Let's explore why you must do something about loneliness
Hello you wonderful human.
I feel like I need to start with a confession. Well, maybe a warning. I’ve got a hot cup of coffee in front of me as I stand at this desk in our office/kitchen/dining room in our townhouse in suburban Canberra and I’m about to write on a topic that I feel very strongly about: loneliness.
I fear for the safety of this keyboard. I’ll be typing furiously and I fear that it may spontaneously combust.
You can choose to read these words with the same caffeine-fuelled intensity, or you can choose to sit back for a few moments and read these words in a more sedate way while sipping a camomile tea.
My keyboard is already hoping that I’d chosen to join you in the more sedate option.
Let’s get into it
As I shared with you in the first post, ever since I realised that the thoughts and feelings I experienced as I entered mid-life were loneliness and getting support to help me on the way to being a more connected human, I’ve become intensely curious about loneliness. This intense curiosity feeds our mission here at HUMANS:CONNECTING: to destigmatise loneliness and to help humans get the connection that they need a deserve.
This post is very much about loneliness and destigmatising it. Uncomfortable things become more comfortable the more we sit with them and understand them.
This post is all about loneliness and why it’s so bad for us humans. But an alternate title for this post could be: know thy enemy.
Let’s start with a definition. We find the Australian Institute of Family Studies’ definition of loneliness to be helpful. It says that loneliness is ‘a person’s subjective feeling about, or perception of, the quality of their social connections. Usually, a negative feeling of being unsatisfied with their social relationships and connections. Loneliness is often a catch-all term for how people feel when there is a gap between their actual and desired levels of social relationships and connection.’
This is a great definition, and it’s like those you’ll often find in academic literature or clinical discussions on loneliness. But I want to bring your attention to an important word in that definition. Did you spot it already?
It’s the third word: subjective.
Loneliness is a subjective experience. Two humans may have very similar life experiences to each other, but one feels a gap between their actual and desired levels of social relationships and connections and feels lonely and the other does not.
Here's an important thing to remember: loneliness doesn’t need a diagnosis. If you feel lonely, then you are lonely.
The statement ‘if you feel lonely, then you are lonely’ can land with a thud within us, can’t it? It’s an uncomfortable realisation. Let’s stay with this discomfort for just a moment longer.
It’s OK. I’m here with you in the discomfort (albeit typing furiously).
Here at HUMANS:CONNECTING, we also operate by the understanding that we humans experience loneliness when we don’t feel seen and we don’t feel heard.
There’s a lot in that sentence, too. I’m resisting the urge to write thousands of words right now that will support you and explain exactly what ‘don’t feel seen and heard’ means. Indeed, our blog will contain (and our podcast already contains) so much support for you when we’re in that discomfort that loneliness brings.
But this post is about learning about loneliness and why it’s so bad for us, so we’d best keep moving (but know that there’s a lot of support right here for you…)
Why loneliness is so bad for us
Simply, loneliness does a very good job of killing us.
I want you to read this article, which, despite having a business/workplace focus, is very instructive. It was written by Dr. Emma Seppälä (Yale University and Stanford University) and Dr. Marissa King (Yale University) and neatly brings together how loneliness and the absence of real, meaningful connection affects us physically, mentally and emotionally.
The article cites the book ‘Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection’ by loneliness expert John Cacioppo (University of Chicago) and research by Sarah Pressman (University of California, Irvine), both of which report that obesity reduces longevity by 20 per cent, drinking by 30 per cent and smoking by 50 per cent.
Loneliness? 70 per cent.
Indeed, feelings of chronic loneliness and social disconnection increase our chances of suffering a stroke or heart attack by 30 per cent.
These findings are supported by Hara Estroff Marano in ‘The Dangers of Loneliness’, which appeared in ‘Psychology Today’ in 2003. She wrote that chronic loneliness, in adults, ‘is a major precipitant of depression and alcoholism. And it increasingly appears to be the cause of a range of medical problems, some of which take decades to show up.’
She also cites a study by John Cacioppo, which detailed how loneliness can compromise our physical, mental and emotional health and well-being. You need to read this.
Estroff Marano writes:
· Perhaps most astonishing, in a survey he [Cacioppo] conducted, doctors themselves confided that they provide better or more complete medical care to patients who have supportive families and are not socially isolated.
· Living alone increases the risk of suicide for young and old alike.
· Lonely individuals report higher levels of perceived stress even when exposed to the same stressors as non-lonely people, and even when they are relaxing.
· The social interaction lonely people do have are not as positive as those of other people, hence the relationships they have do not buffer them from stress as relationships normally do.
· Loneliness raises levels of circulating stress hormones and levels of blood pressure. It undermines regulation of the circulatory system so that the heart muscle works harder and the blood vessels are subject to damage by blood flow turbulence.
· Loneliness destroys the quality and efficiency of sleep, so that it is less restorative, both physically and psychologically. They wake up more at night and spend less time in bed actually sleeping than do the nonlonely (sic).
Conversely, as Seppälä and King write, feeling socially connected ‘can strengthen our immune system, lengthen our life and lower rates of suicide and depression.’
This is sobering stuff, isn’t it? Even though I’ve been working on loneliness and human connection for years, all this information and data still shakes me. Indeed, we’re finding out evermore ways that loneliness and social disconnection is harmful – deadly, even – to humans. We’ll be sure to share that with you in future posts.
For now, I may need you to pour me a cup of your camomile tea…
It’s an experience that all humans have
You and I – and all other humans – experience loneliness in our lives. We're designed to experience loneliness.
The thoughts and feelings that come with a loneliness experience are an evolutionary response we’ve developed to tell us that we’re not getting the connection we need to ensure our survival.
Our loneliness is telling us that we’re not getting some kind of connection that we each need and deserve.
That’s it.
Anything that we make our loneliness mean about our worthiness for love and belonging beyond the simple understanding that loneliness is telling us we’re not getting the connection we need is unhelpful judgement.
And judgement rarely makes any situation better.
Our take on loneliness
Here at HUMANS:CONNECTING, we operate from this simple fact that loneliness is the response we’ve developed to tell us that we’re not getting the connection we need to survive.
And this statement is key: understanding your loneliness helps you unlock the connection you’re missing.
Loneliness is often equated with hunger and thirst in talking about our survival. This is for good reason.
Hunger is the signal we give ourselves to tell us to stop what we’re doing and eat something.
Similarly, thirst is the signal that we need to stop what we’re doing and drink something.
Loneliness is our signal that we need to stop what we’re doing and connect.
Bluntly, what happens when you ignore your hunger for long enough? You die. What happens if you ignore your thirst for long enough? You die. What happens when we ignore our loneliness for long enough? We know how this ends (and the research mentioned above shows it).
Neither you nor I enjoy experiencing loneliness. That’s the point. We’re not meant to enjoy it. We're not meant to stay in a loneliness experience for long. But for so many different reasons, we choose to stay in a loneliness experience rather than getting the connection we each need and deserve.
There are going to be many more posts in the future of this blog (and episodes of the podcast) that will dive deeper into the many finer points of why we choose to stay in loneliness beyond the point of it causing us physical, mental and emotional pain.
We strongly believe that it does not need to be this way.
We do not need to persist in our loneliness when we experience it.
At HUMANS:CONNECTING, we empower you to accept your loneliness and then sit with it to begin understanding what you’re telling yourself about the connection you’re not getting. We believe that you will thrive when you claim ownership – take agency – of your loneliness and listen to the part of you that wants more from life.
The process and the content may not be fun, in fact it may be very uncomfortable for a little while. But choose your discomfort: listening to your loneliness (and not the negative self-judgement that may come with it) and using it to get the connection you’re missing; or stay in your loneliness and hope that it goes away or something else works.
The first step is to be aware of your loneliness. The second step is to accept your loneliness. In good news, in being here reading these caffeine-fuelled words, I think you’re already at stage two.
Great things can happen from here. The next step is to listen to your loneliness, and you never have to do that alone (indeed, listening to your loneliness alone misses the point).
Let’s end your loneliness
We don’t want you to leave empty handed after reading one of our blogs. It’s unfair to leave you thinking ‘so what?’ or being so overwhelmed by the concepts I explore with you here.
Here’s one thing you can do now: own your loneliness. Own that loneliness is part of the human experience that all humans, including you, are meant to experience.
You don’t have to solve your loneliness right now. You don’t have to fix it, either (incidentally, your loneliness never needs fixing, because fixing implies that you’re broken and you are NOT broken). Simply let it exist. I simply invite you to write down, in your own handwriting (so no notes app on your phone or statements furiously typed onto a screen):
‘My name is [insert your name here], I experience loneliness and that’s okay.’
Then take a deep breath and smile. You did something brave, courageous and amazing: you began getting your loneliness out of your mind, heart and soul and onto a page.
I want to remind you that you’re braver and more courageous than you will ever give yourself credit for. Now go and do something kind for yourself: go for a walk, dance badly to some loud tunes, take a bath, calling a friend are all good options.
And I’m right here to tell you how amazing you are whenever you need a reminder.
That’s it for the post
While we’ve come the end of this post, we’re really just getting started. There’s so much more content on how you can become a more connected human to come.
We’d hate for you to miss what’s coming up. The next blog is going to be about how connection is the antidote to loneliness. If you subscribe to our mailing list, you won’t miss any future content on our blog and podcast as it gets released into the wild.
If you don’t want to, that’s OK too. But if you want to rely on social media to let you know when I written something for you, know that social media is a fickle beast. It’s tough to keep up with friends and family as well as the content we want to see amongst the ads and stuff in our feeds, right?
Subscribing to the mailing list removes that risk entirely and you get a lovely little email from me when there’s something new for you.
Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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