
The Lethality of Loneliness - mgh2
https://newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolation-can-kill-you
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b6
I hope it's not annoying to people if I type this word yet again, but:
meditation. If I had known how helpful it would be, I would have started many
years ago.

It just doesn't seem possible that it's helpful, right? Sitting quietly and
watching the breath? But as you do it and get better at it, you learn what
it's about, and realize how it's helping in ways that might seem subtle at
first.

I felt like an outsider my whole life, like an alien imposter, never getting
the memos that other people seemed to get, and I know it caused me a lot of
suffering, but after my almost two years of daily meditation, when I call up
the subject of loneliness in my mind, I just can't get it to hurt anymore. I
just can't get it to make sense anymore. It feels like the mental supports for
my discontent have been eroded away. Now I feel as if it was kind of crazy
that it ever hurt. I've never really been alone, and never will be. It's not
really possible to be alone.

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dublinclontarf
What did you do to meditate?

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leonroy
I also found meditation to be incredibly useful. Far more than it first
seemed. Meditation seems to take the edge off the highs and lows of the day so
you're just a little more even keel.

I'd recommend the Headspace app to start with. After a few weeks you should be
good to start meditating on your own and looking into more advanced meditation
techniques. Or you can keep it basic too, there's no hard and fast really.

~~~
dublinclontarf
Thanks, will try.

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dalbasal
There is a certain trade off between liberalism's individualism with all its
virtues and the more group oriented concept of society it has largely
replaced.

To a certain extent, this is a legal/phlosphical issue. We treat people as
personally responsible for themselves and a "nuclear" family. Individuals are
responsible for their own happiness, social environment, financial well-
being.... Stresses, successes, disasters and windfalls are personal to a
person/family. This leaves us more "uninsured" than we would have been in more
integrated communities.

The philosophical/legal side, grew alongside urbanism, globalism, capitalism
and all the other features of a modern world. The philosphy of liberal
individualism may be more cause than effect, it's hard to seperate.

In any case, I think lonliness is a consequence of this way that our society
is organized, a painful one. The "problem" is at its most acute among the
elderly.

This is getting past the point (I don't have a fix to suggest) but I think one
way of thinking about how society is organized is considering companies.
Companies have replaced clans, villages, tribes, sects and such as the primary
way cooperation is organized. Company dynamics determine who does what and
with who. Company hierarchies are the relevant hierarchies in our lives. They
are, very disconnected form our "home life," in a way that I think is unusual
for a human system.

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Lagged2Death
I wish more commenters would read the article.

It's not about garden-variety, dictionary-definition, transient, intermittent,
universially-felt-at-some-point sort of "loneliness" many of you assume it is.

It's about chronic loneliness, the loneliness of an orphan, the loneliness of
a closeted homosexual, the loneliness of a retiree whose friends are all dead.

It's about loneliness as a force powerful enough to _change the sufferer 's
genetic expression_. It's really something.

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jondubois
I think that you have to be lonely at some point in your life in order to be
genuine. A lot of people are over-socialized and not in touch with themselves
and it's difficult to be friends with them because it feels like work.

~~~
ikeyany
Well, not always. Sometimes people refuse to look inwards because they do not
like what they see. In such a case, it's less painful to ignore it.

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KenanSulayman
Really, I think that the impact of loneliness inherently depends on everything
we have went through in the childhood.

I lived in a tent next to the Mýrdalsjökull glacier near Vík í Mýrdal for half
a year; and I have lived for over three months in a tent in the rainforest,
north of Panama.

It was always a kind of mental escape from the chaos for me. And I always felt
alienated from most of society. Maybe it's some kind of latent autism? At
least for me there's nothing more beautiful than reading a book with a gas
lamp, hearing the sound of the sea and seeing the aurora borealis right over
me.

Alone.

~~~
cpete
That sounds wonderful. Do you have any photos or writing about these
experiences (or others)?

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AnonNo15
So relatable. I've struggled all my life with loneliness. I had up and down
periods, but overall it is the biggest issue in my life.

~~~
Lich
Sorry to hear that. Pretty much the same for me since I started middle school
up to now (in my early 30s). To this day I have no close friends. During my
years as a student, after school it would pretty much be just me sitting in
front of the computer. My cell phone call log? Mom and dad, and the occasional
junk call. Post-school, as an adult, it was pretty much the same. Like the
article states, it physically hurts sometimes to be truly lonely.

I hope loneliness is over for me, now that I got married very recently. If
you're wondering how that happened, it was a blind date setup by my aunt. I
was lucky to meet someone that liked me, and had things in common with. I was
really lucky that she still liked me even after she found out I had no
friends, and pretty much no social life.

I hope you are able to fight your way out of loneliness.

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elcapitan
I can relate to the argument that loneliness, because of less social control,
leads to unhealthy habits.

However, for introverts I don't think it's true that loneliness leads to
reduced health because of negative feelings. For me at least it's more 'toxic'
to have to spend large amounts of time with people than to be alone.

~~~
emerongi
As an introvert, I don't really feel lonely when I'm alone. I'm actually more
likely to feel lonely at a big social gathering. Small social groups are
refreshing, but too much time with others will start burdening me.

I only start feeling lonely after a significant amount of time of being alone.
This could be weeks or months. Yes, I've spent a lot of time alone and have
"rejected" many of my social circles after starting to feel burdened. I now
have only a few friends that I talk to and I'm very happy like this.

As a sidenote, I felt very lonely as a kid. I think I've just adapted.

~~~
distances
I think this is the point; being alone doesn't equal loneliness. An introvert
can be lonely too, for sure. But it's important to differentiate between the
two.

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cybervegan
I'd be interested to know how this interplays with ASD (as I have
HFA/Aspergers). I've spend _decades_ in a high stress state... and feeling
lonely/isolated. I'm really lucky that I have an understanding wife, but I'm
really not that good with the normal "social situations" neurotypical people
gravitate to, but where I end up feeling agitated and disorientated, and
emotionally drained. I've often said I feel drawn to such situations but hate
it when I'm in them.

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pasbesoin
It can reach into your physical life and destroy you, physically.

Once the physical symptoms become manifest, it becomes all the more self-
reinforcing. You are all the more adverse to many social contacts, because you
can no longer "hide" your state for periods of time while engaging in them.

A bad home environment (neighbors from hell) was the start of my isolation.

It's probably taken 20 years off my life, based on the state of my health,
now.

It was a slippery slope -- one of vulnerability. Each additional adverse event
eased by the former, and more greatly exacerbating the problem.

Early in life, I was forced through an extended set of circumstances where my
own experience and needs were expressly discounted and I was coerced to work
with and endure others' expectations, at great stress and expense to myself. I
had no control. I had no agency.

I learned to shut down and "wait things out". I never learned how to advocate
for myself -- not in the face of adversity.

As an adult, "waiting out" adversity just allowed it to grow, step by step,
instance by instance.

And the more your life diverges from others', and the older you get while this
happens, the more alone you end up.

