No Friends, No Family, and No Support (9 Tips to survive)

This blog post will help you understand how to manage feeling like you have no friends, no family, and no support. We will also learn how to be happy when you have no friends, no family, and no support. Finally, we will understand the difference between loneliness and being alone and what to do when you have no family. 

Managing Feeling like You Have No Friends, No Family, and No Support

Here are a few ways to manage feeling like you have no friends, no family, and no support:

• Seek help;
• Expand your support network;
• Improve your coping skills;
• Journaling;
• Ponder why you feel you have no friends, no family, no support;
• Practice simplicity;
• Processing negative core beliefs;
• Reframe your negative core beliefs;
• Practicing self-care;
• Understand your social needs;
• Setting personal socialization goals.

Seek help

Feeling a sense of estrangement, loneliness, or as if you have no friends, no family, and no support, or are grieving a loss, could be excruciating to deal with alone. You can seek help from a mental health professional. They will help you cope with your challenging emotions and establish healthy relationships.  

Moreover, if you are experiencing thoughts of harming yourself or others, seek help immediately. Working toward emotional stability is the first step toward establishing healthy connections. 

Expand your support network

Often, we attempt to take help from people who are not aware of what we are trying to do. It leads to a circumstance where neither party benefits. Likewise, going to the same set of people for the same set of issues can be unproductive. In this case, a different perspective could be useful. Seek help from people whose interests are aligned with yours and who have some experience dealing with the issues you are currently facing. 

Suppose it is a problem with work, seek help from people within your field. Doing so could also help you expand your network and establish new friendships. 

Improve your coping skills

Take a moment and introspect how you manage stressful situations like a disappointment. Do you deal with it head-on, or do you dwell on it until it manifests as a headache? If it is the second option, it is time to improve your coping mechanisms. 

Seek professional help in this regard. Mental health practitioners are equipped to teach you specific adaptive ways of coping with stress. There are certain things you can do right now, such as deep breathing, relaxation practices like meditation, and yoga. Moreover, learn to dissociate yourself from the issue to reflect on it better before arriving at a solution.

Journaling

A lack of support could stem from ineffective and inadequate communication. Pen down your frustrations, the source of this feeling, and your thought process behind your sense of inadequate support. Next, write down possible solutions. 

One example is, “I spoke to X about my problems, and X was not understanding and considerate. Maybe I should try talking to Y or Z instead.” 

Even if you do not arrive at satisfactory solutions, writing in itself would be calming and introspective.  

Ponder why you feel like you have no friends, no family, and no support

Many people tend to have a rigid outlook on things that can and cannot be carried out. They have an all-or-none or black-and-white way of thinking. This cognitive style makes them disappointed when people cross the boundaries they have placed.

Try to understand why you feel like you have no friends, no family, and no support. Could you be asking for something undoable? Are they unable to understand from where you are coming?  

It may be challenging for people to take care of you when they do not know what you expect. It is also difficult for them to do something for you if you would not be willing to do the same for them.  

Practice simplicity

As mentioned already, a lack of support could be the result of a lack of communication. You may feel like people do not understand you. The reason behind such a lack of understanding could be overcomplication of matters on your end. 

Try to use simple, straightforward language that sends your message across clearly.

Processing Negative Core Beliefs

Loneliness can mean certain negative beliefs about yourself, making you feel disconnected. It could lead to social withdrawal, and you would get stuck in this vicious cycle. 

Ruminating over having no friends, no family, and no support could elicit feelings of unworthiness, rejection, and low self-esteem. To recognize these negative beliefs surrounding loneliness, try doing the following:

• Start with a neutral statement regarding your social scenario. For example, say, “I have no friends and no family.”
• Second, ask what this indicates about you. For example, “I am alone.” 
• Continue asking yourself what this statement means for you. For example, “Being alone means that nobody wants to be around me.” 
• When you repeat this process until you reach a point with no sub-statement to it, you have accessed your core negative belief. For example, “I am unlovable.” 

Recognizing and understanding your negative core beliefs can be exhausting. Give yourself time and be patient. These beliefs often stem from childhood problems and may be challenging to alter as they predominantly work outside conscious awareness.

Reframe Your Negative Core Beliefs

Once you have identified your negative core beliefs, you can reframe them. This reframing allows you to understand why you feel like you have no friends, no family, and no support. 

For instance, instead of saying, “I have no friends, no family, and no support,” you could frame it as, “I am starting to evaluate my social challenges, and I am working toward establishing healthy relationships.” 

Whenever thoughts of a lack of support and consequent loneliness start to pervade your mind, consciously remind yourself of this adaptive statement until it becomes habitual. 

Practicing Self-Care

People typically attract others of similar mental health, and it happens unconsciously. Engaging in self-care activities is not just good for your well-being, but also draws emotionally stable people toward you. It occurs in the place of attracting unsupportive people. Give yourself time to figure out your needs and self-care requirements and get into a structured routine. 

Understand your social needs

Social needs are different for everybody. It means that what one may find satisfying may be detrimental to someone else. Some people may find staying in touch through online platforms work for them, while others require offline, face-to-face connections to fulfill their social needs. 

Understand your social needs by asking yourself the following questions:

• How do you feel after connecting with someone on social media?
• Do you feel like you resonate with others after posting your thoughts on social media?
• Do you like speaking over the phone or texting, or neither?
• Do you feel a connection with others after posting something anonymously?
• How do you feel after meeting somebody in person?
• What is the minimum duration of a fulfilling conversation?

Setting Personal Socialization Goals

After you figure out your socializing needs, you can establish specific achievable goals. Keep adding to these goals as and when you deem necessary. Examples of some personal goals include:

• Posting something online once a week;
• Signing up for a book club;
• Subscribing to an online or offline group;
• Taking part in a class (academic or otherwise);
• Rekindling a previous friendship;
• Connecting with someone new once a month;
• Join a fascinating online forum.

Being Happy When You Have No Friends, No Family, and No Support

Happiness is a subjective feeling and is derived differently for everybody. It may take time to understand your source of joy regarding your social life. To start with the exploration process, try the following: 

• Take time to understand yourself and your needs;
• Comprehend the frequency with and how you would like to connect with people to satiate your social appetite. Knowing your needs is vital for establishing connections;
• Give yourself time and space to grieve and process the loss of relationships you had or wished you did. Processing your emotions can help you move forward while acknowledging your emotional process; and
• Engage in activities that appeal to you.

Loneliness Versus Being Alone

Understand that loneliness and being alone are two different things. Loneliness refers to a desire to connect but the inability to do so regardless of the reason. On the other hand, being alone refers to being disconnected from others for reasons outside of your control. It means that you have some connection, and even in the presence of others, on the inside, you feel alone. 

For loneliness, it is recommended to take a more preventive approach regarding forming connections. For aloneness, it is best to introspect and establish a relationship with yourself before attempting to connect with others. 

What to Do When You Have No Family?

You have may lost your family or be estranged from them Whatever the reason may be for not having a family, you can cope with it despite how impossible it feels. Remind yourself that you can still create a support system by surrounding yourself with respectful, considerate, and caring individuals. Allow yourself to define what exactly a family means to you.  

BetterHelp: A Better Alternative

Those who are seeking therapy online may also be interested in BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers plenty of formats of therapy, ranging from live chats, live audio sessions and live video sessions. In addition, unlimited messaging through texting, audio messages and even video messages are available here.

BetterHelp also offers couples therapy and therapy for teenagers in its platform. Furthermore, group sessions can also be found in this platform, covering more than twenty different topics related to mental health and mental illness. The pricing of BetterHelp is also pretty cost-effective, especially considering the fact that the platform offers financial aid to most users.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we understood how to manage when you feel like you have no friends, no family, and no support. We also learned how to be happy in such situations. Further, we understood the difference between loneliness and being alone and what to do when you have no family. 

Frequently Asked Questions: No Friends, No Family, and No Support

References

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/10-things-you-can-you-feel-lack-support.html

https://family.lovetoknow.com/about-family-values/no-family-no-friends-how-cope-being-alone