Together: Why Social Connection Holds the Key to Better Health, Higher Performance, and Greater Happiness

by Vivek H. Murthy

Cole, who studies the effects of loneliness at the molecular level, says that repeated or extended experiences of threat will actually change the brain. 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 exacerbates them in people unlucky enough to have both a genetic propensity toward social anxiety and a painful social history. Whether conscious of it or not, they’re always on guard in social situations, assessing the trustworthiness of people around them, trying to distinguish potential friends from foes. “If I’m the kind of person who’s had a rough upbringing,” Cole says, “when I go into new social settings, I am not going to come up to the first person I see and be immediately friendly to them.” Instead, the first response is caution and wariness, which may appear to others like reserve, standoffishness, or even arrogance. People who are naturally friendly may take offense and back away, and before you know it, the fear of social threat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of rejection.