Have you given up on volunteering as a way of dealing with loneliness?

Not exactly. I have, in my years of loneliness, done an amazing amount of volunteer work. I’ve sat on Boards of Directors, walked dogs (see my posts on Animal Assisted Therapy), worked at craft fairs, joined committees…the list goes on.

None of these activities really helped my loneliness (with the exception of the dogs!). Some of them made me feel more lonely. There’s nothing worse than feeling intensely lonely and finding yourself sitting around a boardroom table, knowing no one and being bored out of your mind.

This isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed my volunteer activities. Some—like volunteering at a craft fair—have been fun. But they’ve been fun despite my loneliness. They’ve been fun in themselves. I haven’t stopped volunteering. What I’ve done is stopped volunteering as a way to try to “end” my loneliness. I now only do things that I want to do, with my loneliness not entering into the equation one way or another.

I find that volunteering without trying to “end” or “cure” my loneliness takes a lot of weight off the volunteer activity. I’m not asking the volunteer work to do more than it’s capable of, and that leaves me feeling less stressed, and makes the volunteer activity more enjoyable.