Loneliness

We may feel lonely if we have no one to sit next to at lunch or when we move to a new city, or no one has time for us on the weekend. 

However, the occasional feeling of loneliness has become chronic for millions over the last few decades. While we live in the most connected time in history, we feel the most isolated. In the US, 46% of the population feel lonely regularly. In the UK, 60% of 18 - 34-year-olds often feel lonely.

Loneliness is a subjective individual experience. You can be surrounded by people yet feel lonely. If you feel lonely, you are lonely.

Loneliness can affect everybody, regardless of money, fame, power, beauty, social skills, a great personality.

Loneliness is part of your biology, just like hunger. Hunger make you pay attention to your physical needs; loneliness makes you pay attention to your social needs. So loneliness is an early warning system to ensure you stop behaviour that would isolate you.

During the Renaissance, Western culture turned its focus away from collectivism to the individual. The Protestant theology further stressed individual responsibility.

During the Industrial Revolution, people left their villages and fields to enter factories. As a result, stable communities started to dissolve while cities grew. This trend sped up more and more, and today, we move great distances for new jobs, love, and education while leaving our social net behind.

Today, we meet fewer people in person and less often. In the US, the mean number of close friends dropped from 3 in 1985 to 2 in 2011.

Most people become lonely because they become too busy with work, university, romance, kids, Netflix. Then it's easy to sacrifice time with friends until you wake up one day and discover you feel isolated and desire close relationships.

Studies found that the stress that comes from chronic loneliness is the most unhealthy thing we can experience.

When you feel lonely, you become worse at interpreting social signals and understand people less. Your brain starts to become out of tune with recognising faces and categorising neutral faces as hostile, making you become distrustful of others. You assume the worst about others, become more self-centred to protect yourself and appear more cold and unfriendly than you are.

Try to recognise the vicious cycle you may be trapped in. 

• Accept that loneliness is a normal feeling. Everybody feels lonely at some point.
• Examine what you focus your attention on. Check if you selectively focus on negative things. 
• Are you assuming the worst about others' intentions? When you enter a social situation, have you already decided how it will go? Do you assume others don't want you around?
• Can you give others the benefit of the doubt?
• Can you risk being open and vulnerable again?
• Do you avoid being around others to protect yourself?
• Have you become complacent with your situation?

• Try to reach out to someone today regardless of whether you feel a little lonely or want to make someone else's day better. Maybe it's a friend you haven't spoken to in a while. Call a family member who has become estranged.
• Invite a work colleague for a coffee.
• Go to something you are usually too afraid to go to, such as a sports club.
• Don't go with any expectations. The goal is to open up a bit to exercise your connection muscles or help others exercise theirs.
• If you feel unable to solve your situation yourself, please reach out and get professional help.