Peaceful

  "Loneliness is dangerous. It’s addicting. Once you see how peaceful it is, you don’t wanna deal with people.” (Hedonist Poet)

A lack of close friends can bring about the emotional distress known as loneliness. It begins with an awareness of relationship deficiencies. Our cognitive awareness plays through our brain with an upsetting emotional soundtrack. We might feel empty, isolated, distanced from others, and deprived. These feelings tear away at our emotional well-being.

When our need for social relationships is not met, we fall apart mentally and even physically. There are effects on both the brain and the body. It can take a serious toll on our health by eroding our arteries, creating high blood pressure, and even undermining learning and memory.

Despite the negative effects of loneliness, it cannot be considered abnormal. It is a normal feeling as everyone feels lonely at times. Long-lasting loneliness is something else entirely. It is one of the surest markers in existence for instability.

In 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. In adults, loneliness is a major precipitant of depression and alcoholism. And it increasingly appears to be the cause of a range of medical problems that can take decades to show up. Below are the statistics (the facts) on loneliness:

·         Doctors provide better 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 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 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 both physically and psychologically. These people wake up more at night and spend less time in bed actually sleeping than do the non-lonely.

·         Prolonged loneliness can increase your chances of an early death by 30%.

·         The increased mortality risk is comparable to that from smoking. And loneliness is about twice as dangerous as obesity.

·         Social isolation impairs immune function and boosts inflammation, which can lead to arthritis, type II diabetes, and heart disease.

·         Loneliness has doubled: forty percent in adults, which up from twenty percent in the 1980s.

·         All of our Internet interactions aren’t helping and may be making loneliness worse. A study of Facebook users found that the amount of time you spend on the social network is inversely related to how happy you feel throughout the day.

“Social isolation kills more people than obesity does, and it’s just as stigmatized.” (Jessica Olien)

 

Here are some practical ways to overcome loneliness:

 

1.   Are your feelings based in reality: Not to argue that loneliness is definitely a growing reality in our modern world, but does a temporary feeling accurately depict your entire life? Maybe you have a tight-knit group of friends and family, but just feel lonely in the moment. If that’s the case, try to figure out what brought this feeling on.

 

Has it been a while since you last saw your friends? Should you call your family to check in with them? Maybe you need to do some self-reflecting and spend some time alone for a while, just reconnecting with yourself. Sometimes our feelings don’t always mirror our reality. Make sure to tune into these emotions whenever they arise.

 

2.   Focus on others rather than yourself: Volunteering makes a great way to both connect with other people, and also take the focus off of yourself. Think about how many people live on the streets everyday with virtually no source of consistent food or water, no safe place to lay their head at night, and no real friendships to support them.

 So many people suffer much more than we could ever imagine, and we can all do something to help them. By helping others, you will in turn help yourself, so look for local charities or soup kitchens to volunteer your time at. This will instantly make you forget about any loneliness you may have felt before, and reconnect you to one of the basic foundations of human existence: helping one another.

3.   Know yourself better: In all honesty, you must learn to enjoy your own company before you can truly appreciate the company of others. Otherwise, you will only want to connect with other people out of desperation in an attempt to escape from yourself. You have to go deep within and break all the chains that bind you so that you can finally leave behind any emotional trauma from the past.

You must learn to totally love yourself before anyone else can offer you the same sentiment. Otherwise, you will continue to feel lonely even in a room of thousands unless you heal your wounds from the inside out. It will seem much easier to connect with others once you’re fully in tune with your own self.

4.   Reach out to others: In order to overcome loneliness, you need to feel a common bond with others. How do you go about doing this? Well, the easiest way is to research local meet-ups and groups that you have an interest in joining.

 If you look around, you will find that other people long to connect just as much as you do, so don’t hesitate to reach out to them. We all have an intrinsic need to feel accepted by others, and connecting with like-minded people could turn out to be the best decision you’ve made for your mental and emotional health.

5.   Spend less time on social media: We can instantly connect with almost anyone online, but it just doesn’t compare with face-to-face human connection. We can’t hug someone online, or see the change in their facial expressions, or feel the energy of the person through the computer or phone. Try to limit your technology use to a few hours a day if you can.

You will find that you have much more time to bond with your current friends, and even make connections with new ones. If you don’t know where to start, first think about the businesses or parks you frequent. You likely talk to the same people at the places you go most often, so why not try to cultivate a friendship with them?

6.   Talk to a stranger: How many times do you notice people’s heads in their phones when you go out in public nowadays? Maybe you have fallen into this habit as well. Try to put away your phone for a change, and go up to someone new.

Strike up a conversation with a stranger. You have a chance to connect with someone anywhere you go. We have a world occupied by more people than ever before. We all don’t have much of an excuse for feeling lonely. It just takes reaching out to someone, and not limiting ourselves to our current reality.

“Friendship is a lot like food. We need it to survive. 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.” (Hara Estroff Marano)[i]

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[i] Sources used:

·        “7 Ways to Overcome Loneliness” (https://www.powerofpositivity.com/7-ways-to-overcome-loneliness/)

·        “Loneliness Is Deadly” by Jessica Olien

·        “The Dangers of Loneliness” by Hara Estroff Marano