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I wish there was an easy answer or easy advice for feeling lonely. If there is, I don’t know of it. When I see clients in my office that feel lonely, we could say you should make more friends, you should go out more but to be honest with you: they’re already out with all their friends. They just are lonely while surrounded by a bunch of people. I think part of the reason this comes up (especially during adolescence) is because you’re recognizing who you are as a certain person and that may not be similar to the people you’ve been friends with growing up. You might feel disconnected, you might feel like you’ve outgrown your friends and that can lead to loneliness. Another aspect of feeling lonely could just be that you’re old enough now to recognize the existential crisis that we are actually all completely separate from other people and we are living our own life and not other people’s. So as far as feeling lonely, that’s a difficult thing that I usually work with in therapy over a course of many weeks and months to alleviate. It’s not something that I think I have a quick tip or advice for.
