Video

Transcript

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