Everybody feels lonely sometimes when we have no one to sit next to at lunch. When we move to a new city or when nobody has time for us at the weekend. But this occasional feeling has become chronic for millions over the last few decades.
In the UK, 60% of 18 to 34 years old say they often feel lonely. In the US, 46% of the entire population feels lonely regularly. We live in the most connected time in human history, yet an unprecedented number of us feel isolated. Being lonely and being alone are not the same thing. You can be filled with bliss by yourself and hate every second surrounded by friends. Loneliness is a purely subjective, individual experience.
If you feel lonely, you are lonely.
A common stereotype is that loneliness only happens to people who don’t know how to talk to people or how to behave around others. But population-based studies have shown that social skills make practically no difference for adults regarding social connections. loneliness can affect everybody. Money, fame, power, beauty, social skills, a great personality— nothing can protect you against loneliness because it’s part of your biology.
Loneliness is a bodily function.
Loneliness is a bodily function, like hunger. Hunger makes you pay attention to your physical needs; Loneliness makes you pay attention to your social needs. Your body cares about your social needs because millions of years ago, it was a great indicator of how likely you were to survive.
Natural selection rewarded our ancestors for collaboration and for forming connections with each other. As a result, our brains grew and became more and more fine-tuned to recognize what others thought and felt and develop and sustain social bonds.
Being social became part of our biology. You were born into groups of 50 to 150 people, which you usually stayed with for the rest of your life. Getting enough calories, staying safe and warm, or caring for offspring was practically impossible. Being together meant survival. Being alone meant death. So you needed to get along with others. For your ancestors, the most dangerous threat to survival was not being eaten by a lion but not getting the social vibe of your group and being excluded. To avoid being excluded from the group, your body came up with “social pain”.
Social Pain
The pain of this kind is an evolutionary adaptation to rejection. A sort of early warning system to make sure you stop behaviour that would isolate you. Your ancestors who experienced rejection as more painful changed their behaviour and stayed in the tribe. While those who didn’t likely died. That’s why rejections hurt, and even more so, loneliness is painful. These mechanisms for keeping us connected worked great for most of our history until humans began building a new world for themselves.
Loneliness epidemic
The loneliness epidemic we see today only started in the late Renaissance. Then, western culture began to focus on the individual. Intellectuals moved away from the collectivism of the Middle Ages, while the young Protestant theology stressed individual responsibility. This trend accelerated during the Industrial Revolution. People left their villages and fields to enter factories.
Communities that had existed for hundreds of years began to dissolve while cities grew. As our world rapidly became modern, this trend sped up more and more. Today, we move vast distances for new jobs, love, and education and leave our social net behind. As a result, we meet fewer people in person and less often than in the past.
The mean number of close friends in the US dropped from 3 in 1985 to 2 in 2011. Most people stumble into chronic loneliness by accident. You reach adulthood and become busy with work, university, romance, kids, and Netflix. There’s not enough time. The most convenient and easy thing to sacrifice is time with friends. It’s hard to find close relationships as adults until you wake up and realize that you feel isolated and yearn for intimate relationships. Hence loneliness can become chronic.
Effects of loneliness
While humans feel great about things like iPhones and spaceships, our bodies and minds are fundamentally the same as they were 50,000 years ago. We are still biologically fine-tuned to being with each other. Large-scale studies have shown that the stress that comes from chronic loneliness is among the most unhealthy things we can experience as humans. It makes you age quicker. It makes cancer deadlier, Alzheimer’s advances faster, and your immune systems weaken.
Loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity and as deadly as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The most dangerous thing about it is that once it becomes chronic, it can become self-sustaining. Physical and social pain use common mechanisms in your brain. Both feel like a threat, so social pain leads to immediate and defensive behaviour when inflicted on you.
When loneliness becomes chronic, your brain goes into self-preservation mode. It starts to see danger and hostility everywhere. But that’s not all. Some studies found that when you’re lonely, your brain is much more receptive and alert to social signals. While at the same time, it gets worse at interpreting them correctly. You pay more attention to others, but you understand them less.
The part of your brain that recognizes faces gets out of tune and becomes more likely to categorize neutral faces as hostile, making it distrustful of others. Loneliness makes you assume the worst about others’ intentions towards you because of this perceived cruel world. As a result, you can become more self-centred to protect yourself, which can make you appear colder unfriendly and socially awkward than you are.
Loneliness trap
If loneliness has become a strong presence in your life, you can first try to recognize the vicious cycle you may be trapped in. It usually goes something like this: an initial feeling of isolation leads to feelings of tension and sadness, making you focus your attention selectively on negative interactions with others.
This makes your thoughts about yourself and others more negative, which changes your behaviour. You begin to avoid social interaction, which leads to more feelings of isolation. This cycle becomes more severe and harder to escape. Each time loneliness makes you sit far away from others in the class, not answer the phone when friends call, and decline invitations until the invitations stop.
Everyone has a story about themselves; if your account becomes that, people exclude you. Others pick up on that, so the outside world can become how you feel about it. This is often a slow creeping process that takes years and can end in depression. And a mental state can prevent connections even if you yearn for them.
Escaping the loneliness trap
The first thing you can do to escape is to accept that loneliness is a normal feeling and nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody feels lonely at some point in life. It’s a universal human experience you can’t eliminate or ignore. A feeling until it goes away magically. But you can accept that you feel it and eliminate its cause.
Introspection
You can self-examine what you focus your attention on and check if you are selectively focusing on negative things. For example, was this interaction with a colleague rarely negative, or was it mutual or positive?
What was the actual content of an interaction? What did the other person say? Did they say something wrong, or did you add extra meaning to their words?
Maybe another person was not reacting negatively but just short on time. Then there are your thoughts about the world. Are you assuming the worst about others’ intentions? Do you enter a social situation and have already decided how it will go? Do you assume others don’t want you around? Are you trying to avoid being hurt and not risking opening up, and if so, can you try to give others the benefit of the doubt?
Can you assume that they’re not against you? Can you risk being open and vulnerable again?
And lastly, your behaviour is avoiding opportunities to be around others? are you looking for opportunities to decline invitations? Or are you pushing away others preemptively to protect yourself? Are you acting as if you are getting attacked? Are you looking for new connections, or have you become complacent with your situation.
Seeking help
Of course, everyone in each situation is unique and different, and just introspection alone might not be enough. If you cannot solve your situation alone, please try to reach out and get professional help. It’s not a sign of weakness but courage. However, we see loneliness as a purely individual problem that needs solving to create happiness or as a public health crisis. Therefore, it is something that deserves more attention.
Humans have built a world that is nothing short of amazing. Yet, not one of the shiny things we have made can satisfy or substitute our fundamental and biological need for connection. Most animals get what they need from their physical surroundings. We get what we need from each other. We need to build our artificial human world based on that.
Try this out
Let’s try something together. Let’s reach out to someone today regardless if you feel a little bit lonely. Or want to make someone else day better. Maybe write to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. Call a family member who has become estranged. Invite a work buddy for a coffee or go to something you are usually too afraid to go or too lazy to go to, like a social event or a sports club.
Key Takeaways
Being lonely and being alone are not the same thing. Loneliness is a bodily function, like hunger. So if you feel lonely, you are lonely.
Chronic loneliness is among the most unhealthy things we can experience as humans. It makes you age quicker, cancer deadlier, Alzheimer’s advances faster, and your immune systems weaken. Most people stumble into chronic loneliness by accident when they become too busy to connect with friends. Loneliness is twice as deadly as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Once it becomes chronic, it can become self-sustaining.
Loneliness makes you assume the worst about others’ intentions towards you. You can become more self-centred to protect yourself and appear cold and unfriendly. Loneliness is a feeling you can’t eliminate or ignore. But you can accept that you feel it and eliminate its cause. You can self-examine what you focus your attention on and if you are selectively focusing on negative things, analyze your thoughts about the world.
If you feel unable to solve your situation alone by yourself, please try to reach out and get professional help. Loneliness is not an individual problem but a public health crisis that deserves more attention.
