How do you deal with your loneliness (to those of you who feel it)?

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Lots of video games.

...Does it have to be a healthy coping mechanism?

Embrace it. Find comfort in yourself.

I picked up a sport this year. People are surprisingly friendly.

I endure, painfully.

Poorly.

I pretend to have imaginary friends in my head until it seems like real enough and the day passes.

There is a singular niche community that I involve myself with where I pop in and make highly desired items to give away for free.

It makes me feel like people care about me for a while. For now, that's good enough for me.

Assuming this is coming from a lack of friendship:

Start with a pet, if possible. Then work your way up.

Getting my cat a few years ago helped take the edge off so I didn't come off as so desperate or distant (oscillating between the two extremes).

Then slowly picked up effective habits and retrained bad habits in interacting with people. Still working on it.

If you mean you feel lonely within your existing friendships, there's a degree to which that is "normal" or at least somewhat universal. Some philosophers would say true connection with another person is fundamentally impossible. But even if that's the case, we can find meaning and beauty in the process of trying to achieve the unachievable. Happiness comes not from finally filling an unfillable lack (a mythical ideal), but the novelty or enjoyment of the process.

I focus on spending time with friends and family when I can. And video games when I can't. I stopped pushing myself to do things I didn't want to do also, that helped a lot with being disappointed in what I achieve. BG3 is nice therapy these days for me.

I don’t know if you’ve seen this before, but I recommend the Kurzgesagt video on loneliness.
It hit me quite deep, first time I saw it.

Sit through it

Distract

Though my lizard brain demands me to be around other people, most of the things that bring me genuine life satisfaction are just easier to do solo. When I'm at purely social events I also get this sense of dread that I could be making better use of my time.

The voice in my head is making contradictory demands, so I've learned to not feel bad for circumventing it. I have my own goals in life, instincts be damned.

I find that listening to people casually talking is usually enough to satisfy the lizard brain, so I listen to a lot of stuff in the background: YouTube video essays, Twitch Just Chatting streamers, etc. When it gets particularly demanding I'll try engaging with the people, but usually I just let my subconscious listen while I'm focusing on more important stuff.

Watching others having fun together oddly helps me a bit. I might binge a youtube channel like Corridor Crew, for example. Sometimes I even prefer being "a fly on the wall" because I don't have to participate and be drained of energy. I also don't have to worry about feeling rejected or offending anyone (and thus no "social hangover").

I gather unto me, as much of this nectar as I can whilst not harming too many friends and family. Then I enjoy it.

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Depends. Is the loneliness a byproduct of choices made for happiness in other aspects of your life, like moving to a new city or being picky about your social circle? Are you choosing to stay in and not interact for certain reasons? Or is the loneliness caused by things you can't control, like people leaving or mental health issues?

If it's the former, I say embrace it and work on focusing less on how you think your life should look. Pay attention to the things that you love by yourself. Take in the moments any moment where you notice you're having a great time and don't have to stop due to someone else. Imagine you just got done with a 12 hour road trip with someone who talks too much and breathe in the silence and peace of the moment. Listen to rain or cars rushing by. Sometimes, I find that loneliness can be caused by feeling like you're missing out on something but maybe wouldn't even make you happy. There are lots of people who feel lonely in their families or friendships or relationships.

If it's the latter, I'd work up to a more comfortable and satisfying level of socialization. It takes time. In that process, you'll hopefully find yourself leaning pickier and finding out what works and what doesn't. Be selfish. Learn to spend time with people and then decide for yourself whether you want to keep spending time with them. Treat your energy and presence like precious rubies. They are! Invest in who matters most to you and keeps you feeling good after you leave. This will build your confidence and belief in your worth and motivate you to keep working on the things that keep you from happiness. Ending loneliness isn't a goal you get to, it's a side effect of choosing people who see the real you and doing the self care of letting others in. :)

Doing an effort and force myself to be with others . With the time and being patient , it heals .

Alcohol.... Feel like ive been overindulding in it for a few years.... but what else to do?

For me, my loneliness was really rooted in my self-loathing. When I was able to deal with that, I was able to deal with my feelings of loneliness.

That's a very good question

I recognize that everyone that has abandoned me will at some point lose everyone and everything that has ever mattered to them.

My dogs, my awesome wife, and lots of video games. Some pot now and then, also, but there’s a limit to how much it helps.

Social anxiety around embarrassment and rejection tends to keep me away from family and friends, so I embarrass myself only around safe people.

As a kid I used to talk to my stuffed animals and this continued until middle school when my folks threw my stuffed animals away. After that I just started gaming more, my folks used force me outside of house and tried to get me to interact with my peers, but to no avail.

Listen to lots of music, the amount of sad love songs in my playlist keeps increasing lol. Work out at home with calisthenics as well, and try bulk when I find the time to do meal prep. Unfortunately most of my real life friends and the person I'm dating live on the other side of the city and I can't afford a car, so lots of loneliness

To be frank, I can't. There is a compounded problem in my case - my only major social contact is my mother who's wound up being rather controlling. My father left, my sister is reducing contact with her, my family on my father's side has moved away from us for obvious reasons, and I never really had much of a friendship in school, or high school, or college for that matter. That leaves me woefully unaware of how to interact in an existing social circle without feeling like a burden to them, so I basically live as detached from society as possible.

Take some time, like 30 minutes to an hour, and just try to desensitize from everything kinda. No music, no games, no phone. Whatever I want to do in that time I do. Be it some cleaning, a walk in the woods, just laying there mostly lol. And just think about whatever I need to think about.

A lot of the times it's negative thoughts, but it's been more less negative the more I do it. But I've found you have to just work through those negative thoughts and feelings and let them be. They will always be a part of me, doesn't mean it has to always be a hurtful thing. Lessons are best taught the hard way IMHO, and all I can do in try to be a better person. Once I started letting those bad times play out and think just how I can be better, I thought about them less as I gave myself more time to just freely think.

After a while, those times where I'm disconnected from everybody stopped being frightening and now are something I happy partake in.

I can keep writing a bunch on this lol, but I heard a thing where when naming the top 5 people you love, you should be number 1. Not in a selfish, narcissistic way but you are going to be the one that's always there for you. So may as well try to be your own best friend.

The same way I distract myself from anything even slightly unpleasant or uncomfortable.

Escapism via gaming, reading, music, and YouTube.

Usually multiple at once. Sensory overload makes it easier to distract yourself completely.

The more time you have doing nothing, the more you will reflect upon yourself and sink into depresstion. Play games, watch tiktok, youtube and films/tv shows. Do anything but stay focused with yourself.

It's killing me. I must confess I still believe (still believe). When I'm not with you, I lose my mind! Give me a sign!