Everybody feels lonely from time to time
When we have no one to sit next to at lunch
When we move to a new city
or when nobody has time for us at the weekend.
But over the last few decad es,
this occasional feeling has become chronic for millions.
In the UK, 60% of 18 to 34 year old say they often feel lonely.
In the US, 46% of the entire population feel lonely regularly.
We are living in the most connected time in human history,
and yet, an unprecedented number of us feel isolated.
Being lonely and being alone are not the same thing.
You can be filled by bliss by yourself, and hate every second surrounded by friends.
Loneliness is a purely subjective, individual experience.
If you feel lonely,
you are lonely.
A common stereotype is that loneliness only happens to people who don't know how to talk to people,
or how to behave around others.
But population-based studies have shown that social skills make
practically no difference for adults when it comes to social connections.
Loneliness can affect everybody.
Money, fame,
power, beauty,
social skills, a great personality—
nothing can protect you against loneliness,
because it's part of your biology.
Loneliness is a bodily function, like hunger.
Hunger make you pay attention to your physical needs;
loneliness makes you pay attention to your social needs.
Your body cares about your social needs,
because millions of years ago,
it was a great indicator of how likely you were to survive.
Natural selection rewarded our ancestors for collaboration,
and for forming connections with each other.
Our brains grew and became more and more fine-tuned
to recognize what others thought and felt, and to form and sustain social bonds.
Being social became part of our biology
You were born into groups of 50 to 150 people,
which you usually stayed with for the rest of your life.
Getting enough calories, staying safe and warm,
or caring for offspring was practically impossible alone.
Being together meant survival,
being alone meant death.
So it was crucial that you got along with others.
For you ancestors, the most dangerous threat to survival
was not being eaten by a lion,
but not getting the social vibe of your group and being excluded.
To avoid that, your body came up with "social pain".
Pain of this kind is is an evolutionary adaptation to rejection.
A sort of early warning system to make sure you stop behaviour that would isolate you.
Your ancestors who experienced rejection as more painful
were more likely to change their behaviour when they got rejected,
and thus stayed in the tribe, while those who did not got kicked out
and most likely died.
That's why rejections hurt,
and even more so, why loneliness is so painful.
These mechanisms for keeping us connected
worked great for most of our history,
until humans began building a new world for themselves
The loneliness epidemic we see today really only started in the late Renaissance.
Western culture began to focus on the individual.
Intellectuals moved away from the collectivism of the Middle Ages,
while the young Protestant theology stressed individual responsibility.
This trend accelerated during the Industrial Revolution.
People left their villages and fields to enter factories.
Communities that had existed for hundreds of years began to dissolve,
while cities grew.
As our world rapidly became modern,
this trend sped up more and more.
Today, we move vast distances for new jobs,
love, and education,
and leave our social net behind.
We meet fewer people in person,
and we meet them less often than in the past.
In the US, the mean number of close friends dropped from
3 in 1985 to 2 in 2011.
Most people stumble into chronic loneliness by accident.
You reach adulthood and become busy with work,
university,
romance,
kids,
and Netflix.
There's just not enough time.
The most convenient and easy thing to sacrifice is time with friends.
Until you wake up one day and you realise that you feel isolated,
that you yearn for close relationships.
But it's hard to find close relationships as adults,
and so, loneliness can become chronic.
While humans feel pretty great about things like iPhones and spaceships,
our bodies and minds are fundamentally the same they were 50,000 years ago
We are still biologically fine-tuned to being with each other.
large scale studies have shown that the stress that comes from chronic loneliness
is among the most unhealthy things we can experience as humans
it makes you age quicker it makes cancer deadlier
Alzheimer's advance faster
your immune systems weaker
loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity
and as deadly as smoking a pack of ciggarettes a day
the most dangerous thing about it is that once it becomes
chronic it can become self sustaining
physical and social pain use
common mechanisms in your brain
both feel like a threat
and so social pain leads to immediate
and defensive behaviour
when it's inflicted on you
when loneliness becomes chronic
your brain goes into self preservation mode
it starts to see danger and hostility everywhere
but that's not all
some studies found that when you're lonely your brain is much more
receptive and alert to social signals
while at the same time it gets worse at
gets worse at interpreting them correctly
you pay more attention to others but you understand them less
the part of you brain that recognises faces
get out of tune and becomes more
likely to categorise neutral faces as hostile
which makes it distrustful of others
loneliness make you assume the worst about others intentions towards you
because of this perceived hostile world
you can become more self-centred to protect yourself
which can make you appear more cold unfriendly and
socially awkward than you really are
if loneliness has become a strong presence in your life
the first thing you can do is to try to recognise
vicious cycle you may be trapped in
it usually goes something like this
an initial feeling of isolation leads to feelings of
tension and sadness
which makes you focus you attention selectively on negative
interactions with others
this makes your thoughts about yourself and others more negative
which then changes your behaviour
you begin to avoid social interaction
which leads to more feelings of isolation
this cycle becomes more severe
and harder to escape each time
loneliness make you sit far away from others in class
not answer the phone when friends call
decline invitations until the invitations stop
each and every one of us has a story about
ourselves and if your story becomes that
people exclude you others pick up on that
and so the outside world can become the way you feel about it
this is often a slow creeping process that takes years
and can end in depression
and a mental state that can prevent connections even if you yearn for them
the first thing you can do to escape it is to accept
that loneliness is a totally normal feeling
and nothing to be ashamed of
literally everybody feels lonely at some point in their
life its a universal human experience
you can't eliminate or ignore a feeling until
it goes away magically but you can accept that
you feel it and get rid of its cause
you can self examine what you focus your attention on
and check if you are selectively focusing on
negative things
was this interaction with a colleague rarely negative
or was it really mutual or even positive
what was the actual content of an interaction?
what did the other person say?
did they say something bad or did you add
extra meaning to their words
maybe another person was not really reacting negatively but
just short on time
then there are your thoughts about the world
are you assuming the worst about others intentions
do you enter a social situation and have
already decided how it will go?
do you assume others don't want you around?
are you trying to avoid being hurt and not risking opening up
and if so can you try to give others
the benefit of the doubt can you just assume
that they're not against you
can you risk being open and vulnerable again?
and lastly your behaviour
are you avoiding opportunities to be around others
are you looking of oppertunites to decline invitations
or are you pushing away others preemptively to protect yourself
are you acting as if you are getting attacked
are you really looking for new connections
or have you become complacent with your situation
of course every person in each situation is unique
and different and just in introspection alone
might not be enough
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
if you feel unable to solve your situation alone by yourself
please try to reach out and get professional help
its not a sign of weakness but of courage
however we look at loneliness as a purely individual
problem that needs solving to create
happiness or as a public health crisis
it is something that deserves more attention
humans have build a world that is nothing short of amazing
and yet not of the shiny things we have made is able to
satisfy or substitute
our fundamental and biological need for connection
most animals get what they need from their physical sourroundings
we get what we need from each other
and we need to build our artificial human world
based on that
(giggling)
lets try something together lets reach out to someone today
regardless if you feel a little bit lonely
or want to make someone else day better
maybe write a friend you haven't spoken to in a while
call a family member who has become estranged
invite a work buddy for a coffee
or just go to something you are usually to afraid to go to
or too lazy to go to like a DMD event
or a sports club
everybody is different so you know whats good for you
maybe nothing will come of it and that's okay
don't do this with any expectations
the goal is just to open up a bit
to exercise your connection muscles so that they can grow stronger over time
or to help others exercise them
we want to recommend two of the books we read
while researching this video
a book that addresses
among other topics
how to deal with loneliness in a way that we found helpful and actionable
and
loneliness, social nature and the need for social connection
by John T. Cacloppo & William Patrick
it's an entertaining and scientific exploration
as to why we experience loneliness on a biological
level how it's spread in society
and what science has to say on how to escape it
links for both books in the video description