The terrible truth about loneliness

Every person can feel lonely from time to time. It can be pain after parting with a loved one, the loss of a close relative or moving to a new place after many years of living in your home. People can be lonely for a million different reasons.

What is loneliness?

Loneliness is most often described as the negative emotional state that a person experiences when he notices the difference between ideal relationships that he would like to observe between himself and another person and reality. An unpleasant feeling of loneliness is subjective - the researchers found that loneliness does not depend on how much time you spend in the company with someone, but how much - without. It is more concerned with the quality of the relationship, not with their number or duration. A lonely person can be in the company of other people, but feel that no one understands that these relationships with people do not make sense. For some people, a sense of loneliness can be temporary and quick-passing. Others can not easily cope with this feeling, and this condition can only develop if a person does not have people with whom he could establish contact.

Basic signals

From the evolutionary point of view, human dependence on the group ensured the survival of man as a species. Accordingly, loneliness can be seen as a signal in order to join someone. And from this point of view, loneliness is much like hunger, thirst or physical pain, which are signals that it's time to eat, drink or seek medical help. However, in modern society, neutralization of the signal about loneliness has become much more complicated than quenching hunger, thirst or treatment. Loneliness can develop in people who are not surrounded by other people caring for them.

Risk Factor

The researchers found that social isolation is a risk factor for the emergence of many diseases, as well as for premature death. Recent scientific work on this topic provides information that the lack of social ties represents for a person the same risk of early death, as, for example, obesity. Loneliness is a risk factor for many physical ailments and conditions, such as fragmented sleep, dementia and even a decrease in cardiovascular activity.

Biological propensity

Some people may even be biologically more vulnerable to loneliness. Studies have shown that a predilection for this feeling can even be inherited from parents and other ancestors. Many studies have concentrated on studying how loneliness can result from a combination of certain genes and social and environmental factors (for example, parent support). Most often, loneliness as a mental condition, which can be equated to other mental illnesses, is completely ignored. Therefore, researchers still have a long time to fully understand how this state can affect the mental health of a person. After all, most of the research on loneliness and mental health was focused solely on the relationship between loneliness and depression. And although loneliness and depression are somewhat similar, they are still very different. Loneliness refers exclusively to negative feelings about the social world, and depression refers to a more general set of negative feelings. In the study, in which the state of loneliness in subjects was observed for five years, it was found that it could become a harbinger of depression, but the reverse option is impossible.

Loneliness is not a symptom of depression

This condition is very often mistakenly regarded as a normal symptom of depression, or people assume that loneliness will disappear as soon as doctors take up the treatment of depression. Simply put, "lonely" people are forced to join social groups and make friends, suggesting that after that the condition will immediately disappear. And although creating a social platform for communication and finding new friends is the right step, you should not believe that such a pain can be got rid of so easily. People suffering from loneliness may have some concerns about social situations, and as a result they will reject the opportunity to create new connections - such is the human psyche.