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The Lethality of Loneliness

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Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#41

Post by lotharbot »

navs wrote: post #16

So what do you folks do to combat loneliness? I've tried meetup.com but the groups I joined haven't quite worked out for me. Outside of work acquaintances and classmates, I don't socialize.

Family. Religious groups. Neighbors. Sports (participation or fandom). Volunteer at a nearby school, shelter, or community center. I've even done a meetup group that was pretty successful.

"We try things. Occasionally they even work." - Parson Gotti, http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F109.jpg

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#42

Post by Killah911 »

zupatol wrote: post #36

> At one point, the psychologists thought of designing a mobile app, a sort of electronic nagging mother, to help people break bad social habits. (You’d check an item off the list, say, if you remembered to talk to anyone that day—a store clerk or a librarian.) But they didn’t get funding for the software, so now they’re focusing on a simpler and more low-tech fix. This mobile app sounds like something that would be…

Some of us should probably reach out to them. It does sound like a fairly straight forward app. Might even be a good hackathon project or fun size project which doesn't necessarily need to have monetary rewards.

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#43

Post by conroe64 »

navs wrote: post #26
lotyrin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people I know with this problem have trouble even meeting people, which tends to be a prerequisite for making friends and forming relationships - let alone successful long-term ones that could become marriages.

As is my case. it's hard enough just greeting someone let alone forming a lasting bond that eventuates into some situation allowing for intimacy.

I'm in the same boat. I'm also have attracted a lot of, how to put this, people who use other people, since I'm not good at standing up for myself, so that, therefore, makes wary of people.

My belief is being social is a skill and I have to learn to get better at that skill in order to attract more normal people. I've been trying the following recently, although I haven't had enough time with any of it to know how well it will work, but just to give you some ideas:

lang-8.com - this site allows you to correct English of people trying to learn it. You can post a journal as well in another language you're trying to learn. My hope is that speaking another language might change the way I interact with people in my native language. But also, people there are very friendly, since you're helping them.

mmo games - trying to get into eve online. Maybe learn to establish relationships that way.

teamspeak - this has an online chat I've been using to practice smalltalk.

I tried a psychologist as well, but his philosophy of life and the way he related to me seemed so goofy that I quit. Also, it was quite expensive for what I got out of it.

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#44

Post by dreeves »

zupatol wrote: post #36

> At one point, the psychologists thought of designing a mobile app, a sort of electronic nagging mother, to help people break bad social habits. (You’d check an item off the list, say, if you remembered to talk to anyone that day—a store clerk or a librarian.) But they didn’t get funding for the software, so now they’re focusing on a simpler and more low-tech fix. This mobile app sounds like something that would be…

There are a lot of apps that could be used this way. I think http://lift.do might work well for this. And I know of people using our own http://beeminder.com for things like this.

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#45

Post by Alex3917 »

"Did God want us to die when we got stressed? The answer is no. What He wanted is for us not to be alone. Or rather, natural selection favored people who needed people."

These are both the same thing though. Essentially we're herd animals, and as such we're designed to die if we aren't contributing to the herd. Probably so that if we can't pass on our own genes we can at least increase the chances that someone with similar genes can pass theirs along, by virtue of not wasting resources.

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#46

Post by simantel »

zupatol wrote: post #36

> At one point, the psychologists thought of designing a mobile app, a sort of electronic nagging mother, to help people break bad social habits. (You’d check an item off the list, say, if you remembered to talk to anyone that day—a store clerk or a librarian.) But they didn’t get funding for the software, so now they’re focusing on a simpler and more low-tech fix. This mobile app sounds like something that would be…

Isn't this exactly what Lift does?

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#47

Post by nodata »

zupatol wrote: post #36

> At one point, the psychologists thought of designing a mobile app, a sort of electronic nagging mother, to help people break bad social habits. (You’d check an item off the list, say, if you remembered to talk to anyone that day—a store clerk or a librarian.) But they didn’t get funding for the software, so now they’re focusing on a simpler and more low-tech fix. This mobile app sounds like something that would be…

I think Glenda can do recurring todo lists.

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#48

Post by virtualwhys »

WalterSear wrote: post #24
virtualwhys wrote: post #20

and then there are the twinkle eyed ones that spend huge amounts of time alone (hermits, monks/nuns on long term solo retreat). It probably has less to do with being alone than feeling alone. For lay people, however, living alone in the world goes against the grain; hard not to feel like an odd ball. Something the article does not touch on is accepting the reality of alone-ness: we're all alone together (quote from a…

>Something the article does not touch on is accepting the reality of alone-ness: we're all alone together (quote from an old friend). I don't think this is the same thing. Some people are demonstrably more alone than others, such as closeted men during the AIDS epidemic.

Agreed, but doesn't change the fact that we're all alone together.

Even connected people, with friends, family, and lovers by their side...exit stage left alone.

Loneliness is a layer thrown on top of fundamental alone-ness. Obviously life is more enjoyable when feeling connected, belonging and so on, but for many that's simply not in the cards.

If everyone felt accepted and loved, would it be life? Sounds more like heaven.

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#49

Post by btipling »

afterburner wrote: post #32
btipling wrote: post #2

In a very good sociology course I took in college the professor drew an upside down bell curve on the board. The y axis was risk for suicide and the x axis was social interaction. The extremes of social interactions, very low or very high amounts, led to being at greater risk for suicide according to research quoted by the professor. Average amounts of social interactions had the lowest risk for suicide. I don't reme…

For "too much" interaction, which way does the causality run though? These people could be attempting to compensate for feelings of loneliness or other unhappiness with more social interaction.

I remember anecdotes about increase in stress and social obligations, which makes sense I think. You can imagine maybe a failed business person with unwanted attention as in the case of Bernard Madoff son, or the story of exemplary high achieving students who unfortunately end their life. Such a case was in my local news recently in Albany, CA, and when I heard of her tragedy I thought of this then too.

Re: The Lethality of Loneliness

#50

Post by Aardwolf »

I often select text in articles as a visual cue which line I'm reading.

Why oh why does this site needs to pop up a "share" widget when selecting text?

Websites are really popping these "share" things all over the place lately.

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