Loneliness

[Thorin]

This article really struck a nerve with me: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/04/how-loneliness-begets-loneliness/521841/

The idea that one can be lonely in a crowded room, that feeling lonely makes you less likely to make open up thus causing more loneliness, and that "lonely" and "being alone" are not the same thing.

[Mr. Analog]

Growing up I had few friends and my parents weren't super affectionate so its no surprise I'm not only used to isolation but I seek it out. It's not like I don't enjoy other peoples' company but I've been on my own so long its just overwhelming and I don't go out of my way to seek it. I've been an extroverted introvert most of my life and I don't see that changing.

Recently I started really thinking hard about it, on one had it would be nice to have a person to really talk to and be around but on the other hand I don't want other peoples' problems.

I think this is why online social interaction is so popular, you can gate what you want out of a relationship

I'm pretty sure I'm going to die young, sad and alone and I've made peace with that...

[Darren Dirt]

It's sad/frustrating to know that what you said in the OP is of course very "common knowledge" for our group here on RW but is NOT understood by countless others... including those suffering from loneliness-amplified depression.

And the reality leads to the fact that, yes, you can be an "outgoing introvert" who is actually feeling extremely miserable / anxious / worse at the exact moment that you are verbally entertaining a large crowd at a social gathering. #BeenThere



Post-Grunch Edit:

I've been an extroverted introvert most of my life and I don't see that changing.

WOW, without first seeing your reply I mentioned the same little-understood phenomenon -- where your outward actions / confidence (often via "forcing yourself to do the tough stuff") comes across as extroversion, when THEY don't understand that deep down you can't wait to be done the social situation so you can go back to the refreshing/recharging bliss of solitude, introspection, creativity, etc.

[Darren Dirt]

Recently I started really thinking hard about it, on one had it would be nice to have a person to really talk to and be around but on the other hand I don't want other peoples' problems.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to die young, sad and alone and I've made peace with that...

DAMMIT BUDDY! Those words I can imagine coming out of my dad over the last few years (if not decades) and it makes me feel... things. He suffered from a severe case of PRIDE (old school label). What today we would say is a "private person ... they keep to themselves, don't want to bother others..."

To quote Bob Newhart in that MAD TV sketch: *STOP IT!*


You are not doomed to miserable loneliness nor dying "young". But *most of all* talking to your friends about your problems is NOT imposing/burdening us WITH those problems! Sometimes :shock: it can help just to be and feel HEARD even if the audience isn't able to "FIX" your problems! Recent life lesson for me, considering all the stuff I am going through right now with my brother's situation and what LITTLE I can do to actually help "fix" things... Yet my company has helped him feel less hopeless and alone.


The rest of your life starts NOW my friend -- and it can be comparitively AMAZING, it does not have to be more of what it has already been up to this point. But the willingness to change has to come from you, deep within, all we can do is support you on the next leg of your life journey and walk alongside you as much as we can.

#E-HUG

[Thorin]

Not sure if you guys read the linked article.  I try not to post links to articles because it feels like link-spamming and because on other forums I've seen how people don't bother reading the links, just post their own opinions to the headlines.  But what you're talking about is discussed in the article.

So a couple of quotes that I think are important if we want to keep discussing this:

Cacioppo: First of all, let me qualify something. Living alone, being alone, and the size of your social network is only weakly related. Think about patients in hospitals: They aren?t alone, they have all the support they could ask for, but they tend to feel very lonely. There?s a difference between being alone and feeling alone. People in marriages tend to feel less lonely than people not in marriages. However people in marriages can feel extraordinarily alone when they feel alienated from their spouse and family. They?re so weakly correlated, we need to take objective isolation and perceived isolation and separate those two.

In animals, it?s not separating a monkey from any companion, it?s separating them from a preferred companion. When we do that, we see the same effects in those monkeys that we see in humans; they feel lonely.

Cacioppo: We know that there?s a number of cultural factors and environmental factors. For instance, the internet has increased connectivity. But if you ever find yourself [looking at] your texts and emails at an event with your family, you may realize that those digital connections don?t mean that you feel more connected.

If you use those [digital] connections as a way station?kids tend to do this; they use Facebook so that they can then meet up somewhere?it?s associated with lower levels of loneliness. If it?s used as a destination?and ironically, lonely people tend to do this, they tend to withdraw socially because it?s punishing, and interacting digitally perhaps as a non-authentic self, makes them feel more like they?re accepted. But it doesn?t actually make them feel less lonely.

If the only acceptance you can get of yourself is a fake representation on the web, that?s not going to make you feel connected. But if you look at online dating, there you?re using it to meet other people, so not surprisingly, that tends to be associated with lower levels of loneliness.

Khazan: Why do people who are lonely interpret social situations more negatively?

Cacioppo: There?s two ways to think about it. One is what?s going on pre-attentively, and one that's going on consciously. [For example,] when you get hungry, you can feel it, you want to have some food. Its purpose is to motivate you to seek food before you are so low on fuel that you can no longer have the energy [to do so].

And loneliness motivates you to repair or replace connections that you feel are threatened or lost. So people pay more attention to social information because they?re motivated to reconnect.

So in hunger, you are [much] more sensitive to bitter than to sweet tastes. The reason for that development is that bitter tastes, evolutionarily speaking, were associated with poisons. What that means is if you?re really hungry, you?re going to spit out palatable, bitter food even though you?re trying to find something to keep you alive.

Same thing with loneliness. If you look at early humans and other hominids, they were not uniformly positive toward each other. We exploit each other, we punish each other, we threaten each other, we coerce. And so it isn't that I want to connect with anyone, I need to worry about friend or foe. Just like bitter versus sweet, poison vs. non poison, if I make an error and detect a person as a foe who turns out to be a friend, that's okay, I don?t make the friend as fast, but I survive.

But if I mistakenly detect someone as a friend when they're a foe, that can cost me my life. Over evolution, we?ve been shaped to have this bias.

That sets up an expectation, because what I expect is often what I see. If I think you're going to be hostile, I'm going to answer questions very differently than if I trust you.

You?re motivated to connect. But promiscuous connection with others can lead to death. A neural mechanism kicks in to make you a little skeptical or dubious about connecting.

Being physically alone does not mean you feel lonely.
Being physically in a group of people does not mean you don't feel lonely.
Online connections can make you feel more accepted, but that does not necessarily make you feel less lonely.
Feeling lonely can actually make you more skeptical about people, thus less likely to connect on a personal level, thus less likely to get less lonely.
The way to feel less lonely is to feel that there are people who are your friend, not because they want something from you, but because they like interacting with the real you.
The best way to accomplish this is to be friends to others, so that they reciprocate (they won't all, but we only need a few real friends to fight the loneliness).

As for not wanting to take on other peoples' problems, I don't think that's necessary.  As men, we typically want to hear the problem and then fix the problem, not hear the problem and then commiserate and then do nothing about it.  To which I say, so don't; instead, find an activity to do that everyone likes and stick with it, that'll still make the other people feel liked.

[Mr. Analog]

I did skim the article and I really felt it, sometimes the loneliest place to be is in a crowd. I certainly feel this way with my workmates. I like them but I can't connect to them the same way as I have done in the past with others, but that's really me holding people at arm's length rather than them.

What I meant about other peoples' problems is I can barely juggle my own crap I don't know if I'm capable of being around another human for protracted periods before seeking escape.

Like I say, I've been on my own so long it's not easy to relate to people. 14 years collectively, with perhaps 2 months of intimacy somewhere in all that time... and even that was a blur as it was during a very difficult part of my life. I crave companionship but I've never had it before and I probably never will, so that's something I've had to come to terms with. I am who I am, and that's okay.

[Darren Dirt]

I skimmed yesterday and only read in detail today.

But I felt obliged to respond to the words and emotions shared by my good friend. Sometimes support from a close relationship can make a HUGE difference compared to solid science and facts etc. Actually that's part of what the article touched on: human contact doesn't do much for loneliness UNLESS there is a mutual connection and/or common goal/benefit shared/exchanged.

I want to connect more with people especially you guys. For all of our health.