#618: Finding Connection in a Lonely World

Loneliness is associated with not only an increased risk of heart disease but also an increased risk of dementia, depression, anxiety, premature death, and sleep disturbances.

If you look at the mortality impact of loneliness—the amount by which our life is shortened when we're lonely, it seems to be similar to the mortality impact associated with smoking 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than the mortality impact we see with obesity and sedentary living.

If you're lonely, you're not alone. All of us experience loneliness at some point in our lives. We don't talk about it because we're often ashamed. We've come to believe that if we're lonely, we're not likeable, or we're broken in some way. The truth is that all of us experience loneliness.

As human beings, across cultures, we all have a few core needs: We all want to be seen for who we are, we all want to know that we matter, and we all want to be loved.

On a biological level, loneliness puts us in a stress state, and in the short-term, that stress can be good. It can motivate us to go and seek out other friends and family members and to hopefully feel more connected. But we run into problems when that loneliness is prolonged and when the stress state that it causes is prolonged as well. We know that chronic stress is associated with higher levels of inflammation in the body, which can lead to an increased incidence of heart disease and other chronic illnesses.

Social media makes it easy to spend a little bit of time with a lot of people. It's easier for me to wish happy birthday to 100 friends on Facebook by typing 'HBD!' on their walls than to actually pick up the phone and have a half-hour in-depth conversation with a friend on his or her birthday. We've lowered the barrier to having shorter and less intimate interactions with people we barely know.

There is great power in simply showing up, witnessing, and listening to someone deeply. While it feels passive, when you're listening deeply to someone, you're telling them, 'I see you, you matter, and you are loved.'

We know that when people pursue wealth, power, and fame, defining their worth by those things, they rarely end up happy. The world is filled with rich, powerful, and famous people who are profoundly unhappy.

We know that loneliness is exceedingly common ... 22% of adults in America struggle with loneliness.

The foundation for connecting with other people is our connection with our self, which is marked by how comfortable we feel with who we are, how grounded and centered we feel, and how aware we are of our worth & value.

The data seems to indicate that men and women have similar rates of loneliness, but it also suggests that men have a harder time admitting it.