Why do I feel lonely for no reason?

Loneliness is an anachronism, but there's nothing we can do about it.

Began to live alone in the first year, had a friend told me that a person can do almost anything in the home, about 4 o 'clock in the afternoon, but it is best not to sleep alone, or you will wake up at twilight lie on the bed to hear the children to play the sound outside the window, down stairs the old man's voice chat, look at the setting sun is a little bit of all, and then feel very lonely.

Of all the profound emotional responses, loneliness is not the most extraordinary. In fact, it's with us from the very beginning of life, when parents take a baby from their arms and he or she experiences loneliness for the first time. As slow after establishing connection with others, form a variety of social relations, "lack of" company bring physical sense of loneliness may fade, but mentally without relying on feelings will appear at various stages in their lives, such as a sudden loss of meaning, a variety of reasons lead to significant changes in social relations, can let a person in sad lonely.

Not only that, but even those in relationships can feel lonely. People in the crowd, but do not want to merge with the people around them, as if sinking into the land. This is perhaps one of the oldest descriptions of "every man is an island," as the loneliness of disappointed expectations is often heightened by the feeling of not being understood or the expected response to what is said. More often, it comes from dysfunctional relationships, where people feel unable to connect emotionally or ideologically with those around them, leading to the uncomfortable experience of "sleeping in a different bed."

Loneliness is also one of the earliest observed symptoms of The Times in modern society. With the advent of the industrial revolution, the word "alone" become social researchers and astronomers using high frequency words, and was constantly poetic, romantic and label, so that now people are isolated from each other in the metropolitan of individuals, the brain is always a Edward hopper of the classic painting: a room, a window, a lamp, a man of absence. From then on, loneliness no longer belongs to the "old without children" and "young without father" marginalized groups of society, but has become a daily experience of the whole society.

People also began to think about the problems of loneliness. On an individual level, loneliness slowly deteriorates physical and mental health. Follow-up studies in different parts of the world have shown that it can damage the brain, heart and immune system to varying degrees, reduce life expectancy, and increase the risk of falling into an unhealthy lifestyle due to the emotional gap caused by loneliness. On a broader scale, loneliness can also lead to more serious social problems. The political theorist Hannah Arendt, for example, argued that loneliness was the foundation of totalitarian rule. In isolation, people lose the ability to experience other things and think for themselves. Such individuals are more likely to be attracted to totalitarian coercive logic and collective passion.

Unfortunately, we may now be living in the loneliest age humanity has ever known. In her 2020 book The Century of Loneliness, British economist Norena Herz pointed out that loneliness had become synonymous with the 21st century even before the pandemic. In the United States, three out of five people feel lonely; One in eight people in the UK feels they have no friends to rely on; In Japan, there are elderly people who commit crimes and go to prison to alleviate social isolation.

Why is loneliness increasing in modern society? The psychoanalyst Frome Reitzman argues that loneliness, as a subjective emotional feeling, actually comes from the difference between the "connection of possession" and the "connection of desire." In other words, perhaps it's not just that we have less, but that we want more.

For example, is the world's interconnected social media a cause or a consequence of loneliness? Past researchers have argued that digital social relationships can sometimes lead to more complete loneliness by giving us company without the need for friendship. If an individual's interpersonal network can originally be divided into three layers, the innermost intimacy layer is the one that most affects people's sense of connection. Social media pulls the weak relationship in the middle and outer layer into our daily category, creating an illusion of "being accompanied". When this illusion is broken, it is easier to feel alone in a "crowd".

Author of loneliness spread, fay, bond, ahab, found that online social sharing does to a certain extent, eliminate the loneliness of people, the only problem is, do we have the corresponding degree of offline relationships - "when social media is between a man and the world the only way to communicate, lonely phenomenon will be more common."

After 2020, the epidemic has further aggravated the lack of offline connections and reduced face-to-face interactions, making loneliness a "plague of The Times" accompanying the novel coronavirus. In March 2022, the World Health Organization released a briefing that the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a dramatic 25% increase in global rates of anxiety and depression, with mental health deterioration worsening in areas where social interaction was limited.

At the same time, news events spread more intensively than in the past via the Internet in real time may also aggravate individual loneliness. National topics fermenting in a very short period of time and increasingly polarized online voices sometimes lead to self-doubt and distrust of the group, resulting in strong feelings of loneliness. What's more, such opinion discussions can create a tear between the individual and offline social support, so some people choose not to discuss news and social events with family, friends and partners in order to circumvent differences of opinion, which introduces new feelings of not being understood.

But The Times when we feel most alone are also The Times when we need to actively connect. The first piece of advice from both WHO and Arendt in the face of loneliness was to rebuild the bonds of community. In this era of COVID-19, not only do we need to work hard to strengthen our existing intimate relationships and maintain even weekly meetings and correspondence with our closest family and friends, but we can also rebuild trust in our communities by reaching out to people we don't know. Joining an online community and saying hello to your downstairs neighbors, for example, can also help alleviate loneliness.

Loneliness is essentially the result of introspection, or self-staring. According to The Japanese Sinologist Rokuro Spuro, loneliness is "a state of mind that arises when you feel that you are abandoned and you look at yourself when you cannot communicate with others." So one way to avoid loneliness, if you will, is to stop self-staring. When describing their loneliness, many empty-nesters will say that it all started when their children left home, which not only takes away their company, but also deprives them of a part of the meaning of life, and the latter brings a more intense sense of loneliness. Therefore, some psychologists suggest that the first step to challenge loneliness is to actively release kindness, try to love and pay attention to someone or something like a mother with a child in her arms, and the loneliness will be alleviated.

Finally, self-staring can sometimes be an opportunity for self-care. Psychoanalysts have proposed that people are able to endure loneliness because of active parental care in childhood, which they eventually internalize as self-care and self-companionship, viewing loneliness as a time of undisturbed solitude that is entirely their own. This is "negative loneliness" as the first step of "positive solitude" - like Elizabeth bishop in the age of 49 mentioned in the letter to a friend, "I've always dreamed of becoming a lighthouse keeper, absolutely alone, no one disturb me reading, or just sat there, although this dream was harshly dismissed in 16 years old, I think everyone should experience loneliness, or at least go through it for a while... Maybe it's a regular need."