What Researches Discover About Loneliness
And How They Put You In Driver’s Seat
This realism of loneliness, as we see its different manifestations and dimensions in contemporary societies, especially in complex and developed cultures, must be examined from two possible ways. First of course is the populist perception, which often is not what an objective perspective can accept. This is largely because this populist perception about loneliness is a creation of people affected by the troubles of loneliness themselves. That is why it has larger elements of subjective perceptions, coloured by pep psychology and mass media.
It has to be accepted that it is a populist practice to add more fiction into facts. Often, most fictions about things start with facts but populism ensures that subjective narratives and personal lore also become part and parcel of the objective reality. Populist perception about loneliness being a collective realism of the experiences of lonely people itself, loads of extrapolated wisdom and experiences easily become acceptable as fact. Human brain is genius of extrapolations.
However, scientific, objective and logically singular fact about loneliness is far from what populist realism stands as. It is very important for all people to understand and accept this singular objective factsheet about loneliness. Yes, it has to be admitted that it is not going to be easy for those people suffering from loneliness to accept this, as it somehow puts the larger onus on them. Still, accepting helps in unlearning the clichéd and stereotypes about loneliness, which is predominant in popular perception of most.
Most scientists define loneliness subjectively. That is, they believe, if you consider yourself lonely, you are. They insist that loneliness must be seen as an internal, subjective experience, not an external, objective condition. It is an objective realism that people grow lonely because of the gloomy stories they perceive and tell themselves.
This realism about loneliness has to be accepted. It is of primary importance, as the diagnosis of real meaning, nature and actualism of the realism of loneliness, in all its manifestations and multidimensionality, shall help us in accepting that loneliness is largely about subjective perceptions and that is why, an individual is very well endowed to not only come out of this perceived loneliness troubles, rather also begin to value, treasure and enjoy it. Moreover, we shall then begin to use this facility of loneliness as a tool of empowerment for life-living wellness and personal excellence. So, about loneliness, we all need to have two different process done simultaneously – unlearning and then learning.
Enough researches have established that lonely people have just as much social capital, defined by physical attractiveness, height, weight, socioeconomic status, and academic achievement, etc., as their non-lonely peers. What this hints at?
It is the same, which the above fact asserts. That is, perception as well as realism about loneliness is very subjective, very individualistic and that is why loneliness can be successfully handled by the affected individual itself. Researchers also maintain that the less educated are lonelier than the better educated. This also clearly points to the same fact about loneliness being a very subjective realism and a person, who has better mental and consciousness abilities, can truly avoid loneliness trap and can be endowed enough to come out of it successfully. This shall be a truly winning, enjoyable and self-worthy experience for all.
Researches establish the fact that lonely people are not necessarily more isolated. Also, it needs to be known and accepted that scientists say, ‘what we most crave is the company of other people, but it can be that very company that sets us off to what we perceive as loneliness and then begin to belief in its onset’. Let us spare and invest good amount of positivity, leisure, acceptance and innocent reception about some core realism about loneliness.
Researchers find that loneliness often has loads to do with our intimacy needs and how we handle it. Also, researches confirm that a key part of feeling lonely is feeling rejected, and that, it turns out, is the most damaging part. It is for sure that the feeling of rejection is somehow a corollary of the core issue of intimacy, which is at the centre of the emotions of loneliness. This series of related emotions and realism have to be very carefully understood and accepted.
Researchers say, ‘What is different about lonely people from other non-lonely ones is how they interpret their social interactions with friends and acquaintances. Loneliness is interpreted by scientists as the ‘perceived’ gap and ‘inconsistency’ between what someone desires in relationships, especially intimate relationships and what one actually has or finds in these relationships. Studies say that lonely people tend to feel put upon and misunderstood. The researchers say, ‘lonely people are more likely to attribute problems in social relationships not to themselves but to others, and often see themselves as victims who are already giving as much as they can to their relationships, but get back poor things.’
This must be viewed with a very affectionate and compassionate heart and mind. Does this all seem not very serious thing but just a small gap between what is perceived and what turns out to be? Does it seem that the trouble is not actually something physical or actual but notional and subjectively perceivable? If it is, doesn’t this signify a very usual thing between people. Globally, experts accept that despite technologies, humanity has grown this trouble of gap between people, be it communication or relationship goodies.
This surely seems the reality. Researchers and scientists say that worst thing for lonely people is that ‘loneliness itself can further distort their thinking, making them misread other people’s good intentions, which in turn causes them to withdraw to protect themselves from further rejection. This in turn causes other people to keep them at arm’s length’. Scientists warn, ‘loneliness can create its own self-defeating behaviour’.
Now, let us put in picture what we said very initially in this book. We talked about the idea of 3Cs and their utility in understanding core realism of our life-living experiences. We need to apply this 3Cs principle for better diagnosis of the populist perception about loneliness being a huge trouble. The simple realism, it seems is, loneliness is a condition of our own drifted or fluxed consciousness, giving us misplaced cognitions, thus and in turn making us accept a wrong and unrealistic causality.
What the scientists say about perceptions of lonely people is a two way mechanism. Loneliness distorts what we perceive and believe. However, it is also the vice-versa. Our distorted worldview and perspectives leads us silently to the deep woods of loneliness. Scientists say, ‘you are in your perspectives and your perspectives are in you’. What this means? This suggests the simple fact about the 3Cs. If we have an affected consciousness, which happens because of our over-indulgence in drift and flux life-living choices and clutter culture, we shall have a distorted or disturbed cognition. This means, a consciousness, which misses the poise and balance of perspectives and worldviews, also has distorted cognition – means, he or she sees and accepts something, which is either not a fact but fictitious, or accepts things, which have little facts but more fictions.
The straightforward fact is – there are so many cognitive troubles in our popular cultures, which are embedded in the affected consciousness, many of us tend to evolve, because of the flux, drift and complexities of modern life and living. We have already discussed how our conscious minds and subconscious minds become home to loads of chaos, conflicts and confusion in this contemporary populist culture and then lose their poise. This affected consciousness then affects poorly our faculty of poised cognition. This in turn makes us see and accept twisted and mistaken causalities.
Loneliness, which is actually a potent and potentially positive faculty of a poised consciousness, becomes a victim of wrong cognition and causality. As we said, drifted and fluxed life-living and clutter culture pushes us to the deep woods of loneliness. This forest is a nice place, a truly empowering milieu if we see it that way. However, most people are scared of woods. Therefore, they fail to enjoy the very soothing and serene environs of the woods. It is all because of affected and distorted perspective. We are in our perspectives and our perspectives are in us.
Scientists however very categorically say that being lonely is ‘not such a passive situation that you can say, you just cannot help’. You can, with a change in your perspectives, through a process of unlearning and learning, towards the acceptance of this true and actual realism, within and outside you. The learning, which we all need to have, is about the 3Cs. We need to learn scientific and singularly objective facts about consciousness, cognition and causality. This is what getting popular in many parts of the world. People are accepting that clutter cultures we are in are taking us away from our own realism. People are accepting that mindfulness is the call of the hour. Loneliness is gradually being appreciated.
What we have to unlearn is that populist cultural clichéd, which has entered our instinctive behaviour and actions. We have to unlearn inappropriate benchmarks of success, self-worth, utility and happiness, which the contemporary clutter culture of markets, media and celebrities has heaped on us. We have to unlearn that we cannot do. We sure can! We shall discuss about how to handle loneliness well in later chapter.
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