Dealing with Loneliness

One reader recently asked me if there’s a way to reduce the feeling of loneliness. She pointed out that she did not find it in my book.

While the reader was right: Secret Techniques for Controlling Sadness, Anger, Fear, Anxiety, and Other Emotions has no chapter dedicated to loneliness, but the book categorizes emotions into eight groups, according to where we experience them in our bodies, which is the topic of the first chapter. In a nutshell, these eight areas include all possible feelings that humans can experience. But how can you decide which area of your body does a particular emotion belong to? You can use the same approach that is used throughout the book: observation.

If you have ever experienced loneliness (and probably you have), simply recall that situation from your memory, and observe where you feel the sensations that your mind interprets as loneliness. You should feel it in the sides of your chest. From the book’s standpoint, whenever you experience an emotion in your lateral chest, that feeling belongs to the sadness category. This means that you can use any of the techniques for sadness described in the book to modify or turn off your loneliness.