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April 23 - May 24, 2020
Such hypervigilance could be lifesaving in moments of acute danger, but it placed a lot of stress on the body. Nor was it sustainable for long periods.
this hypervigilance in response to isolation became embedded in our nervous system to produce the anxiety we associate with loneliness.
When we’re profoundly lonely, we tend to sleep lightly and rouse often, just as our ancestors did to prevent being overtaken by wolves or enemies.
the anxiety we feel in the first flush of loneliness will motivate us to find “our people.” We’ll go home to Mom. Or hug our spouse.
the solution is more complicated than telling someone who’s lonely to go to a party or “just be with people.”
It’s less common for us to be sitting around our fire talking with neighbors. Instead, we are racing around trying to get work done all the time.
Loneliness can make it especially hard to establish friendships when moving to a new neighborhood or starting a new job or school where everyone seems to belong to a different and inaccessible “tribe.”
the tendency to feel lonely over a lifetime, rather than just occasionally due to circumstance, is between 14 and 27 percent heritable
loneliness is not a discrete condition but an emotional response.
“You’re motivated to connect. But promiscuous connection with others can lead to death. A neural mechanism kicks in to make you a little skeptical or dubious about connecting.”[23]
People who carry emotional scars develop a “kind of neurobiological sensitivity to threat and rejection.” This sensitivity mirrors the instincts of people who are born with social anxiety-and
loneliness, loss, or disappointment can produce symptoms similar to those caused by physical blows or wounds.[24]
emotional and physical pain are both processed by the brain in very similar ways.
While loneliness has the potential to kill, connection has even more potential to heal.
our drive to connect is one of our most important survival instincts.
So strong is this instinct that when we move away from connection it induces genuine pain.
need social connection just as much today as we ever did-perhaps even more-as the world’s increasing complexity makes it easy to feel lost and forgotten.
Loneliness is a built-in reminder that we are stronger together, not just as clans and tribes or family and friends, but also as caring communities that form the foundation of a healthy culture.
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. You need one because you are human.
“No man is an island entire of itself … any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.”[2]
John Milton went so far as to link loneliness to Satan in Paradise Lost.[3]
“The growth of the consumer economy, the declining influence of religion, and the popularity of evolutionary biology all served to emphasize that the individual was what mattered-not
they were caught between the new societal expectations of independence and the emotional pull of their old interdependent way of life.
Loneliness, Ami told me, occurs when our social experience fails to meet our social expectations.
as comforting as it may be to have the support of kindred friends and neighbors you’ve known your whole life, it also can be painfully lonely, even lethal, if your skin color, sexual orientation, or ethnicity differs from everyone else’s-or
think of culture as the bowl in which relationships form. Depending on its size and shape, this bowl is bound to change our experience both of togetherness and of loneliness.
How would a kind city respond to this problem?” It meant accepting people’s differences and fallibility while celebrating their shared community and human experience.
wanted to send a message through the police that the community isn’t here to judge you but to lend you a hand. I wanted to send a message that we’re with you,”
“Sometimes saying we need to be kind feels like it is stating the obvious,” Tom said. “But it doesn’t get stated, so I’ve had to talk a lot about kindness to make it part of our culture.”
the German word ‘mitsein,’ which means ‘being with.’ That’s the higher level of kindness;
We agreed to meet once a month by video conference, during which we’d spend two hours (or more if needed) talking honestly about whatever was on our minds, including our joys and our challenges. We also agreed that we would be one another’s source of accountability.
“Women talk face to face while men talk shoulder to shoulder.”[20]
“Girls have a feeling of constant comparison,” Wiseman told me. This comparison exposes them to the shame of social failure
It’s important to recognize, however, that the broader cultural layers surround us all, dovetailing with other cultural imperatives to shape the ease, frequency, and quality of our social connections,
our wiring signals us that we need to belong to our people in order to feel safe, and that we need to avoid or shun others, for fear they can’t be trusted.
we no longer have the luxury of thinking and acting tribally.
we need to recapture our investment in the collective elements that matter-our relationships, our community organizations, our neighborhoods, our social and cultural institutions-and we must do this while continuing to protect individual expression.
Giving and serving others doesn’t just strengthen our communities; it enriches our lives and strengthens our own bonds to the community and our sense of value and purpose.
Kindness can bridge the divides between us, healing our society even as it relieves our personal loneliness and brings us together.
checking your social media feed is like comparing everyone’s best days to your average days-and
It turned an authentic act of expression into a hollow exercise. Chasing validation like that made me feel bad about myself.
Are lonely, depressed people trying to escape into social media? Or does too much social media make people lonely and depressed?
Social media can help people find meaningful connections, especially when they come from communities that have traditionally been isolated or marginalized.
Others can tell when we’re not paying attention, and it makes them less likely to share as much or as deeply.
the constant presence of our phones and other communication technology has been shown to reduce the emotional quality of our conversations.
The way in which we use technology can not only distract from in-person interactions, but it can also create distance between us and others.
it is also common for social media to allow users a window into the lives of other people they may not have been able to glimpse. In doing so, it can give us opportunities to understand and engage in positive ways with a greater number of people.
perfection is an illusion that technology and modern culture cultivate at the expense of humanity.
Social media’s constant presence creates the illusion that we never need to be alone-and that something must be wrong with us if we feel alone.
Technology can also facilitate better connections. It all depends on how it is designed and used. Platforms like Skype allow students to attend classes
