Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

đź“– Lonely Learning to Live with Solitude

8 min read

Why did I want to read it?

I struggle with feelings of loneliness from time to time.

What did I get out of it?

tl;dr

The book is a mix of the personal struggle of the author, talking with other people experiencing loneliness and summary of research. The worse effect is that loneliness creates changes in mindset that activate a vicious cycle.

  • What produces loneliness in individuals?
  • Loneliness is self-reinforcing.
  • How to get out?

A vicious cycle: once in, you won’t want out

Loneliness has a huge bad physical impact. According to Dr. John Cacioppo, leading loneliness researcher:

…Cacioppo and others working in the field have demonstrated that loneliness— in itself-can lead to dementia, early death, physical illness, and behavioral changes (p. 29)

Including eating anxiety, which I currently show! Loneliness, dysphoria, dietary restraint, and eating behavior - PubMed.

But worse than that, also creates mental changes that activate a self-reinforced vicious cycle:

It’s not possible , in a sense, to become chronically lonely and remain the person you though you were. “It changes a lot of things says” Cacioppo. “Your feeling of social support, your feeling of hostility, your feeling of negativity…” (p. 155)

So even though you note that something is wrong:

One of the first symptoms Rober Weiss pointed to was a sort of pressured restlessness, an inability, when lonely, to feel at ease with what you’re doing. ”(…) I just feel a lot like I should be doing something else”. (p. 90)

you won’t probably feel the need to do something about it. According to research:

…the lonely are unable to think practically about social outcomes, and that they’re unable to hit on the effective social strategies the nonlonely devise (…) “I’ll think about having people I can call up and depend on and be around”, says Sonia, somewhat wistfully. “They can impose on me, and I can impose on them, and we’re just able to have a good time. But that’s the daydream, that’s the thing I make up in my head. In situations when I am with people, I find it tiresome, and uncomfortable.”(p. 143)

Loneliness is also hard because it also bring a sense of calm and control. (p. 173). And, one of the reasons why I think I always end up in management positions, apart from being a control freak):

Because of their need for other people, the lonely become skilled at what’s known as “social decoding”-that is, reading other people, and reading social situations, quickly and accurately. “I’m always hyperaware of other people’s feelings,” (p. 140).

Causes

Loneliness is probably a mechanism from the “old ages”:

“Think about the middle of Australia, or some hostile environment.” Someone alone in this environment is going to have an increased sense of threat, and one of the biggest threats imaginable is other people. “If you’ve been rejected,” Cacioppo notes, “and the reason the disconnection has occurred is because of something within a group, and you’ve been ostracized, then it’s dangerous for you to push your way back onto that team.” (p. 156)

It’s uncorrelated to living on a city vs. village (p. 204), though like the author, I also blame where I live now (Valencia).

Loneliness is only half heritable (p. 203) and culture plays an important role (p. 209), but it may be simply that we differ in needs (just as we need different amount of food depending on our bodies), without pathologizing:

It might be the case, suggest Caioppo, that the lonely simply have higher needs that the nonlonely (…) or simply be more susceptible to social pain and rejection than others (p. 199)

Of course, as always, socioeconomic status is important, contrary to the popular belief: people with high income feels less lonely( p. 289) and đź“– Bullshit Jobs:

Work (…) has turned into something of a social club. (p. 290)

Culture

However, studies show we spend more time alone (p. 211). We work more hours so:

She adds that one of the things that’s gone missing in her life is the time and energy needed to nourish old and new relationships (p. 213)

and so, we shift to socializing (temporarily) at work.

Also, increases in divorce, single parenting, women independency (p. 216). Also, the internets and its “absent presences” and easiness vs. the complexity of dealing with real people (p. 233). Reminded me of Alone Together.

The author says that loneliness has an added problem of dissonance in our current culture, with images of abundant sociability (p. 235), but:

Susan Sontag who noted that images of something will proliferate just as the real object begins to disappear. An image, Sontag stressed, can “exorcise some of the anxiety and remorse” we feel about an object’s disappear-ance; it can keep something alive as an idea even as it begins to disappear in reality. (p. 230)

Our collective obsession with binge-watching Friends.

It’s quite common: a quarter to a third of population feels lonely (p. 206).

Also… a taboo, and demonization (p. ???)

Solutions

There are two types of loneliness according to Robert Weiss (social researcher). You need to avoid both:

  • Social loneliness: you have a significant one but no network
  • Emotional loneliness: you have friends but no attachment figure. (p. 169)

If they try to mend their isolation by substituting a friend for a lover or a lover for a friend, the loneliness will persist (p. 171)

Loneliness doesn’t have to do with social skills:

…although I’ve struggled with loneliness for years, sociability has rarely been a problem for me (p. 10)

Caccioppo recommends discipline/self-regulation when the vicious cycle starts:

they can examine their urge to retreat and remind themselves that the impulse to withdraw is an atavistic one, not one that’s necessary for safety in the present day (p. 159)

Also, along the line of getting in touch:

Experts agree that “nurturing” others, in the form of teaching, child-raising, or fostering stray animals, is an excellent antidote to a sense of isolation (p. 19)

I don’t think I agree with this. Now it’s more or less accepted that loneliness is kind of an epidemic:

It was very hard to feel isolated and to live in a culture in which sociability as presented as easy to achieve (p. 61)

However I felt this way:

…because I couldn’t, then, really accept the idea that loneliness mattered and that a lot of people suffered from it— that I began to struggle with a profound sense of not fitting in. Despite the reading I was doing, I couldn’t shake the idea that my loneliness was unique (p. 62)

I always felt as though I’d be asking too much of people if I referred to a problem murkier and more incomprehensible than the blues (p. 66)

What I needed was someone at home with me, someone whose breath I’d hear as I sat reading, whose footfalls would sound in the hallway, whose voice would reach me from an adjoining room. What I wanted was the quiet presence of another person. (p. 73)

Though it can go out of hand:

“it’s that I’m listening to you, and at the same time I’m really thinking about how you’re perceiving what I’m saying and what you’re thinking about me.” (p. 141)

Since no passive company (p. 220), we need to spend more time socializing, but we are tired (p.222)

Overcoming loneliness it then to revisit trust beliefs (p. 175): learning that you can be safe in relatihoshops as well as ouside of htem. : see others as safe and reliable. Ken Rotenberg: “The more trusting some is, the less lonely they are” (p. 200) Also not only subjective, but real distance can trigger this feeling and start the mechanism, and today is difficult in term of energy.

It’s also the case that we define ourselves in relation to others. When our social networks thin out or crum-ble, we have fewer points of reference available to us in thinking about who we are and who we’d like to be. (p. 178)

lonely people don’t complain about feelings of disconnection in relation to people they don’t know. The whole problem is that they feel disconnected around people they do know. (…) “I don’t have the ones that cover all of who I am” (p. 196)

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