Understanding Loneliness
We are living in the most connected time in human history, yet most of us feel isolated.
I’ve always felt quite lonely, it’s a quiet place in one’s heart. My father left when I was 3 and I lived my childhood with my mother in a wooden hut, nothing tragic, I learnt to spend time with myself and later on the value of being around people, I turned out to be quite extroverted.
As the years went by and the teenage mind overtook my innocense, I started to realize how other people struggled with their lives, how many problems were related to being accepted by others, by our parents’s expectations, the friends we want to hang out with, the girl or boy we like. I couldn’t help but admire how determined to our social life we were, although we like to think of ourselves as individuals with free will over our decisions.
In high school I started having deep relationships, I was shocked at the number of people with depression, cronic anxiety, eating disorders, it was almost normal to be suffering in some aspect of your mental health. I think it’s specially true with younger generations post year 2000, which have been heavily influenced by a social life of your own ideals on a screen, lacking a true connection and empathy for the vulnerable part of us humans, not just what we are proud of.
Loneliness is a subjective feeling that showcases our social needs, the same way thirst does with our body needs. During milions of years it was an indicator of a correct road for survival, if you were accepted and well valued by your tribe you were more likely to be protected, you got to eat shared food and take part in the exponential growth of cooperation with common objectives, natural selection rewarded this function. If you were rejected from your tribe, a solitary human was likely to be killed by nature. Loneliness is a deep feeling linked not only to acceptance but also to death as a final consequence.
Social pain is an indicator to stop behaviour that would isolate you (like eating those two slices of cake that were for your sister), to share and take others into account. It’s a mechanism to keep us conected.
When feeling lonely, you tend to see the negative side of thinks, you’re mind wants to affirm it’s right, even if it’s a negative thought, so you see threats instead of opportunities, you affirm that no one likes you. It can become self-sustaining and gain it’s own new personality, you tend to see neutral faces as hostile, which makes you distrustful, you assume the worst in others intentions, and prefer security to adventure, as you are more and more self-centered, the reality is that you become colder for others, which doesn’t help you socially.
I found myself in this cycle, an initial feeling of tension and isolation when I changed high school the last years, my awareness was centered in all the negative interactions, not being invited, a laugh after looking at me daunted my day more than my academic level did. I started to avoid social interactions, not pick up phone calls, spend days off on my sofa, I cuddled the loneliness as if it were my only friend that understood my truth.
Reality is, most people are like you. We are all dwelling the inner self that doesn’t want to care about anything, That’s what makes caring so valuable, if you care for other people, you are giving them a meaning to exist. I personally think that the more you self-center, the less answers you get, because you are something that exists in reference and influence in others, you on your own are your experience, not a book with a fate of who you trully are. For me, what made me spark my life with energy was to do things that maybe, just maaaybe, I would enjoy (turns out it’s better than doing nothing); playing football, trying acting classes, reading books, going for walks to places I hadn’t visited. Just acting this out forces you to interact with many people, and when you do, care for them, understand they are just like you, don’t overthink, say your feelings, and if they don’t vibe, you wouldn’t have been happy being false anyway. On the flipside, you make better friends.
If this article gave you any questions or ideas related to what I’ve written, I’d love to hear to write more and find out.
