Heye Sophia's List: Solitude

• Some Aspies go through middle school so excited about their passions that they barely notice they're the odd ones out, or if they notice, they don't care. Probably not a lot, but some. Others are unfortunately bullied quite a bit.

• The feeling of loneliness is a universal experience, part and parcel of the human condition.
• Loneliness is often confused with aloneness.
• The real problem with loneliness is not so much the experience itself but the ineffective ways which we have evolved in our attempts to deal with it. Loneliness itself is a primary issue. Our responses to loneliness are secondary issues.
•    The most difficult thing to work though is the blame and self-contempt we usually experience when we consider that it is the result of our own choices that have brought us to this lonely state.

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• A report from the Mental Health Foundation, published this week, argues that our modern market-driven society has led to an increase of human solitude.
• Better relationships mean better lives.
• They have shown how social and emotional isolation break down both body and soul.
• Studies of cancer patients, cited in the report, show that sufferers without close friends were much more likely to die than those with lots of friends.
• Business values no longer clash with human relationships, but have absorbed them. Relationships have become things: things that make you live longer, that offer health benefits.
• For some philosophers, loneliness was the experience of being mortal
• this latest report suggests overcoming loneliness can be a simple matter of choice – as something an individual can do with sheer volition.
• if only we were prepared to make the effort.
• Going through the motions of communicating isn't the same thing as relating.
• As Del Loewenthal, professor of psychotherapy at Roehampton University, points out
• "It's a mistake to turn loneliness into an illness. What matters are people's individual meanings."
• Researchers have shown that some people cope well with being alone when they know that they have a role in life.

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• What is more, we seem to have a basic drive for it. Psychologists find that human beings have fundamental need for inclusion in group life and for close relationships. We are truly social animals.
• we function best when this social need is met.
• Yet the effects are distinct enough to be measured over time, so that unmet social needs take a serious toll on health, eroding our arteries, creating high blood pressure, and even undermining learning and memory.
• Chronic loneliness is something else entirely. It is one of the surest markers in existence for maladjustment.
• children, it leads to all kinds of problems. Failure to be socially connected to peers is the real reason behind most school dropouts. It sets in motion a course on which children spin their way to outcast status and develop delinquency and other forms of antisocial behavior.
• adults, loneliness is a major precipitant of depression and alcoholism. And it increasingly appears to be the cause of a range of medical problems
• Psychologist John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago has been tracking the effects of loneliness.
• Loneliness, Cacioppo concludes, sets in motion a variety of "slowly unfolding pathophysiological processes." The net result is that the lonely experience higher levels of cumulative wear and tear.
• Social skills are crucial for your health.

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• All people seem to depend on varying amounts and intensities of social interaction to keep them happy, stable, and sane. This is not surprising given that human beings are social animals by nature.
• Human beings are also naturally curious.
• seek reasons and information to form explanations that allow us to understand ourselves as well as our world and our place and purpose in the world.
• ask questions
• Prisoners who are isolated for prolonged periods of time have been known to experience "depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember." (2) Studies have also shown that isolation can cause "impaired vision and hearing... tinnitus [(ringing in the ears)], weakening of the immune system, amenorrhea [(absence of menstrual periods in women)], premature menopause... and aggressive behavior in prisoners, volunteers and animals." (1)

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• Negative emotions -- up to a point -- can play a very helpful role in a happy life. They’re powerful, flashy signs that something isn’t right. They often prod me into action.
• Also, one key to happiness is self-knowledge, and yet it’s very, very hard to know myself -- especially painful aspects that I’m trying to deny or cover up.
• A friend of mine said, “I knew I had to get control of my children’s TV time when I heard myself lying to the pediatrician about how TV they watched each week.”
• The bitter medicine of negative emotions can be helpful within a certain range, but if it creates severe unhappiness -- or certainly depression -- it can become so painful that it interferes with normal life. And that's when you need serious help.
• A big part of being happier, I've found, is finding ways either to eliminate the causes, or if that isn’t possible, to deal constructively with negative emotions and difficult situations.

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• It turns out that trying to reassure someone when they’re depressed is likely to make them feel worse.
• The suspected reason for this is that some people feel the need to stay attached to their perception of reality. They make a negative statement like “I hate my job.” Then someone tries to make them feel better by saying, “It’s OK, your job isn’t that bad.” But this statement conflicts with their perception.
• Everything can be seen from multiple perspectives, and if you choose to look on the bright side of things, you’ll dramatically boost your happiness.
• If you were to stick your hand in a fire, it would hurt. The pain would make you quickly recoil your hand and run off in search of water. Of course, you wouldn’t enjoy the pain, but if you didn’t feel it, you’d leave your hand in the fire and cause serious damage or death. The pain tells you you’re doing something wrong, and provides some very strong motivation to correct it immediately.
• The purpose of pain is to make you avoid danger.
• If something is medically wrong with you, then a little pain is good, because it makes you go to the doctor.
• The best mix is to enjoy good emotions most of the time, while allowing negative emotions to serve their purpose now and then. By looking for the good side in everything, you’ll make the most of what life has to offer.

  • This is a concept I'm really interested in.

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• Loneliness has been inversely related to measures of self-esteem
• do men and women experience loneliness differently?
• most lonely people do not reveal -- let
   alone discuss -- their actual thoughts and feelings while they are undergoing the
   experience. As a result, it is the recollection of what it felt like to be lonely that
   is shared with others (including researchers) after the experience has passed,
   been abated, or accepted with resignation. Therefore, in addition to examining
   the effects of gender, marital status, and duration, in this study, we also attempt­
   ed to explore differences in how loneliness is experienced and described while
   the individual is actually in the throes of it, compared with later recollection.

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• "the 'abnormal' condition known as Asperger's syndrome" could be "remarkably similar to the 'normal' functioning of an engineer's mind,"
• Were their kids, he wondered, getting a double dose of some kind of autism-causing genes?

  • This makes me wonder whether this autism has to do with NURTURE instead of NATURE.

  • The kids of engineers/math whizzes.
• He'd begun to theorize that this sort of brain type would be common in any population that brought people with very strong math, science and tech skills to cluster together — and to think that if these high systemizers were choosing one another as mates, they might be particularly likely to have autistic children.
• Assortative mating — or, in common language, the tendency of birds of a feather to flock together — has long been known to play a big role in how people choose their marriage partners.
• "People are attracted to each other based on their similarities," says Carol Mathews, a psychiatrist with the UCSF Medical Center who has studied the role of assortative mating in psychiatric disorders. "It's not necessarily a conscious choice."
• Beyond certain familiar links that he expects he may find between, say, engineer parents and children with speech delays,

  • It's hard for me to research autism around the globe because the info I'm finding is about organizations that raise awareness around the world, instead of how uninformed societies view autistic people.

  • I can tie in loneliness/social interaction of the PARENTS and relate that to their autistic kids... I think I want to use this to compare autism in different countries.
• We are also collecting data on dyslexia and ADHD," he says, "but precisely which types of parents are more at risk for having such a child is exactly what we are wanting to discover."

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• By the time we reach adulthood, autistic people's experience of "togetherness" has likely consisted of some combination of: being intruded on by other people wanting us to engage with them, when we don't share that desire; being interested and curious about other people,
• lifetime of such distressing and discouraging experiences
• availability of the Internet, more and more autistic people have been reaching out and forming connections, creating community, and discovering our own styles of autistic togetherness.
• ANI was the first autistic community to be created naturalistically by autistic people, and it remains the largest autistic-run organization to have regular physical gatherings of autistic people. I am primarily in a position to report about the culture that has developed within this particular autistic community.
• On the other hand, the time autistic people got to spend together was precious to many of us.
• The ANI community has thus developed to have a high reliance on written language as a means of communication, and to have customs and rules that place greater emphasis on protecting people's boundaries than on allowing complete freedom of self-expression.
• People sometimes come to autistic space expecting a kind of utopia where there will be no interpersonal or environmental difficulties. In actuality it simply has some different difficulties.

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• “Most things which other people do by intuition, I have had to work out rationally.”
• As a start, not all autistic people are lonely.
• ‘You must feel lonely, since you  live such an isolated life.’ Because they said this to him, he tried to feel lonely, purposely,  but he didn’t succeed.
• comfortable in her own small world
• Problems arise when she is  confronted with people in the outer world who do not understand her. 
  
• she lacks the energy to maintain  friendships with others.
• not good at maintaining superficial  contacts. They are looking for depth, and depth is something that you can find only in a  small number of relationships.
• pleasant and meaningful pursuits are a better remedy against  loneliness than human company.
• People can sit there and have a drink  (most of them will take coffee in the morning) and read the available newspapers. Although  talking to each other is always possible, not much is said. What makes this situation  pleasant for Hedwig is that she does not need to socialize, to talk to people.
• expectations for the future, most of them appeared  to be pretty pessimistic
• This concerns their personal situation as well as  developments in society.
• expect that their loneliness will  always be there or will even worsen when they grow older
• There seems to be less  solidarity with those who are vulnerable, among whom autistic people.
• it  is important that the society in which we live, cares about us.
• Almost everyone said that they would like to receive understanding, recognition and  acceptation from other people. Because it is difficult for non-autistic people to empathize  with autistic people, this will ask a lot of patience from them.
• they tried to adapt to other  people as well as they could.
• does not prevent me from looking for solutions and from trying  to find new friends, or, for that matter, a partner in life.
• In fact I have never felt lonely, although I am alone.
• My life seemed lonely in their eyes, so that was how  I should feel.  I still prefer being on my own and I often do things all by myself.
• When I am with other people I always have to think about how things  ought to be done.

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• As far as I'm concerned, one of the best ways is by seeking, and enjoying, solitude.
• Solitude is the state of being alone without being lonely.

• Solitude is desirable, a state of being alone where you provide yourself wonderful and sufficient company.
• inner richness
• peacefulness
• replenishes us
• you choose
• differ in the amount of solitude we need
• self worthy of sharing
• driving our own lives
• Lonelinesss depletes them.
• restores body and mind

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