Hi Felix

It sounds like you have a lot of good habits; exercising, meditating, studying, eating healthily, spending time with friends and family.

You have a couple of good friends that you see a few times a month. Yet you say that you don’t have friendship, a social life or a social circle. How many friends would you like to have? It should be relatively easy to make friends by joining a hobby group of your interest.

My concern is that does loneliness come from you and will it remain no matter how many friends that you have? Is this something that you feel at the moment because your time isn’t occupied by a job?

You are very critical of yourself. This is a form of self-abuse. One way of learning to accept yourself is changing this habit.

What helped me is repeatedly addressing the core belief when I’m feeling calm and therefore less likely to engage in critical behaviour.

I would suggest writing down all of the things that you like about yourself. You could start small and perhaps focus on actions if you have difficulty with this. Try doing this when you feel better after an episode of disliking yourself. Please be patient and practice this regularly it will take some time to sink in.

It can also be helpful to keep a list of compliments that others give you. This doesn’t necessarily mean physical compliments. If someone says that you are a good person or hardworking etc those are compliments too.

Are you divorced? If so, was there a reason that the relationship ended? It could be pertinent since you are interested in dating.