Loneliness – A Troublesome ISSUE “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” – Kurt Vonnegut. I sometimes feel very lonely. I’ve even thought that I suffer from depression. Alas, my loneliness doesn’t last very long and neither do the feelings of doom and gloom. Usually, I am back to my chipper and ambitious self in 24 hours. How do I bounce back? I sob as if a loved one has passed on. It’s a dark, heavy and ugly cry. But it helps me release all the fear and doubt that I carry and rarely speak of. One trouble with most of us is that we don’t use the resources within ourselves. We are all neglectful of powers that we share as our human birthright, capacities for distraction from ourselves, for intelligent enjoyment, for receiving and giving. Through lack of mental and moral and spiritual exercises our souls shrink and shrivel and break out into maladies that almost inevitably include the feeling of misery and isolation usually described as loneliness. If we were properly related to ourselves and to the world we should never lack for company and we should never be lonely. I remember vividly when it was reported by BBC that Sarah Shourd’s mind began to slip after about two months into her incarceration. She heard phantom footsteps and flashing lights, and spent most of her day crouched on all fours, listening through a gap in the door. That summer, the 32-year-old had been hiking with two friends in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan when they were arrested by Iranian troops after straying onto the border with Iran. Accused of spying, they were kept in solitary confinement in Evin prison in Tehran, each in their own tiny cell. She endured almost 10,000 hours with little human contact before she was freed. One of the most disturbing effects was the hallucinations. “In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there,” she wrote. “At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn’t until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realized the screams were my own.” We all want to be alone from time to time, to escape the demands of our colleagues or the hassle of crowds, but not alone and alone. For most people, prolonged social isolation is all bad, particularly mentally. We know this not only from reports by people like Shourd who have experienced it first-hand, but also from psychological experiments on the effects of isolation and sensory deprivation. We’ve known for a while that isolation is physically bad for us. Chronically lonely people have higher blood pressure, are more vulnerable to infection. Social support is psychologically powerful. Actual, university level scientific studies have found that human beings are intensely social creatures, and that if they don’t feel socially supported they become more at risk for not only stress, but also physical health problems as well. So, it’s no surprise that those that feel that they’re not socially supported – whether they have no friends, or they have many friends but don’t feel supported by those friends – can feel anxious. “The immune system has to make a decision between fighting viral threats and protecting against bacterial invasions because it has a fixed fighting capability. In lonely people who see the world as a threatening place, their immune systems choose to focus on bacteria rather than viral threats. Without the antiviral protection and the body’s antibodies produced against various ills, the result means a person has less ability to fight cancers and other illnesses. Those who are socially isolated suffer from higher all-cause mortality, and higher rates of cancer, infection and heart disease.” A research conducted by Cole and Dr. John Cacioppo shows that social isolation can push blood pressure up into the danger zone for heart attacks and strokes. It undermines regulation of the circulatory system so that the heart muscle works harder and the blood vessels are subject to damage by blood flow turbulence. The research further indicates that loneliness can destroy the quality of sleep, so that a person’s sleep is less restorative, both physically and psychologically. Socially isolated people wake up more at night and spend less time in bed actually sleeping. One is recommended to make sure that s/he is trying to stay as active and busy as they can, and never allowing themselves to succumb to that feeling of being alone on purpose. When one is alone, s/he should give themselves things to do, including puzzles, books, funny shows on TV, and whatever else they can find to lessen their anxiety further. Staying busy is a useful way to keep their mind off of their anxieties. I believe that the best way to get rid of loneliness is to commune with our Lord with tearful eyes and to polish our souls in solitude. Sometimes we need to be with our own. Let us make use of our solitude as the poets who produce the best poems in their solitude. Hence, although isolation and keeping distant from social life is injurious, yet we can use it in our own favor. Source: OutlookAfghanistna
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 03:37:24 +0000
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