What is loneliness
Let’s try to analyze loneliness as a discreet entity. We avoid referring to the theories that over the centuries have addressed the theme of man’s impossibility to get in touch with his fellow men. Or the prospects that consider loneliness a consequence of other psychic problems.
An interesting first reflection from which to start is that the opposite It is not company. You can feel alone also being among so many people – but without sense of intimacy and closeness.
We will try to refer to solitude as a perceived sensation and the pain that derives from it.
The function of sociality
On the planet men survived, without a shadow of a doubt, as social creatures.
Sociality has always meant survival: The man, once learned to govern the animal and vegetable world, immediately realized that understanding the intentions of their fellow men could lead to alliances and protections. On the other hand, not understanding the social situation could be more dangerous than a predator.
To the sense of safety was also added the feeling of pleasure that derives from the exchange with the other. Still elements that contribute most to the achievement of happiness concern not solitary dimensions: love, intimacy, sense of belonging to something. There are studies that demonstrate how the latter is a protective factor from suicidal ideation.
Subjective sensitivity to social disconnection
The car Man It is physiologically structured to have innate patterns that establish the levels of social connection and levels of sensitivity to exclusion. The genetic component that determines the need for social connection does not constitute what will then be thesubjective experience of solitude.
Individuals with standard bass connection and low sensitivity to social exclusion hardly live as a problem being more or less in connection with others. At the opposite extreme we find people with high standards of connection and great propensity to pain when these are not satisfied.
Those who are sensitive to social exclusion can be socially satisfied and those who have little need for relationships can be alone, this is not the problem. The pain is activated when there is a divergence between the desired social connection and the level of contacts provided by the environment.
The feeling of solitude in our times
The widespread feeling is that the sense of solitude is increasing vertiginously in our societies in recent years.
Why and how did we get there? There is no univocal answer, but there are various factors that have influenced. The development of urban planning without aggregative and social sharing spaces. The rapid introduction of communication tools that found us unprepared for a reflection on their use and avoid the side effects. The exasperation of a narcissistic culture. Models that make you think a life worthy of being lived only if it is filled with activities. The literary and cinematographic production that considers the hero worthy of this name only on condition that it operates in a solitary way. Certainly this and much more, in complex appeal.
A little at a time, without realizing it and not imagining the risks, the companies have made it regress the need for sociality From a vital need to an accessory factor.
The pain deriving from solitude
Loneliness hurts so much, generates pain And it’s not just a metaphor. Neuroimaging studies have observed that when we feel the pain of solitude, an emotional area is activated, called the region of the dorsal front cingol, which is the same that records emotional responses to physical pain.
The feeling of solitude and physical pain share many neuronal circuits. The brain areas responsible for the sense of gratification and reward also work worse.
To give an example, normally when we observe a happy face some brain regions are activated that generate pleasure. In subjects who suffer from solitude, this type of response is weakened. The brain reacts in a more marked way to negative events and generates less satisfaction for what is positive.
Like physical pain – whose function is to move away from physical dangers – the social pain (which we call loneliness) has evolved in the human species as a protection mechanism. It serves to avoid the dangers deriving from remaining isolated.
Physical pain pushes us to a change of conduct – for example, removing the hand from an sharp object – perceived solitude stimulates us to seek closeness. It happened in primitive man and happens in the modern one: the eras change but the brain structure remains the same.
When solitude creates psychological damage
Occasional solitude feelings do not leave particular negative signs, they are physiological and help the development of the person.
However, exceeded a certain limit no longer allow any level of growth; Only the stress levels and negative effects of this will increase.
Not being able to meet their fellows determines a deep wound that affects the body from a physiological point of view. The physical effect is comparable to that determined by hypertension, sedentary lifestyle, obesity and smoking.
Stress hormones compromise the immune and cardiovascular function to which are added conduct that neglect more and more a healthy lifestyle.
From a psychological point of view The permanence of isolation leads to cycles of sensations, thoughts and negative conduct that self-reinforcement and unfortunately They lead precisely towards the marginalization that is trying in every way to avoid.
The loss of relational skills
It is not always true that those who experience continuous states of solitude have less relational skills than others. It is much more likely that he does not manage to use them, gradually ending up losing even those he had.
A little at a time a hypercritical and dissatisfied attitude towards everything and self is fueled. The person who lives alone will tend to attribute failures to himself and fortuitous reasons; No reality will be able to scratch this profound belief.
Progressively self-regulation skills are increasingly altered. What does self -regulation mean? For example, the ability to exclude distrating thoughts or disconnected from the context instead of focusing on the interaction taking place.
Being able to focus attention on the aspects useful for achieving our purposes, excluding from the mind those irrelevant or counterproductive, is an indispensable ability in all fields. Social cognition with the loss of the correct decoding of the other, its point of view, its intentions and the expressive signals of the body is also compromised.
The sensations of threat
The sensations of feeling threatened and impaurito they take more and more field. Just as our Savana ancestor did, those who feel only and isolated automatically activates the long -range scan of the surrounding environment to intercept any possible danger and find protection.
This attitude adopted in a social context prevents us from grasping the useful information on the quality of the interpersonal contact in progress and does not allow to acquire that experiential background necessary to send harmonious social signals to the environment.
Loneliness and depression
Day after day this continuation of unpleasant sensations creates the conditions for the onset of depressive states. We immediately clarify and for a avoidance of misunderstandings: solitude and depression are two different constructs. If loneliness describes how we feel in relationships with others, depression defines how we feel, point.
The sense of solitude originally arises as a signal that pushes us to take one step towards the other; On the contrary, depression retains us.
What shares loneliness with depressive states the style of Passive coping: Despite the pain warned there is the tendency to do less and less and not to structure effective answers.
It is not difficult to understand how to try several times that they reach a goal and not succeeding leads us to pull the oars on the boat; We all went a little at least once in a lifetime. The active commitment is faded firsthand and the search for emotional and practical support from others. It is precisely this spontaneous tendency, this trap, which we must counter.
What to do?
One of the first notions that are learned in cognitive behavioral specialization schools is that most mental mechanisms are learned.
By our knowledge we learn a little at a time to build valid relationships or to withdraw socially. In providing, or providing ourselves, help we must have the change in our schemes of thought and behaviors.
There is nothing to continue to repeat that we feel alone: if loneliness is thirst for social relationships, we do not satisfy it by focusing more and more on the sense of thirst we feel.
We must learn to intercept the threat sensations that are activated when we meet someone or imagine doing it and try to manage them a little at a time until they deactivate them.
Gradually expose themselves to these unpleasant sensations – Not avoiding them – helps to make small steps forward: it’s a certain fact, you just have to try!
Thus we begin to grasp new experiences on interaction with the other and to build a sense of curiosity for how we send the messages, avoiding to anticipate the scene in a stereotyped way.
Let’s not focus on how the other looks, we focus on the way we look at the other. We learn to consider the other as a human being who can find himself in a situation similar to ours.
Let’s try to contain the tendency to attribute to the other mental states of which we actually do not know anything or at least it is not said that they are the same that we imagine. Accepting that the other can have beliefs, intentions, emotions and knowledge other than ours is at the basis of a good theory of the mind, does not mean that there are no prerequisites for interaction.
Exploit the need for social connection
The need for social connection should not be understood as the lubricant for the gears of an engine but part of the engine itself; an element constitutive of the human structure.
We know well that it is not easy to resolve the question when social relationships are involved: if we feel an unpleasant feeling (hunger, thirst) there are conduct capable of extinguishing them.
When the malaise is created is the sense of loneliness The most obvious answer would be to create a bond, however, you have to find someone willing to enter into relationship with us.
The most realistic expectation would be to start feeding the relationships we have, even those apparently not very significant. Try to send everywhere we find small pro social signals: a smile, a nod that can make the other understand: “I perceived you and I have been perceived” even if for a moment.
Let us remember that the most naive mistake is to think “I am here, the other beyond”. There is no inside and an out, a mind and a body. The world is made of connections and relationships, not of “things itself”.
Oriental philosophies, physics and computer science know it well. It may be useful to keep it in mind as a starting point to start building a reality richer in social meanings that help us feel a little less alone.
Bibliography
Please refer to the work of John T. Cacioppo
