Three ways I cope with loneliness while living alone in Australia

Not long ago, I published an article about loneliness among young people in Australia and received many messages afterwards.

Some readers said they had not realised others felt the same way. Others said that even after living overseas for many years, loneliness still followed them.

That was when I began to realise that loneliness may be something far more people struggle with than we imagine.

It also reminded me of a video call with my mother some time ago, when we talked about my cousin.

My cousin works at a university in China. Her job is stable and respectable, and she has both winter and summer holidays. During her breaks, she takes barista courses, learns to dive and travels. From the outside, her life looks rich and fulfilling.

Yet living alone, she often tells her parents that she feels an overwhelming sense of loneliness.

Because of this, my aunt and uncle regularly stay at her apartment for a few days to keep her company.

My cousin believes she feels lonely because she does not have a partner and lives by herself.

But does having a partner mean loneliness will disappear?

Not necessarily.

According to research by American psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad, loneliness is not determined entirely by whether someone lives alone or has a partner. What matters more is whether they have stable social connections and a life structure that can support them.

A person can still feel deeply lonely while remaining in low-quality relationships.

So I began to think that loneliness may trouble all of us, regardless of age or where we live.

Here are three small things that have helped me cope with loneliness while living in Australia and build a life system of my own.

When we are at school, new social opportunities appear every day, whether we actively seek them or not.

After graduation and entering the workforce, however, it becomes very easy to fall into a repetitive life between home and the office if we do not make an effort to connect with the outside world.

If you also live alone, you may spend an entire weekend at home and barely speak a single sentence.

Matthew Lieberman, a researcher in social cognitive neuroscience, has argued that the human brain evolved for social connection.

Connection is not an optional extra. It is a basic need, much like eating and sleeping.

Even introverts who genuinely enjoy solitude may not feel well if they remain isolated for too long.

People are social beings. We need contact with real people and genuine interaction.

You also do not need to rely only on family and close friends to ease feelings of loneliness.

Simply stepping outside and experiencing the real world can help. Even small interactions with strangers can make a difference.

You could invite a friend out for brunch.

You could visit a weekend market to buy food for the coming week, browse handmade goods and chat briefly with the stallholders.

Or you could take your laptop to a library and work in a different environment.

Local communities in Australia also offer many activities and volunteering opportunities.

If your weekends often feel empty, or you are still looking for work, volunteering can be a meaningful way to meet local people and become more connected to the community.

I once volunteered at Vinnies, where I helped sort second-hand clothes and attach price tags.

I also chatted with the staff.

These may sound like very small tasks, but they offered immediate feedback and gave me a sense of being useful.

Helping others brought me joy, and through these small activities, I also met new people.

I once spoke with an editor from a magazine in China and mentioned that I had recently bought a camera and wanted to learn photography.

He said that many people he had met who lived in Australia seemed to know at least a little about photography.

Thinking about it, he was probably right.

People who have lived in Australia for a while often joke that the country has beautiful mountains and water, but very little entertainment.

Life moves slowly here.

If you do not live in a large city such as Sydney or Melbourne, there may be even fewer things to do. In more remote areas, you may see more kangaroos than people in a day.

As a result, many people begin experimenting with small hobbies such as photography, pottery or painting.

Over time, however, I realised that the most healing part of these hobbies is not simply learning.

It is creating.

Positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the idea of flow—the state we enter when we become completely absorbed in a challenging and creative activity and lose our sense of time.

This is often when people experience their strongest sense of happiness.

Yet when many of us try to escape boredom, emptiness or loneliness through hobbies, we remain consumers rather than creators.

We read books, study photography or learn to paint.

Learning is valuable, but if we remain only in the process of receiving information, we are still consumers.

Knowledge, ideas and techniques continually enter our minds, but nothing new grows from them and enters the world.

After a while, boredom may return.

What truly gives us a sense of value and creates lasting motivation is making something.

When we use the painting techniques we have learned to create our own work, or express an idea from a book through our own thoughts and words, we complete the transformation from input to output.

Finishing something that belongs to you brings a powerful sense of satisfaction.

You may also receive feedback from others, which creates a sense of value and achievement. That feeling encourages you to continue, gradually forming a positive cycle.

This happened when I decided to return to painting last year.

At first, I simply wanted something to do in my spare time.

But while practising, I treated each exercise as though it were a finished piece. When I was pleased with one, I casually listed it online.

To my surprise, many people contacted me asking whether they could buy my paintings.

The same has happened since I began writing more regularly.

No matter how many books I read, consuming knowledge alone does not make it part of me.

So I force myself to produce something.

Finishing an article gives me a sense of achievement, while the writing process helps organise the confusion inside my mind.

When I receive feedback from readers—or realise that something I wrote may have helped another person—that unexpected connection gives me a deep sense of value.

Creating is one way of building a real connection with the world.

So when you begin a new hobby, do not focus only on learning.

Try creating at the same time.

Do not remain only a consumer of life.

Build a world of your own.

Caring for another life can also help ease the loneliness of living alone.

I feel incredibly fortunate that a little dog entered my life.

Since his arrival, my home has become far livelier.

Hearing the tap-tap-tap of his paws across the floor every day gives me a sense of comfort.

My routine has also become much more regular. I have to leave the house before nine every morning, and on weekends, we go to the dog park.

Talking with other dog owners has also added more social interaction to my life.

Of course, before bringing a new member into your home, you should carefully consider whether your circumstances are suitable.

A pet is a life and a commitment that may last more than a decade.

If keeping an animal is not currently possible, you could care for plants instead.

When I turned thirty, it was as though some hidden farming instinct suddenly awakened inside me.

I became completely obsessed with tropical houseplants.

For a period of time, the first thing I did almost every Saturday morning was rush to Bunnings to see whether any new plants had arrived.

Caring for them became an essential part of my weekend, and I never grew tired of it.

When I first brought my monstera home, it had only two very small leaves.

Now it has four or five large, deeply split leaves, each more than thirty centimetres wide.

Watching it grow has given me an enormous sense of achievement.

Psychology suggests that caring for another living thing can strengthen our sense of responsibility and happiness, while also helping us build a more stable daily rhythm.

Often, it is not only the pet or plant itself that heals us.

The process of caring for it helps us rediscover our own lives.

Many people believe that the answer to loneliness is to have more people around them.

But how many people can truly accompany another person throughout an entire lifetime?

Rather than waiting passively for someone else to fill our lives, perhaps we should build our own sources of stability.

The German-American philosopher Paul Tillich once wrote:

“Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.”

Perhaps loneliness is not always an emotion that must be eliminated.

Instead, we can stop focusing on its presence and place our attention on connection and creation.

When life becomes full enough, loneliness no longer feels quite so frightening.