“Love begins with paying attention to others, with an act of gracious self-forgetting. This is the condition in which we grow.” - John O’Donohue
In the 1980’s, the British author and documentary producer Neil Ansell, then in his twenties, found himself unemployed, broke, and lacking direction in life. He was sharing a squatter’s house with 20 other people when he was offered the opportunity to live in an isolated cottage situated deep within the mountains of Wales. The cottage had no heat, electricity, or running water, and the nearest neighbor was miles away. He would have to live off the land, foraging for food, chopping wood for heat, and haul buckets of water to the cottage. Ansell jumped at the offer, seeing it as a chance to live like a modern-day Thoreau, while perhaps developing a better sense of himself through self-imposed solitude.
What Ansell learned during his five years of isolation in the Welsh mountains is chronicled in his book Deep Country, where he recounts the daily rhythm of a life without neighbors, cars, phones, or any social contact. We might expect that his five years of extreme isolation led to profound self-discovery, but Ansell’s experience was just the opposite. He describes his isolation as a period in which, with each passing year, he gradually forgot who he was. His loss of self is reflected in his journal entries, which evolved with each passing year. Early entries were full of personal accounts of his experiences in nature, rich with emotional detail and self-reflection. As time went on and his days without human contact increased, the journal entries lost his voice, gradually shifting to dry chronicles of daily life, devoid of any personal reflection.
Years of extreme social isolation stripped away Ansell’s need for self-identity. Without the friction that comes with everyday social interactions he had no need for a separate sense of self. The boundaries we draw to distinguish ourselves from others are unnecessary when we are alone: Ansell became, as he says, “an absence, a void”, a faceless observer who gradually began to “disappear from his own story.” He learned what many social scientists have known for years--that a good deal of our self-identity is shaped, either knowingly or unknowingly, through the ways others react to us and we interact with them.
Most of the research related to the health risks of social isolation involves people who feel lonely and crave more social contact. Ansell’s isolation was self-imposed; he purposefully chose to live a solitary life for five years. He was alone but not lonely. Although Ansell’s isolation was extreme, a need for solitude is not unusual, nor is it unhealthy. With Covid, solitude has gotten somewhat of a bad rap, but studies show that many animals seek out brief periods of being alone. In fact, our bodies can reach a point in which they crave time alone and will send physical signals that we need to withdraw. But we frequently do not recognize that need—most likely because we are taught that solitude is undesirable--misinterpreting the irritability, exhaustion, and anxiety that comes from being overwhelmed. We may mistakenly seek out other people when withdrawal would be a healthier option. Time alone is a good way to recharge, as we are free from the demands of social interaction. Not only does it allow us to decompress, solitude can provide a calm space in which we can reflect and gain perspective without the distractions of other people’s opinions.
But solitude is a medicine that is best taken sparingly, as extended periods of isolation have side effects. Through the use of sophisticated imaging technology, we are learning that not only do we have an emotional longing for social connection, we have a physical need as well. Long periods of isolation, whether self-imposed or involuntary, create changes in both the structure and functioning of the brain. Evolutionary biologists have found a link between the size of a primate’s brain and the size of the communities it can form. With large brains, humans create the largest communities and social networks of all the primates, some of which can contain as many as 150 people. An increased brain size is necessary for the mental processing required to navigate our social world; it seems being social is hard work. Human interactions require us to juggle a large amount of information—from the basics of a person’s name to more detailed facts, such as the particulars of a friend’s life, shared experiences, job status, as well as interests. Many social faux pas result from mental slip-ups in which we forget important facts, such as asking a recently laid off friend about how her job is going.
A significant amount of mental processing is involved in socializing and, following a “use it or lose it” principle, isolation can lead to a loss of these abilities, causing our brains to shrink. MRI scans of nine explorers who lived in Antarctica for 14 months at a research station showed diminished capacity in the brain regions involved in the formation of new memories. As their stay at the research center progressed, the explorers performed worse in tasks involving spatial processing, as well as those related to selective attention, which is our capacity to focus on an object over a period of time—a necessary skill for rewarding conversations with others. Other research has found that people exposed to extended periods of isolation showed a spike in social dysfunction and engaged in higher levels of antisocial behavior. They also reported higher levels of anxiety as well as depression and consumed more alcohol.
Whereas being alone intentionally for short periods can be beneficial, loneliness is quite a different beast. A growing body of research suggests that loneliness is a particular form of stress that depresses the immune system and triggers an inflammatory response in the body. It has been implicated in everything from an increased risk of hypertension to Alzheimer’s disease, as well as a heightened susceptibility to viral infections. And the anxiety associated with loneliness interferes with sleep, making it harder for lonely people to both fall asleep and sufficiently cycle through the deeper stages of sleep. And just like a poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle, the health risks associated with loneliness are cumulative; the longer a person experiences loneliness, the higher the likelihood of getting sick, and the longer the recovery will be.
All of us are likely to feel lonely at some point in our lives. Occasional bouts of loneliness are not always problematic, especially if we have the right emotional tools to overcome our isolation. Such experiences can even make us stronger, helping to build emotional resilience. But loneliness behaves much like a virus; if we lack good immunity, once it takes hold, it can be very hard to treat.
Social isolation can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that creates a vicious cycle referred to as “the loneliness loop”. Since humans are wired for social connection, we rely on a safe, predictable social environment in which to thrive. Feeling socially isolated trips our emotional alarm bells, sending warning signals throughout the body that we are unsafe. Many of us would feel unsafe living alone in an isolated cottage in the Welsh mountains; Ansell had previous experience living and working in nature, so he found it relaxing. The parameters of what defines social isolation can be quite murky and depend on the individual. Some feel lonely when they are away from close friends, whereas others can be lonely even when they are surrounded by others. It is not the external characteristics that define loneliness, but whether we feel isolated and crave more connection.
Regardless of the circumstances, the entry point into the “loop” is a perception that we are isolated from others and, therefore, vulnerable. Feeling unsafe shifts our thinking patterns—we become hypervigilant, engaging in unconscious surveillance of the environment for threats. Hypervigilance works well when we are being stalked by a tiger but is too heavy handed for the subtleties of human interactions. Lonely people see the social world as more threatening; they have a heightened sensitivity to the criticism and judgment from others, such as being overly sensitive to saying the wrong thing. They also tend to interpret social interactions in a way that confirms their beliefs. Their negative evaluations of others combined with a toxic blend of low self-esteem, hostility, stress, anxiety, and pessimism, lead lonely people to act in ways that are sure to alienate others. Their negative social expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy, trapping them in a loop that impairs their ability to interact with others normally and further entrenches their isolation.
As stated earlier, successful social interactions require specific cognitive processes, and these processes downshift when our brains are in states of hypervigilance. Interacting with others requires the ability to regulate our thoughts, emotions, and behavior so that they match the requirements of a given social situation. Essentially, we need mental processing skills to enable us to “read the audience”, adhering to social norms while filtering thoughts and acting in ways that recognize other people’s needs. With a narrowed attention span that is looking only for danger, lonely people show significant impairment in their ability for this level of self-regulation. More importantly, their poor social skills are reactive and appear automatically, outside of their awareness, further impairing their ability to make connections with others.
How do we break out of the loneliness loop? Because there is a great deal of shame associated with social isolation, it can be a hard cycle to break. The hardest part is recognizing that the hostility and negativity we feel toward others can be related to feeling vulnerable. Humans are meaning-makers, capable of seeing connections where none exist; we are just as likely to believe that our friends are thrilled to hear boring details about our vacation as we are to think that everyone on the subway is staring at the mud on our pants. The danger and stigma experienced by lonely people makes it hard for them to accept that their interpretation of other people’s behavior is skewed and inaccurate. Ironically, it could be that the very poison they seek to avoid--solitude--becomes the cure that breaks the loop. Learning how to tolerate short periods of solitude has been shown to be an effective way of calming the nervous system, as it provides the space needed for self-reflection and body awareness. How one approaches solitude is important, as it is helpful only when it provides space for mindful and reflective activities, such as journaling, meditation, mindful movement, or deep breathing.
You can’t pull a lonely person out of the loop by convincing them that their social world is safe. Doing so will simply alienate them further. So, when you find yourself stuck at the holiday party talking to that hostile, negative coworker, rather than argue or find an escape route, you might try practicing a bit more compassion. The most rewarding social interactions start with curiosity and listening, so finding neutral ground with your coworker may shift the relationship in a new direction. It also helps to recognize that all of us have times when social situations can feel threatening, making anyone capable of social misfiring and awkwardness. Reaching out to others who try to push us away may backfire, but there is always the chance that a connection will blossom. You may be happily surprised to meet the person who hides behind the bluster.
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