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Coping with loneliness
Loneliness and its effect on society
Loneliness and its effect on society
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Mother Theresa once said “The greatest disease [..] today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.” Different from being physically alone, loneliness is related to the perception, whether it’s real or not, of being rejected from others and to the dissatisfaction with the current social relationships. Actually, loneliness has become a growing epidemic that is slowly suffocating our modern-day society. Humans are social animals which have needs for inclusion in group life and for close relationships. Feeling lonely can motivate people to start connecting with others, but it can also trigger a viscous cycle of behaviours that aggravate their situation. We are slowly losing the genuine feelings of companionship, of …show more content…
This problem has been severely underrated. It’s becoming more dangerous. Solitude is not just a short term emotion, it can be long term and agonizing, leading to drastic health problems. It has been proven that people have greater chance of dying due to being alone. Loneliness degrades human health more than smoking, or obesity can. It is a psychological issue that strikes the mind at first, thus emotions, moving on to the next target which is the physical body. When someone is very lonesome he becomes subjected to anxiety, depression, and it might even lead to substance abuse. Loneliness is one of the major reasons for suicide. When a person decides to end his life it is because he feels like his existence doesn’t matter, or does not affect the people around him. It is because of the absence of emotional connection with others. Some people tend to …show more content…
From an evolutionary viewpoint, loneliness corresponds to a signal, that one needs to act and repair the weaknesses it is causing. Although feeling lonely can push us to reconnect or forge our interaction with others, it can, in most cases, increase the risk for rejection and lead us through a viscious cycle of maladaptive perceptions and behaviours. However, research confirms our deepest intuition: Human connection lies at the heart of human well-being. It’s up to all of us to maintain ties where they’re fading, and create new ones where they’re absent. Our job today is to repair connections and strengthen social ties rather than driving ourselves apart from eachother. By doing that we can ensure the survival of our genes as well as our physical/emotional health and wellbeing. MOTHER THERESA continues by saying that « We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. » All the world needs is a little love, a little interaction and communication between its citizens, to fight this feeling of aloneness, to let our societies unite again, live
I-Chieh Chen (2015) in The study The Scale for the Loneliness of College Students in Taiwan (http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jedp/article/download/46795/25238) stated that Loneliness was initially studied by Sullivan (1953) (A Peplau, D Perlman, LA Peplau… - Loneliness: A …, 1982 - peplaulab.ucla.edu) who proposed that loneliness was an unpleasant and intense experience related to unsatisfied requirements for intimacy (http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jedp/article/download/46795/25238). Sullivan’s research was all but neglected in his time. This neglect lasted until 1973, when Weiss, an American scholar who was an adherent of Bowlby’s attachment theory, published an article entitled “Loneliness: the experience of emotional and social isolation” (RS Weiss - 1973 - psycnet.apa.org).
Stephen Marche Lets us know that loneliness is “not a state of being alone”, which he describes as external conditions rather than a psychological state. He states that “Solitude can be lovely. Crowded parties can be agony.”
What do people think of when they hear the word solitude? For many, it evokes a negative connotation, but in reality, those same people carry false associations with the word. Solitude is the state of being alone. It is not the same as being lonely, which is the dread of being alone. Despite these erroneous myths of solitude perpetuating many minds, the truth is that everyone can benefit from solitude. Humankind’s greatest inventions were conceived and developed in isolation, and even with this fact, many individuals do not realize what is lost without solitude. William Deresiewicz, author of “The End of Solitude”, reflects on how society no longer appreciates solitude and how technology is responsible for it. Additionally, Susan Cain, author
In the absence of friends and companions, people begin to ache from loneliness. Loneliness is an unavoidable, fact
Turkle provides dialogues of individuals who avoid social interactions at all cost and would rather communicate through technology, as it is just an inconvenience to have direct confrontations. These dialogues strongly support Turkle’s argument that we’re creating a greater gap between others and ourselves. The reason we are lonely is because we place less effort into building relations with others.
Why can Isolation be deadly? Many people who are isolated or have isolated themselves suffer a higher risk of mental health issues such as anxiety, loneliness, paranoia and depression, which can lead to more serious feelings about yourself like committing suicide. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, it was found people with fewer human contacts had a 26% greater likeliness to die, regardless of age and sex. Social Isolation is the absence of social relationships and can in fact be deadly. The amount of social relationships humans need to be happy varies from person to person, but it is vital that everyone has meaningful relationships and social interactions on a regular basis. A study performed by Holt-Lunstad
I learned that isolation is such a bigger problem amongst people in our day and time. Isolation is very serious and could possibly lead to depression, suicidal thoughts, withdrawal, and social anxiety. With the authors giving this message, I could possibly save someone who I know that could possibly be going through withdrawal or social
We immediately resolve to our phones or tablets as a remedy to loneliness. However this doesn’t solve the problem, rather, it makes it worse. The lonelier we are, the more technology we surround ourselves with, resulting in a difficulty to physically communicate with others; it is a paradox. Consequently, the gadget in our hands acts as barrier, neglecting human relationships. “ At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mails.” This clearly describes the negative role in which technology diminishes the exchange of experiences, and interactions, for example talking about your day, or to just spend time as a family. In my opinion if one is texting at the dinner table, it immediately displays a lack of interest and reluctance to
Several studies also asserted that loneliness is correlated with aging itself (Tijhuis et al, 1999; Victor et al, 2000) and that there was a gradual increase in loneliness up to the age of 90 (Holmen, 1992). This increasing trend can be attributed to interactions with other factors due to additive nature of risk factors for loneliness and social isolation (Victor et al, 2000).
Loneliness is a terrifying feeling that never escapes our lives. When I was younger, my largest fear in life was that I would make no friends and would be lonely. As I grew older, the fear shifted to dying alone. Now that I take steps back to look at this I realized everything I have missed, everything I have misunderstood. I am finally strong enough to understand that loneliness is inescapable, it lives with you all through your life. Life is a lonely place, where even if you are lucky enough to have people around you, all you have to look forward to is losing them either through going separate ways or death.
Communication is a vital component in feeling complete, but however as seen with both sadness and love, there is always a balance to allow the capability of feeling. Out of everything in this world, satisfaction is difficult to attain, and somehow no matter what we do, we seem to paradox the very thing we want. The compatibility of ourself with others creates the greatest difficulty in this world. Loneliness is a fabrication within our own existence that simply serves as a way to provide us with unhappiness. The fact is our happiness derives also from the same very things that cause unhappiness, but one thing remains in this world that we all are trying to escape from, infinite loneliness.
In life people are be alone by choice, no matter if it was flat out what the wanted or alone due to some kind of forced circumstance that grew out of a previous choice they made, but when it comes down to it loneliness is never truly desired. In the short stories A Painful Case and Eveline we see examples of each type of loneliness. In A Painful Case Mr. Duffy for the most part of his life chooses to be alone. In Eveline, Eveline seems to be lonely because she’s unable to leave her duties to her family. In both stories the main characters display their desire to have someone near but when they’re finally given the chance it’s inevitably taken away from them, and then they’re driven back into the entrapment of loneliness.
Everyone has times when they are alone for situational reasons, or because they have chosen to be alone. Being alone can be experienced as positive, pleasurable, and emotionally refreshing if it is under the individual's control. Being alone and lonely, and even
I feel uncomfortable in my own world. Being alone unnerves me. I always have felt the need to share my world, my mind and my feelings with somebody. My feelings about myself seem less important than what others think of me. I'm scared of being lonely. And so are we all. We all seem to be on a continuous search for someone who will really love and understand us. Someone to provide us with a purpose for life. And yet I think we are all essentially alone. We are alone in our thoughts an emotions.
Before technology, face to face communication was a normal everyday thing and loneliness was a problem that was rarely talked about or experienced. People went about their day without checking their phone every five minutes or so to see if anyone liked the status they posted or feeling lonely when nobody new liked it. In new studies more and more people have feelings of loneliness and depression. However, more people now use social medias such as Facebook, twitter and instagram. While it is true that technology mainly sites such as Facebook can lead to a person feeling alone, it is also true that it depends on how you use the technology, either to your advantage or as a depressant.