How Loneliness Kills | The Contagious Disease Deadlier than Cancer

Almost everyone has felt lonely at least once in their life. Whether you are 16 or 60 loneliness doesn't spare anyone. Of course not everyone who lives alone is lonely and not everyone who is lonely lives alone.

Being lonely is different from being alone. You can be surrounded by people at a party or in school/office and still feel lonely to your core and you can be alone millions of miles away from any human contact and still feel joyfully connected to the world.

STATISTICS

A recent cigna survey has reported that nearly half of Americans always or sometimes feel alone(46%) or left out(47%). Fully 54% said that they always or sometimes feel that no one knows them well.

Loneliness isn't just a US phenomenon. 33% of Britons, 28% of Canadians and nearly half a million Japanese under 40 said that they very often feel lonely.

One 2015 analysis found that lonely individuals had a 32% higher risk of dying. Moreover young people are about three times more likely to feel lonely than people aged 65 and above.

How loneliness is as lethal as smoking 15 cigarettes a day

Chronic loneliness can damage us in ways that go far beyond  limiting our basic happiness.

Loneliness has an alarming effect on our health. It leads to high blood pressure, increased BMI, disturbs our endocrine system by increasing stress hormones and even our immune system.

It also causes a decline in our mental abilities including poor decision making, decreased attention span and concentration, impaired judgement and rapid progression of Alzheimer's disease.

LONELINESS IS CONTAGIOUS

A recent study tracked the spread of loneliness within social networks over time and found that loneliness spreads through a clear contagion process: individuals who had contact with lonely people at the start of the study were more likely to become lonely themselves by the end of it.

The contagion also depends on the degree of closeness between people. The closer non-lonely people were to a lonely person the lonelier they became later on.

 Alarmingly, this contagion was transmitted even beyond the immediate circle of the lonely person such that it spreads throughout the entire social network. It demonstrated both how and why loneliness is at epidemic proportions in today's society.

ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM LONELINESS?

A big reason why most people suffering from loneliness do not understand the severity of this disease and therefore do nothing to treat it is because they fail to realise that they are suffering from it.

 Below are the two most common symptoms of loneliness:

 First: Loneliness causes us to become overly critical about ourselves and those around us. It makes us judge our existing relationships too negatively all of which impact our interactions with others.

Second: Loneliness drives us into cycles of self protection and avoidance that causes us to push away the very people we hope to be with.

HOW TO TREAT LONELINESS

Many of us suffer from loneliness despite having a tight network of supportive friends or being in a committed relationship.

In fact, even living with people with whom we don't share much emotional proximity often highlights the immense emotional distance and profound disconnection we feel leading to powerful feelings of isolation.

➲ Remove your negatively tinted glasses

Loneliness makes us contemplate about constant disappointments and rejections. The best way to fight our fears and pessimism is to purposely visualise the scenarios in reasonable and realistic ways. Loneliness might make us question how our friends feel about us. But we should always balance our doubts with the memories and shared experiences that created and sustained the friendship over time.

➲ Take time to reflect on how you might come across to your friends, colleagues and loved ones. Try to identify your self defeating behaviours.

➲ Try to take the other person's perspective.

➲ Volunteer to help others if you can. It helps to create new social bonds and reduces  feelings of loneliness and makes us feel more socially desirable.

➲ Adopting a friend. Since Dogs are man's best friends.

 Treating loneliness as discussed here should help you feel better and correct your emotional connections. However if you cannot deal with it alone, please feel free to contact us at broadenthyhorizons@gmail.com .

If your pain is so great that you have thoughts of harming yourself, please seek immediate help from a mental health professional.

Manas Mishra