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[bjork]

I try to explain this to my friends, because I rarely see them and they don't keep in touch, but they don't get it. My job is pretty isolated and at night, so it's hard to see anyone ever. Just a simple conversation once in awhile makes me feel better, but they never have the time. Oh well, I guess?

 

[Rhomega Beta]

Well at least I don't have to deal with the hassle of old age much.

 

[leakey]

I'm glad I have my dog; he got me through a lot of potentially lonely spots.

However, half the time that I'm alone is spent binging on Dota and anime so I've probably knocked more years off of my life anyways.

 

[Sölf]

Welp. It was nice knowing you all.

 

[Crayolan]

In that case I'm already dead.

 

[Nightbird]

Well that's one thing I didn't need to know

 

[Danis Saur]

Farewell all, I hardly knew ye.

 

[DOWN]

Humans need social interaction. It's been proven that it's essential for one's health.

 

[sora87]

Great, gonna be lucky to make it to 30 at this rate

 

[Liha]

I have to thank my girlfriend for saving my life. I felt so lonely before I met her and I'm now a happy man.

 

[InfiniteBento]

We all die alone anyway tho so fuck it

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

My loneliness is killing me...

I must confess I still believe...

 

[Bigfoot]

I always thought loneliness was the reason for the high rate of depression and suicide in very developed countries, so this it not news for me

Is this really true? I know it is anecdotal but some of the people I have known that become depressed were very social. Also of the two people I know that committed suicide, one of them was the type of guy that everyone loved and could walk in to a room or bar or whatever and make friends with complete strangers. He was good looking too and the girls loved him. Basically the complete opposite of what you would expect of someone that could kill themselves.

 

[Joe]

It is still possible to feel the negative affects of loneliness even though you voluntarily decided to live in solitude and don't necessarily feel lonely:

Environments ill-suited to our biology often trigger stress and pain.

The fewer strong attachments any specific hunter-gatherer has to the other people in the band, the greater the chance he or she will be abandoned by the band, and consequently, in all likelihood, left alone to die in the wilderness.

The intense feelings of emotional pain lonely people often experience are a consequence of this evolutionary heritage – those feelings are a signal that complete abandonment may be imminent, and that survival is very much at issue.

But the catch is that in modern life, being alone more than one might like is rarely a serious survival threat. It may not feel good to consistently have nothing to do on a Saturday night, but that on its own is almost never a sign that your life is at serious risk.

Because of our hunter-gatherer past, however, being alone too much often triggers a survival-mode state in us that, like all survival-mode states, creates stress and releases stress hormones throughout our bodies and brains. And chronically high stress levels seem to be largely responsible for the physical and psychological health issues that lonely people are at higher risk for. So the cruel irony is that, although being socially isolated is rarely an actual survival threat in modern, industrialized cultures, the state of being lonely does trigger stress and survival-mode states because of our hunter-gatherer past, and so being socially isolated does often end up creating a survival risk – but mainly because of chronically elevated stress levels driven by unnecessary and inappropriate survival-mode states.

The brain is, in effect, tricked – typically unconsciously – into unnecessary states of survival mode, such as fear of abandonment, not because of actual survival-threatening circumstances, but because our brains confuse our evolutionary past with our modern circumstances.

 

[Air]

Broken heart syndrome bro.

 

[kiguel182]

Hopefully it isn't too slow to do it.

 

[FluxWaveZ]

It is still possible to feel the negative affects of loneliness even though you voluntarily decided to live in solitude and don't necessarily feel lonely:

Environments ill-suited to our biology often trigger stress and pain.

I just don't buy that this is universally applicable. There ARE people who feel notable amounts of stress when they are with people rather than without.

That article goes over the negative effects people who choose to be isolated but who would WANT togetherness suffer, but it does not go over the fringe group who, instead, feel emotional anxiety when they are forced into the "hunter-gatherer group" dynamic. What of those people? What if the people who are "alone" are not actually "lonely"?

I'd like to see a study/article that explicitly covers that kind of person, because what I'm seeing in Montgomery's is for the general assumption that someone feels comfortable being in a group or seeks connections with others, when there are exceptions. And those exceptions aren't irrelevant in a topic like this when many of the people who actually respond are the type who actively avoid social situations because of the stress they create, not people who will have stress created because they're not in social situations.

 

[How About No]

Humans need social interaction. It's been proven that it's essential for one's health.

Can't we just take a supplement pill

It is still possible to feel the negative affects of loneliness even though you voluntarily decided to live in solitude and don't necessarily feel lonely:

Environments ill-suited to our biology often trigger stress and pain.

This is pretty interesting tho

 

[jb1234]

I try to explain this to my friends, because I rarely see them and they don't keep in touch, but they don't get it. My job is pretty isolated and at night, so it's hard to see anyone ever. Just a simple conversation once in awhile makes me feel better, but they never have the time. Oh well, I guess?

If they were really your friends, they'd make the time. "Too busy" is a bullshit excuse.

 

[Jeronimo Jones]

Loneliness is not the same as being alone. I would expect the limited research to say that happily alone people are somewhat better off than the lonely and isolated.

 

[bjork]

If they were really your friends, they'd make the time. "Too busy" is a bullshit excuse.

I know this in my brain, but they're all I have.