Heye Sophia's List: Loneliness

• 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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• 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.
• ask questions
• 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.
• 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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• Loneliness has also been described as social pain - a psychological mechanism meant to alert an individual of isolation and motivate her/him to seek social connections.

• 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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