Ask A Therapist: I’m Single & I’m Embarrassed About How Lonely I Am - Refinery29

One of the ways that people often read into their negative feelings and thoughts is by engaging in them with rumination. You might spend a lot of time trying to work out: Why do I feel this way? Should I be single? Should I not be? Why am I feeling bad about it? Is it bad that I'm feeling bad? We can get ourselves into a real tangle. There's a couple of techniques, aside from working on the acceptance, for when you get stuck ruminating. One is distraction, but it's not a distraction by way of avoidance: it's more diversion. It's doing something healthy in place of ruminating, which could be doing something that you enjoy. The other is breathing techniques. So if you're feeling negative thoughts and emotions rising, and you've got yourself into a mental tangle, how can you get out? Often just resetting, by focusing internally on basic things like the breath or bodily sensations, can help some people get out of that negative loop.