9 Easy Mantras to Crush Your Loneliness (2024)

Day after day, you come home to an empty house. The loneliness is getting to you. You long to belong and to feel seen.

Instead, you feel edgy and sad, trapped in your isolation. And what’s worse is that you recently heard that ongoing loneliness has health risks (Park et al., 2020).

You wonder: What can I do to change things?

What if you could handle your lonely moods by applying a cognitive self-statement, essentially a simple mantra?

Though it might not instantly change your situation, these three-word mantras below can help you gain fresh perspectives.

Since each is short, you can easily pick one, repeat it, and memorize it!

How Could 3 Words Help You?

Early in the development of cognitive models, psychologist Dr. Donald Meichenbaum learned that self-instruction training, or speaking your instructions to yourself, could help subjects carry out a behavior.

Since then, research suggests verbal strategies can mediate behavior, helping us to self-regulate and get more mindful (Racy et al., 2024).

Verbal mediation strategies include talking to ourselves using positive encouragers. We can remind ourselves to appreciate the benefits of solitude, build good habits, and interrupt mood-lowering thoughts.

Short cognitive coping self-statements are used in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), developed by Dr. Albert Ellis, who encouraged people to restructure their irrational beliefs into rational ones. The model is still in use with ongoing validation studies (Balkis, 2024).

Overall, short statements can help you cope when the going gets tough.

As you select your three-word phrase, notice if it reminds you of something important, improves your frustration tolerance, fosters self-acceptance, or helps you elicit new thinking or a fresh perspective.

Read on and decide which one will apply best to you.

1. Nothing Is Missing.

If you were to visit a nursery and look at the newborns, would you decide that one is less valuable than the others?

Or would you realize that all humans have intrinsic value, whole and complete, simply because they’re here?

Loneliness can make you forget the truth about yourself.

Remind yourself that nothing is missing. You are whole and valuable, even if you currently feel lonely.

2. Breakdowns Precede Breakthroughs.

When you feel lousy, remember that your breakdowns often precede your breakthroughs.

For example, crying and sorrow serve as wake-up calls that you’re unhappy.

Other painful feelings include grief, sorrow, anger, guilt, regret, fear, shame, embarrassment, and more.

Pain is a motivator. For many, it can precede internal and external change, leading to powerful breakthroughs.

3. Solitude Bears Gifts.

Do you hold an assumption that others make you complete? Were you taught that you’re incomplete on your own?

If you hold this idea and are willing to review your life, you can question it.

Perhaps you might remember times when solitude provided unanticipated gifts.

Recall moments when solitude offered you a healthy headspace, not to mention a chance to rest and re-group.

4. Habits Can Change.

Sometimes, we develop bad habits around loneliness:

• If you’re in the habit of coming home and doing nothing, you can break that habit by adding in an activity before going home.
• If you’re in the habit of being unsociable, you can break that habit by practicing being friendlier to people in your life.
• If you’re in the habit of isolating yourself, you can break that habit by joining and attending group meetings.

Just because you have a specific habit now, it doesn’t mean you must continue this habit.

You can opt to use replacement behaviors to build new habits.

New habits applied with regularity can help you reach improvements in your circ*mstances.

What are some habits you can break? What are some habits you can build?

5. Only Do Now.

If you are panicking about feeling lonely, your mind might be making your problem even bigger than it needs to be.

What if you made your problem smaller, shrinking it to just focusing on now?

• If you’re feeling sad, instead of trying to solve all of the causes of your sadness, you could ask, “What is one thing I can do to take care of myself right now?”
• If you’re feeling worried, instead of trying to solve all of your worries, you could ask, “What is one request I can make right now?”
• If you’re feeling helpless, instead of trying to take lots of action steps, you could ask, “What is one empowering action I can take right now?”

Sometimes, focusing on something manageable makes things more manageable.

6. Just Like Breathing.

We pause between our inhale and our exhale. Just because you pause when you exhale, you don’t panic that you’ll never again inhale.

Likewise, when you inhale and pause, it doesn’t mean you’ll never again exhale. Pauses are natural and recurring.

Recognize that social pauses show up in the same way.

Just like breathing, social pauses are natural.

7. On Its Way.

Mystical teachers sometimes use the phrase, “It’s on its way.” They teach you to pretend you’re placing an order to the universe, visualize what you want, and then imagine that everything you want is on its way.

When you act as if the connection you want is on its way, you will begin to notice opportunities for greater connection, creating more of that for yourself.

8. Just Reach Out.

You might think that you don’t have anyone to reach out to. It’s time to consider who you already have in your life:

• Consider contacting a therapist or support group.
• Consider calling an old friend.
• Consider calling a family member.

Who else might you call? Brainstorm a list of people and start working down that list!

Talking to another person when you feel lonely will lower your loneliness and increase your sense of support, building the opposite of loneliness: connection.

9. Don’t Give Up!

Remember a time when your situation changed; it can happen for you again.

References