What causes loneliness? There is not one single cause of loneliness. Loneliness can often be a result of life changes or circumstances that include living alone, changing your living arrangements, having financial problems, or death of a loved one.
The core of loneliness: lack of pleasurable engagement--more so than painful disconnection--predicts social impairment, depression onset, and recovery from depressive disorders among adolescents. J Pers Assess. 2002 Dec;79(3):472-91.
Some of the most common causes of loneliness include: Social Anxiety, Isolation, Difficulty with Assertiveness, and Poor Self-awareness. Common types or forms of loneliness include: Lack of Physical Connection, Lack of Common Interests, Lack of Shared Values, Lack of Emotional Intimacy, and Lack of Self-Intimacy.
If you've experienced ongoing feelings of loneliness, it can have negative effects on your physical health. It could lead to weight gain, sleep deprivation, poor heart health, and a weakened immune system. Loneliness can also put your body under more stress than normal.
When someone feels lonely they are more likely to try to distract themselves with the other things in their lives. So if your colleague is always talking about their stamp collection, or always flying away on exotic solo city breaks rather than spending weekends at home, they might be feeling alone.
Hawkley points to evidence linking perceived social isolation with adverse health consequences including depression, poor sleep quality, impaired executive function, accelerated cognitive decline, poor cardiovascular function and impaired immunity at every stage of life.
Psychologists generally consider loneliness to be a stable trait, meaning that individuals have different set-points for feeling loneliness, and they fluctuate around these set-points depending on the circumstances in their lives.
Loneliness affects people in different ways, and for this reason there are four distinct types of loneliness identified by psychologists: emotional, social, situational and chronic.
A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) points out that more than one-third of adults aged 45 and older feel lonely, and nearly one-fourth of adults aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated.
In other words, loneliness is the mental or emotional discomfort you may experience from either being alone or feeling as though you are alone. This feeling stems from your social needs not being met and/or an inability to get the social connection you desire.
Definition of Loneliness
Loneliness causes people to feel empty, alone, and unwanted. People who are lonely often crave human contact, but their state of mind makes it more difficult to form connections with other people. Loneliness, according to many experts, is not necessarily about being alone.
Signs of adult relational trauma and loneliness may include: Difficulty being alone—the constant need for stimulation or something to distract themselves. Difficulty understandings themselves or their emotional needs. Deep feelings of emptiness that may show up as "boredom." Feeling worthless, or fatally flawed.
Feeling lonely can also have a negative impact on your mental health, especially if these feelings have lasted a long time. Some research suggests that loneliness is associated with an increased risk of certain mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, sleep problems and increased stress.
A lot of mental illnesses like bipolar, anxiety and depression can all make people feel very lonely. Mental illness can make you anxious about seeing others, so you might spend more time indoors. Or it can lead to insomnia, which in turn can make you tired, irritable and lonely.
It may take some time, but it's very possible to build new relationships or deepen existing connections in your life. If you aren't sure what you can do to feel less lonely, consider reaching out to a therapist who can offer help and support.
"Loneliness can change the neurochemistry of the brain, turning off the dopamine neurons, which trigger the reward response, and causing some degeneration in the brain when the reward response is not activated," says Katherine Peters, MD, PhD, FAAN, associate professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Duke University.
Loneliness, on the other hand, stems from the perceived difference between the social lives we actually have and the kind of social life we often feel we should have. More often than not, we feel especially lonely when we compared our current lives against some ideal that we've set for ourselves.
The reason you have no friends may be because you are shy, uncomfortable interacting with others, or simply don't go places that would lead to meeting new people. You don't have friends may have a lot to do with your mindset.
Loneliness has a social dimension (i.e., a lack of social integration) and an emotional dimension (i.e., a lack of intimate relationships). New research shows social loneliness and emotional loneliness have shared and unique risk factors.
It can also push into overthinking mode
Loneliness can make you an overthinker, leading to unsavoury feelings like anxiousness, aggression, and irritability.