The S.C.I.E.N.C.E of L.O.N.E.L.I.N.E.S.S

People who got stuck in loneliness have done  nothing wrong. None of us is immune to the feelings of isolation anymore than we are immune to the feelings of hunger or physical pain. 

John Cacioppo in his book Lonelinees.

We were out at the swimming pool, dipping and playing in the water after a hot day when at one point a friend came up and said "You must be in love." Perplexed at how he got the impression, I went of the defensive and asked "How did you come up with that conclusion?" He simply said "Because you looked lonely." 

I find myself pleasantly intrigued by how he associated being lonely and in love. "Loneliness," he went on to say, "in not the same as being alone, this being with others does not guarantee you to not feel lonely. It is also not the same as being cooped up and drowning yourself with guilt and fear and insecurity. Loneliness, real loneliness, is the want of intimacy." 

Describing loneliness as the want of intimacy really put things into perspective. I later discovered that this definition came from Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, a German psychiatrist contemporary to Sigmund Freud. Some of her notable publications was on Migraine, Stereotypies, and Domineering Mothers. Her theory on migraine, in particular, is.. 

..of the opinion that the symptom is produced when an unconscious hostile tendency is directed in particular at the destruction of an object's intelligence ("mental castration") and guilt feelings turn this tendency instead against one's own head'

(Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 253.) 

I digress. Coming back to the topic of loneliness, it has been recently linked to bodily ailments as well as mental degeneration. Psycho-biologist can now show that loneliness sends misleading hormonal signals, disrupts the genes that governs behavior and causes other body system to malfunction and fall apart. Time and age, being the constant, also contributes to the physical effect of loneliness. Some of the diseases that are thought to be induced partly by loneliness is Alzheimer's, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and are also contributing factors to bad habits such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and drugs. 

Loneliness vary from person to person, just as taste vary from person to person. One would say that a lemon is pleasantly sour, helps to accentuate the taste of his food, while another would say that it is an unnecessary to his food and that the sourness blunts his appetite. There are introverted and extroverted people, as well as there are those who are in constant need for connection and those who don't seem to need friends at all.  

There are among us who are extremely lonely - not because of having too few friends or connections, but because they lack the social support that they require. It is not the quantity, but rather the quality of support - because loneliness can be treated through trust and intimacy. However, following the principle of natural selection and survival of the fittest, lonely people tend to be shunned away from the community for being perceived as weak, or suffer in silence to lead a life under false identity. 

These people are like walking time bombs - more sensitive than others to the pain of rejection. Their temperament is akin to that of a spoiled 5-year-old who would throw a temper-tantrum is his demand were not met. Similarly, shorter temper or passive-aggressive retaliation, cynical remark they consider as jokes, raised voice and self-preservation gestures such as folding the arms across the chest to protect himself. 

Biologically, their heart rate increases, stress hormones flood his body, body tissue swell up, and white blood cells swarm up in anticipation of a physical attack that never came. It would be harmless if this bouts of inflamed arousal dissipates quickly, but if kept for a prolonged period of time, the blood pressure levels would rise. Furthermore, because the body is kept at anticipating larger threats, part of the immune system that fends off smaller, more subtle threats began to fail, contributing to acquired allergies and periodical sickness. 

If we now know that loneliness, a social emotion, can reach into our body's biological system and cause disruptions and amok, what should we do about it? Change our view on health. Being healthy is not just about having a healthy body, but also having a healthy mind and emotion, and a healthy support society. Start small - reach out and seek those who can fulfill your social need, and in return do not shy away from those who seek you to fulfill their social need. Pay closer attention to the later, as you never know, you may heal your own loneliness as you heal theirs, and consequently be in love with each other.

Note : for further reading - The Lethality of Loneliness