Loneliness: a feeling, usually sad and sometimes devastating, that one needs more companionship than one is currently getting.
William Sadler (July, 1975), in Science Digest, describes five "causes of loneliness":
1. Interpersonal Loneliness
You miss somebody who was once close to you. This type of loneliness is closely associated with grief. You're always on the lookout for a new loved one. But, if you find a new potential partner before you heal, you're so afraid of more rejection or desertion that you watch him or her like a hawk.
2. Social Loneliness
"The individual feels cut off from a group that he or she feels is important...ostracism, exile..." This type of loneliness is often imposed on minority groups.
Why not solve the problem of ostracism by defining the group that has rejected you as "not important"? Sure, as long as you're not in the minority group, persons diagnosed with mental illness (consumers). If consumers define those who are prejudiced against them as "not important," they cut out most of the population.
Defined more accurately, social loneliness is what you feel when you are unwillingly cut off from a social group that is very important for your survival or well-being, and there's nothing you can do about it right now.
3. Culture Shock
The loneliness that happens when you move to a whole new culture. This probably includes social loneliness, since most cultures reject foreigners at least somewhat.
4. Cosmic Loneliness
Everybody feels cosmic loneliness sometimes. It's also known as "existential loneliness," the sense that it's not possible to achieve perfect, complete intimacy with another person. It's this type of loneliness that turns our attention to a higher power. This is what philosophers, priests and ministers can help with.
5. Psychological Loneliness
This is the loneliness that comes from the depths of our being, either from our chemical makeup or from our reactions to past traumas. This is the type that I can help with (see What To Do About Loneliness).
6. I want to add a sixth category to Sadler's five. Have you ever been trapped in a situation where you had nobody to talk to who could respond at your level of intelligence? Or where nobody would even listen to your ideas? This can cause strong feelings of loneliness.
In Loneliness, Robert Weiss (1975) writes that loneliness is NOT the same as depression. Lonely people fear that they will always be lonely; depressed people are sure of it. The lonely feel sad and discouraged; the depressed have numbed out and just don't care any more. The lonely cry a lot; the depressed are "cried out." Most important, loneliness can, potentially at least, drive people to go out and find friends; depression is more likely to tempt people to give up and just sleep all day.
That's not good because, in 1988, a team of psychological researchers at the University of Michigan (Chicago Sun-Times, July 29) found that social isolation is a bigger health risk (a stronger morbidity factor, if you don't mind psychobabble) than smoking. So why are there no anti-loneliness ads on TV? Because, as opposed to smoking, loneliness is something psychologists haven't yet figured out how to combat.
William Sadler (July, 1975), in Science Digest, describes five "causes of loneliness":
1. Interpersonal Loneliness
You miss somebody who was once close to you. This type of loneliness is closely associated with grief. You're always on the lookout for a new loved one. But, if you find a new potential partner before you heal, you're so afraid of more rejection or desertion that you watch him or her like a hawk.
2. Social Loneliness
"The individual feels cut off from a group that he or she feels is important...ostracism, exile..." This type of loneliness is often imposed on minority groups.
Why not solve the problem of ostracism by defining the group that has rejected you as "not important"? Sure, as long as you're not in the minority group, persons diagnosed with mental illness (consumers). If consumers define those who are prejudiced against them as "not important," they cut out most of the population.
Defined more accurately, social loneliness is what you feel when you are unwillingly cut off from a social group that is very important for your survival or well-being, and there's nothing you can do about it right now.
3. Culture Shock
The loneliness that happens when you move to a whole new culture. This probably includes social loneliness, since most cultures reject foreigners at least somewhat.
4. Cosmic Loneliness
Everybody feels cosmic loneliness sometimes. It's also known as "existential loneliness," the sense that it's not possible to achieve perfect, complete intimacy with another person. It's this type of loneliness that turns our attention to a higher power. This is what philosophers, priests and ministers can help with.
5. Psychological Loneliness
This is the loneliness that comes from the depths of our being, either from our chemical makeup or from our reactions to past traumas. This is the type that I can help with (see What To Do About Loneliness).
6. I want to add a sixth category to Sadler's five. Have you ever been trapped in a situation where you had nobody to talk to who could respond at your level of intelligence? Or where nobody would even listen to your ideas? This can cause strong feelings of loneliness.
In Loneliness, Robert Weiss (1975) writes that loneliness is NOT the same as depression. Lonely people fear that they will always be lonely; depressed people are sure of it. The lonely feel sad and discouraged; the depressed have numbed out and just don't care any more. The lonely cry a lot; the depressed are "cried out." Most important, loneliness can, potentially at least, drive people to go out and find friends; depression is more likely to tempt people to give up and just sleep all day.
That's not good because, in 1988, a team of psychological researchers at the University of Michigan (Chicago Sun-Times, July 29) found that social isolation is a bigger health risk (a stronger morbidity factor, if you don't mind psychobabble) than smoking. So why are there no anti-loneliness ads on TV? Because, as opposed to smoking, loneliness is something psychologists haven't yet figured out how to combat.