Everyone feels lonely from time to time. When we have no one next to whom to sit in the canteen, when we move to another city, or when nobody has time for us on weekends. But in recent decades, this occasional feeling has become chronic for millions of people. In the UK, 60% of 18-34 year olds say they often feel alone. In the United States, 46% of the population feels alone regularly. We live in the most connected era in human history.
However, many of us feel isolated. Being alone and feeling alone is not the same thing. You can be filled with happiness by yourself and hate every second surrounded by friends. Loneliness is a purely subjective and individual experience If you feel alone, you are alone. There is a misconception that this feeling only happens to people who don't know how to talk to people, or how to behave in society. But population-based studies have shown that our social skills hardly change the number of social relationships in adults. Anyone can feel alone. Money, fame, power, beauty, social skills, an extraordinary personality, nothing can protect you from this feeling, because it's part of your biology.
Get enough calories, stay safe and warm or taking care of his descendants was almost impossible on his own. Staying together meant surviving, to be alone meant to die. It was therefore crucial that we move forward together. For our ancestors, the greatest threat to survival was not to be devoured by a lion, but not to get used to the atmosphere of his group and be excluded. To avoid this, our body has developed "social pain". Pain of this type is an adaptation of evolution to isolation: some kind of primary alarm signal to be sure that we stop isolating ourselves by our behavior. Our ancestors who experienced isolation the most painfully were more able to change their behavior when they were isolated and therefore to remain in the tribe, while the others were rejected and were more likely to die.
This is why isolation hurts, and above all, why loneliness is so painful. These mechanisms, which have allowed us to maintain social ties, have worked well for most of our history, until humans start to build a new world for them. The other side of the modern world The epidemic loneliness we see today began at the end of the Renaissance. Western culture began to focus on individuals. The intellectuals broke away from the collectivism inherited from the Middle Ages, while the new Protestant theology emphasized individual responsibility. This trend accelerated during the Industrial Revolution. People have left their villages and fields for factories. Communities that had existed for hundreds of years began to dissolve as cities grew. As our world becomes more and more modern, this trend quickly accelerated.
Today we travel great distances for a new job, love or education and leave our social network aside. We meet fewer people in person, and we find them less often than before. In the United States, the number of close friends increased from 3 in 1985 to 2 in 2011. Most people accidentally fall into chronic loneliness: we become adults and we are busy with our work college, love, kids, and Netflix. We are run out of time.
With all that, the last thing you want to do is spend time with your friends. Until we wake up one day and realize that we feel isolated, that we are lacking intimate relationships. But it's hard to find intimacy as adults. This is how loneliness can become chronic. As humans have become familiar with iPhones and space shuttles, our bodies and thoughts are much the same as 50,000 years ago. We are always biologically designed to be with others. How loneliness kills Large-scale studies have shown that the tension from chronic loneliness is one of the most unhealthy things we can know as humans. It makes us age faster, increases the death rate from cancer, accelerates the progression of Alzheimer's disease, and makes our immune system more fragile.
Studies have shown that when you feel alone, our brain is more receptive to social signals, while at the same time, he has a harder time interpreting them correctly. We pay more attention to others, but we understand them less. The part of our brain that recognizes faces goes out of tune and considers neutral faces more aggressive, which makes him suspicious. Loneliness makes us assume the worst intentions towards us. Because of this hostile perception of the world, we can become more focused on our own protection, which can make us appear colder, hostile and asocial as we really are.
Each of us has a different story, and if your story becomes that people exclude you, other people perceive it, and then the outside world starts to look like the vision you had. It’s often a slow process that takes years, and that can end in depression, and mental health that prevents connections, even if you claim them. The first thing you can do to escape it, is to accept that loneliness is a completely normal feeling and not a feeling to be ashamed of. Literally everyone feels lonely at some point in their life, it is a universal human experience. You cannot eliminate or ignore a feeling until it disappears, but you can accept to feel it and get rid of its cause.
You can see for yourself what your focus is on, and check if you are selectively focusing on negative things.
Was this interaction with a colleague really negative, or rather neutral or even positive?
What was the content of an interaction?
What did the other person say?
And did they say bad things, or did you add additional meanings to them?
Maybe someone reacted badly, but was they just in a hurry?
Then there are your thoughts on the world. Do you assume the worst in the intentions of others?
Do you start a social situation by already knowing how it will end?
Do you assume that others don't want to see you?
Are you trying to keep yourself from suffering by not opening yourself up to others?
And, if so, can you give others the benefit of the doubt?
Can you just assume they are not against you?
Can you risk being open and vulnerable again?
And finally, your behavior. Do you avoid opportunities to be surrounded?
Are you looking for excuses to decline invitations?
Or do you reject others preventively to protect yourself?
Do you behave as if you were attacked?
Are you really looking for new connections, or would you be satisfied with your current situation?
We get what we need from others, and we need to build our artificial humanity from that. Let's try something together: let's contact someone today. without looking if you feel lonely, or if you want to make someone else's day better. Maybe write to a friend you haven't seen in a long time. Call a family member who has become a stranger. Invite a colleague to drink coffee. Or just go somewhere where you're too shy or too lazy to go, like a Dungeons & Dragons event or a sports club. Everyone is different, so you know what you need. Maybe not everything will work, but it doesn't matter. Don't have any special expectations.
 |
Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels
|
However, many of us feel isolated. Being alone and feeling alone is not the same thing. You can be filled with happiness by yourself and hate every second surrounded by friends. Loneliness is a purely subjective and individual experience If you feel alone, you are alone. There is a misconception that this feeling only happens to people who don't know how to talk to people, or how to behave in society. But population-based studies have shown that our social skills hardly change the number of social relationships in adults. Anyone can feel alone. Money, fame, power, beauty, social skills, an extraordinary personality, nothing can protect you from this feeling, because it's part of your biology.
What is loneliness?
Loneliness is a physiological function like hunger. Hunger makes us pay attention to our physical needs, Loneliness makes us pay attention to our social needs. Our body pays attention to our social needs, because millions of years ago it was a good indicator of our ability to survive. Natural selection rewarded our ancestors, when they collaborated or bonded with each other. Our brains have grown and become more and more precise to recognize what others were thinking or feeling, and to form and maintain social ties. Being social has become part of our biology. We were born in groups of 50 to 150 people with whom we usually stay until the end of our lives.Get enough calories, stay safe and warm or taking care of his descendants was almost impossible on his own. Staying together meant surviving, to be alone meant to die. It was therefore crucial that we move forward together. For our ancestors, the greatest threat to survival was not to be devoured by a lion, but not to get used to the atmosphere of his group and be excluded. To avoid this, our body has developed "social pain". Pain of this type is an adaptation of evolution to isolation: some kind of primary alarm signal to be sure that we stop isolating ourselves by our behavior. Our ancestors who experienced isolation the most painfully were more able to change their behavior when they were isolated and therefore to remain in the tribe, while the others were rejected and were more likely to die.
This is why isolation hurts, and above all, why loneliness is so painful. These mechanisms, which have allowed us to maintain social ties, have worked well for most of our history, until humans start to build a new world for them. The other side of the modern world The epidemic loneliness we see today began at the end of the Renaissance. Western culture began to focus on individuals. The intellectuals broke away from the collectivism inherited from the Middle Ages, while the new Protestant theology emphasized individual responsibility. This trend accelerated during the Industrial Revolution. People have left their villages and fields for factories. Communities that had existed for hundreds of years began to dissolve as cities grew. As our world becomes more and more modern, this trend quickly accelerated.
Today we travel great distances for a new job, love or education and leave our social network aside. We meet fewer people in person, and we find them less often than before. In the United States, the number of close friends increased from 3 in 1985 to 2 in 2011. Most people accidentally fall into chronic loneliness: we become adults and we are busy with our work college, love, kids, and Netflix. We are run out of time.
With all that, the last thing you want to do is spend time with your friends. Until we wake up one day and realize that we feel isolated, that we are lacking intimate relationships. But it's hard to find intimacy as adults. This is how loneliness can become chronic. As humans have become familiar with iPhones and space shuttles, our bodies and thoughts are much the same as 50,000 years ago. We are always biologically designed to be with others. How loneliness kills Large-scale studies have shown that the tension from chronic loneliness is one of the most unhealthy things we can know as humans. It makes us age faster, increases the death rate from cancer, accelerates the progression of Alzheimer's disease, and makes our immune system more fragile.
Loneliness is deadly at the level of smoking a pack of ciggarettes daily.
What is most dangerous is that once loneliness becomes chronic, she can start to self-sustain. There are common mechanism for social and physical pain in our brain. Both are interpreted as a threat. So social pain provokes an immediate defensive reaction when it is inflicted on us. When loneliness attains chronic state, our brain becomes defensive. He begins to see danger and aggression everywhere. But that's not all.Studies have shown that when you feel alone, our brain is more receptive to social signals, while at the same time, he has a harder time interpreting them correctly. We pay more attention to others, but we understand them less. The part of our brain that recognizes faces goes out of tune and considers neutral faces more aggressive, which makes him suspicious. Loneliness makes us assume the worst intentions towards us. Because of this hostile perception of the world, we can become more focused on our own protection, which can make us appear colder, hostile and asocial as we really are.
What can we do about it?
If loneliness has become very present in your life, the first thing you can do is recognize the vicious circle you are stuck in. It often looks like this: an initial feeling of isolation leads to tension and sadness, which makes you selectively focus on negative interactions with others. It makes your thoughts about yourself and others more negative, which will then change your behavior. You start to avoid social interactions, which brings this feeling of isolation even more It becomes harder each time to escape from this cycle. Loneliness makes you sit far from others in class, do not answer friends when they call, decline invitations until they stop.Each of us has a different story, and if your story becomes that people exclude you, other people perceive it, and then the outside world starts to look like the vision you had. It’s often a slow process that takes years, and that can end in depression, and mental health that prevents connections, even if you claim them. The first thing you can do to escape it, is to accept that loneliness is a completely normal feeling and not a feeling to be ashamed of. Literally everyone feels lonely at some point in their life, it is a universal human experience. You cannot eliminate or ignore a feeling until it disappears, but you can accept to feel it and get rid of its cause.
You can see for yourself what your focus is on, and check if you are selectively focusing on negative things.
Was this interaction with a colleague really negative, or rather neutral or even positive?
What was the content of an interaction?
What did the other person say?
And did they say bad things, or did you add additional meanings to them?
Maybe someone reacted badly, but was they just in a hurry?
Then there are your thoughts on the world. Do you assume the worst in the intentions of others?
Do you start a social situation by already knowing how it will end?
Do you assume that others don't want to see you?
Are you trying to keep yourself from suffering by not opening yourself up to others?
And, if so, can you give others the benefit of the doubt?
Can you just assume they are not against you?
Can you risk being open and vulnerable again?
And finally, your behavior. Do you avoid opportunities to be surrounded?
Are you looking for excuses to decline invitations?
Or do you reject others preventively to protect yourself?
Do you behave as if you were attacked?
Are you really looking for new connections, or would you be satisfied with your current situation?
Each person and each situation is different.
A simple introspection cannot be sufficient. If you feel unable to resolve your situation on your own, try to seek professional help. It is not a sign of weakness, but of courage. No matter if we look at loneliness as an individual problem that needs to be solved to increase happiness, or as a public medical crisis, this is something that deserves more attention. Humans have built an absolutely incredible world, and yet none of the shiny things we have created is unable to satisfy or replace our basic biological need for connections. Most animals have what they need with their physical environment.We get what we need from others, and we need to build our artificial humanity from that. Let's try something together: let's contact someone today. without looking if you feel lonely, or if you want to make someone else's day better. Maybe write to a friend you haven't seen in a long time. Call a family member who has become a stranger. Invite a colleague to drink coffee. Or just go somewhere where you're too shy or too lazy to go, like a Dungeons & Dragons event or a sports club. Everyone is different, so you know what you need. Maybe not everything will work, but it doesn't matter. Don't have any special expectations.
0 Comments