A pain necessary to survive
Image created by Namphuong Van
Loneliness is slowly becoming one of the biggest problems for our well-being in modern society. And despite it being discussed more often in the media, I feel like we lack an understanding of what loneliness, on a very fundamental level, actually means and why it causes so much discomfort.
We humans are social creatures, and being lonely doesn’t come without consequences.
The difference between loneliness and being alone
Loneliness and being alone sound similar yet mean two entirely different things.
Being alone means that you are not physically surrounded by any other person, either for a short time or more permanently.Being lonely describes your subjective feeling of a lack of social connection in terms of quantity and quality.
This means that you can be alone and not feel lonely, as long as you know that you have great relationships with friends or family who care for you.
On the other hand, you can feel lonely despite being surrounded by a lot of people. That is the case if you feel like you can’t trust them to support or help you when needed.
Loneliness was (and is) dangerous
To survive, humans have always depended on working together in groups. Our chances of survival on our own in the past were low. We needed people to hunt and share food with, to defend ourselves from predators, and to take care of us if we were sick or injured.
This shows how important social connections were back then. If you didn’t have the social connections you needed (in terms of quality and quantity), your life was in danger.
Imagine living as a hunter-gatherer 12,000 years ago. If you got sick or injured, you needed the help of your community to care for you, bring you food, and protect you from dangerous animals while you recovered.
If you were lonely, there would be no one to support you. You would fall victim to a predator, freeze, or simply starve to death.
That’s why loneliness doesn’t come without consequences: The stress of feeling lonely is as damaging as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Image created by Markus Spiske
Surviving in the modern world
Nowadays, you can technically survive without people caring about you; at least as long as you have money to buy the help you need from others. You do this every day when you buy food that others have produced or when you use medical services.
Since social connections aren’t necessarily required anymore to survive physically, many people barely even notice that they lack social connections.
However, there are still two problems:
1. This only works as long as you have money. Once you run out, you cannot pay people if you need something. People who truly care about you are always there, like a safety net, ready to help you whenever you need it, even if you have no money.
2. Your brain is still stuck in the past: Our brains developed over millions of years, and only in the past few decades has it become possible to survive without social connections. Since then, our brains haven’t changed, and they don’t understand that the danger isn’t as significant anymore.
Additionally, you cannot buy genuine relationships and emotional support and although social connections aren’t essential for survival anymore, they remain crucial for your emotional well-being.
Why loneliness hurts
When asking people who suffer from loneliness, you will often hear them describing that feeling as an abstract pain or discomfort in their chest. It tends to be more noticeable when they go to bed, when no phone or activity can distract their mind from thinking about their situation and emotions.
Without social media giving you the illusion of connection when watching your favorite YouTuber, reality kicks in.
The reason why we experience loneliness as something painful is that the feeling of loneliness activates an area in the brain that is close to our pain center.
This shows just how important social interactions and connections are to your life. If you don’t have the social connections you need, your body signals pain because it wants you to act and fix it in the same way it wants you to act when you have an injury. In both cases, your life is (or at least was for most of human history) in danger.
In the same way your survival is endangered when you have an arrow stuck in your leg, it is endangered when you are lonely and have no one who is there for you in times when you need help.Image created by Mario Heller
Although uncomfortable, the feeling of loneliness is therefore something positive or at least necessary; otherwise, you would lack the incentive to change something about it.
Different perceptions of loneliness
When it comes to loneliness, two different people can be in the exact same situation and feel completely different about it, as it is a subjective feeling.
How you feel depends on the quality and quantity of your social connections, as well as your experiences. If you have had bad experiences with friends or family — such as them not being there for you when you needed them — you might feel lonely, while another person in the exact same situation with good experiences would not.
In the end, what matters is your belief about whether there is someone who would be there for you. Because this is a subjective belief, it doesn’t matter whether a person actually would help you or not. If you don’t feel like they will be there for you, you feel lonely.
This is also why small gestures, like sending a postcard, a thoughtful Christmas present, or calling someone to ask them how they are, are very important. Ultimately, those are signs for the other person that they are important to you (hard evidence).
Image created by Kira auf der Heide
But even if you have good relationships, you might start to feel lonely if, for example, you get lost at sea without a way of communicating. In such a case, despite having friends and family who care for you, you know that they cannot be there to help you in this situation.
Therefore, loneliness heavily depends on your belief whether there are people out there who care enough about you and are capable and willing to be there for you when you need them.
Thanks for reading! If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, remember to follow the publication (and clap/comment too!). Want to write for Mindful Mental Health? Please check out our submission guidelines and ask to be added as a writer in the comments of that post.
Understanding Loneliness and Why It Feels So Bad was originally published in Mindful Mental Health on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.