Loneliness is stronger when not alone
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
There are two variables, both adjustable. Loneliness is eliminated is when that delta is small or zero.
If you’re an introvert and don’t desire social connection and have none, you’re fine. But being in a situation that reminds you of your lack sometimes creates that desire, which creates that delta.
Likewise, if you’re an extrovert, you desire lots of social connection and when it falls below what you actually have you feel sad.
We can’t always control the amount of social connection we get due to circumstances, but we can sometimes control the amount of desire we have by avoiding triggers that remind us.
And when the delta becomes negative, loneliness turns into tiredness. E.g. when an introvert doesn't desire social connection and has too much.
According to the GP, by wanting more fulfilling social interactions they'll become more lonely, not less. Just because you want something doesn't mean you'll get it. If someone can only afford cheap junk food but that's all they know, the last thing you should do is show them gourmet food so they know what they're missing out on.
In objective outcome space you are either healthy (socially, nutritionally) or you are not.
Being desirous of the good outcome is step one to having a CHANCE of having one. If you somehow numb yourself to the possibility/desire, you are guaranteed the actual bad outcome.
Even in subjective space, I think people actually feel better pursuing a good outcome even if they don't succeed, vs numbing themselves and pretending everything is fine as is.
Humans are also very, very bad at knowing what makes them happy. If a healthy person tells me they have one friend they see once a month and no other social outlets and they wouldn't want anything else, 99% of the time I'm going to assume they don't know themselves well enough to know that more relationships than that would make them happy.
These studies never make sense because there's no way to objectively measure happiness, especially not in a way where you can compare two people's self-reported levels of "happiness". The word happiness itself is already is an over-loaded term that everyone has their own definition of. (At best you can measure proxy outcomes like measuring health based on relationships, but there are so many confounding variables it's hard to narrow it down.)
Do these studies actually show that there aren't people who, for lack of a better word, are non-responders? Imagine if 95% of people require relationships to be happy and 5% don't. I would expect most studies to show the correlation exists, but it doesn't mean that 5% doesn't exist. What kind of upper bound do these studies provide here?
It's maybe analogous to someone who has always been overweight and therefore don't perceive a problem with it because they don't have a reference point on how much better being in shape feels.
At the same time if I am forced into a situation where I’m alone and without internet, I fare much better and for much longer than people think I will. Certainly multiples of how long they can manage.
At the end of the day I think we confuse coping with contentment. Some people can cope endlessly, that doesn’t mean they are happy about it.
I would encourage you to challenge this belief. I'm not saying this is true of you, but I used to feel this way when I was insecure and overly worried about what others thought and felt. These days, I'm myself. I'm honest. I'm vulnerable (where appropriate). I'm also compassionate, and not being one of those "calls them hows I sees them" people.
I imagine people like hearing you talk more than you realize. Sometimes they enjoy it but don't necessarily know how to respond, which is about them and not you. This is especially true if it's someone who's chosen to spend time around you and didn't just randomly meet you.
I encourage people to be themselves (while being kind) and quit worrying. You'll attract the right people in life if you're authentic. You'll never attract the right people being someone else.
Sometimes it’s enough to say “Xs sure are cool” without launching into a full history.
More of this. It can be useful to err on the side of asking questions.
And when they say they want to "go get a drink" or whatever explanation for going somewhere not by you, be open to the possibility they want a change of pace. :)
Introversion doesn't imply awkwardness, rudeness etc. though people use it as an excuse often.
> we can sometimes control the amount of desire we have by avoiding triggers that remind us.
This makes me think of Instagram/Snapchat and notably the stories feature. If you are having a fine time on your own at home on a Friday night and then open someone’s story that shows them with a few other people having fun, it can create a sense of missing out and trigger loneliness, when in fact, you weren’t feeling particularly lonely right before that event.
If I leave, it's not enough. If I stay, it's not enough. And before you ask, the groups do not exist on texting. I've tried it and just ended up not being around again. College is like that these days.
Eg I have a few friends who left to their own devices would never make social plans and when I invite them to a BBQ they'll stand lamely to the side BUT at the end of the day they are much happier than if they sat home yet again. I am a mild case of this as well.
I think the comment you replied to is correct. Personally speaking not all social interaction is a positive contributor to one's sanity. Having the same shallow conversations over and over with different individuals while observing people express their narcissistic traits covertly within or over a group can have a corrosive effect on my sanity.
A BBQ could be good but a bit intense for your friends hence their reaction. Maybe inviting them to a more intimate gathering e.g dinner with your own family or a couple of friends would allow them to engage more and allow them to have a deeper connection to others or yourself.
I'm ADHD-neurodivergent so I get the point here, but think of this phenomenon as verbal handshaking. The point isn't the subject matter of the conversation, it's everything else about the exchange. You could almost get the same effect just from spouting word salad at each other, the content doesn't matter. It's how people feel out others whom they don't know very well, with a lot of observation gathering going on. There's a social dance you typically need to go through before someone else will feel comfortable engaging you on a more personal level.
People tell a story that matters to them. They do this with everyone they see. The next time you see them they tell you again. And the next time. And the next.... Ad nauseum...
They don't care about You or that You specifically hear the story, evidenced by the repetition even after advising them of it, they are just narcissists self aggrandizing or whining about a an event they perceive as unfair.
Theres no reason to engage with that behavior as it does nothing but encourage it, with the end result being a systemic harm to self and society.
This behaviour is most common in extroverts ime, though thats likely due to the fact they are more visible than introverts in general.
I know what you mean though. Mentally ill people have a habit of doing this. If you listen in on one talking to themselves you will hear a story of some personal trauma they experienced some time ago.
Perennial victims also do this as a solicitation for love. While as a child we learn to express our bad experiences to our parents and receive love and affection in return. The problem is like drug addicts some people grow up to abuse this to lesser and lesser effect.
When it comes to aggrandizing it can be funny to shut the person down by expressing your disinterest then immediately complimenting them on something trivial that you genuinely like or asking them the question about something you wish to know.
Your comment reminds me of the phrase "People don't do things to you they do things in front of you." It expresses just how performative human behaviour can be at times.
You've had conversations with them about this? They admit to being happier? Do they want to engage more ... so when their foot / leg injuries heal they'll be able to walk comfortably to where the conservations are happening?
That is true, but a sad conclusion. I don't believe, that there are many people who truly want to be alone all the time. Most just rather be alone, than with mean idiots, who will hurt them again.
But avoiding other people and situations to not be reminded how alone you are, will also never allow you to be in a position, where you can indeed open up and connect to the right people.
This is a really magical feeling. Being connected to people who you like, where you just feel welcome and don't have the feeling to be on your guard all the time. There is a reason many people are obsessed with party and drugs as this will get them this feeling temporarily. But I want that feeling everyday and without drugs. But the daily grind makes it an exception.
This. Maybe a bit weird but often for me these connections has been with total strangers while traveling when I was younger. Sometimes it would be with another tourist and sometimes with a local. It's surprising how deep it can get quickly.
I think this is why I love the movie "Lost in Translation", I think it perfectly captures this emotion. But I think if you haven't had that kind of experience with strangers the movie is probably lost on you.
I think it is, because while travelling you are not bound by social expectations and boundaries. "What if I behave weird, then everyone will know in eternity".
No, you meet people and you (both) can relax, because you know you can just move on the next day and never see anyone here again. So you can let go off all that fear and anxiety .. and suddenly you can connect with ease.
I find it funny that you use the words "lack" and "desire" exactly like Lacan, who explained why it is impossible to fill that lack.
As a blanket statement, this may not be valid, as there could be 'feedback loops':
> Buecker and her colleagues found that lonely people tended to be more introverted and neurotic and somewhat less agreeable and conscientious than less lonely people on average.
* https://www.psypost.org/2020/01/study-finds-lonely-people-te...
I'd just point out being an introvert does not mean you don't desire or dont have social interaction, just that it can be tiring instead of energizing. You could still very much crave social interaction as an introvert.
> Only on HN do I expect a formalization of loneliness. I'm not complaining.
I'm inclined to see this as a model, not a definition nor formalization. For me, the definition would be rooted in a subjective experience and would also include considerable formalization.
I don't do this lightly, but I think ChatGPT 4.0's comparison is quite lucid: "... formalization is more about defining and structuring the components or rules of a system or concept, while a model is about representing that system or concept in a simpler or more understandable way."
I enjoy this kind of pedantry. I don't see you complaining. :)
I used to travel a lot for work and experienced first hand how large income disparities can affect people.
I also met enough long term expats who were really jaded. It always made me wonder if they became like that or if they were always like that.
When I visited a south east asian country I was very surprised by the wealth disparity. However, I'm not seeing the connection between spending money as an expat with a significantly higher income compared to the rest of the country and exploitation. If anything it could be argued that you are injecting more cash into the economy from outside.
Happy to be enlightened if I'm missing something!
In countries where not being 6 foot makes you a loser. Why pretend that you live in a meritocracy?
What does that say about you, I wonder?
Thailand and the Philippines are prime destinations for morally dubious westerners to find the "love" they never found at home.
Britain is full of middle aged men with 20-year younger SEA wives (many of whom look almost child-like). I'm amazed the Home Office looks at the "relationship" arrangement and allows all of the visas.
> What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61272271-the-good-life
from my personal experience, being with the wrong crowd can definitely make you more lonely than being alone doing your own thing.
Oh it’s entirely easy to be super lonely when surrounded by other people. The easiest way to achieve this that I’ve found is being a +1 at a wedding. You’re surrounded with people you’ve never met who all know each other pretty well and have tight bonds. Makes you feel super isolated and alone in a way that just isn’t noticeable in an empty room.
At some point I realized that I am not the only +1 at this wedding and somehow those other +1s aren't fucked up in their head about it.
Eventually you realize your agency. Like you can for example spot the other +1 and strike up a conversation.
Oh that's not the problem at all for me. I am perfectly capable of feeling lonely right through that entire super fun engaging conversation with strangers. Because a conversation doesn't scratch that same itch. Like eating potato chips when what you really need is steak.
Not necessarily. I often visit my mum and her partner. I love them both and they love me. Yet, I feel more lonely when I live with them than when I live alone. I can even see it in the intensity of my online chatting and dating app use. Presence of nice people just makes me more hungry for connection.
"Appetite comes with eating."
I definitely relate to the latter. I can go for a long bike ride by myself and feel blissfully content, but standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time is intensely lonely and isolating.
// standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time
I used to be like that, and I would judge the people I was disconnected from like they are dumb for having a good time. Eventually I figured out, I was the standoffish jerk - and forced myself to learn how to go say hi and be more part of the group (although I am still not amazing at it, I realize that if I am disconnected in the corner, it's because of what I have chosen to do/not do)
You might even be saying the same thing and not realize it.
They don't say people feel more lonely "when around people who they like and who like them".
They say LONELY people feel more lonely "when around people", that is, when they are around people who don't care for them.
Like a lonely person at a club full of people where everybody else seems to have friends or a partner.
That's what they say, which is absolutely common sense.
Not that people feel lonelier when with their friends - as you might have understood it.
People who they like and who like them. And you don’t think that that is a massive caveat? The original claim was just “people”, not “fantastic and awesome people”.
> “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” is the type of stuff you could only find on the internet or in academia, you can logic yourself into it but it’s so far beyond common sense it’s insane
And who are you to make this statement? Only on the Internet and in academia? I don’t know what “only on the Internet” is supposed to mean. That everyone lies on the Internet or that none of them (us) are real people? I’ve seen people who have made this claim. On the Internet at least. (How candid are random people about this “in real life”?) They seemed sincere enough about it.
I don’t even know what the hell you are getting at with “logic yourself into”, as if how people feel is just a philosophical-analytical experiment gone wrong. Get a grip.
With people with less social contact, maybe they don't reorganize their memories with respect to social visibility and just by intensity or time spent in that experience.
There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.
In addition to surveys, there are interviews at regular intervals, so observations of the participants are also used as data points.
> There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.
Empirical evidence does not support this. There are such things as 'set points' of happiness:
* https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/meditation-for-moder...
Some folks have lower, and some higher, 'base levels' of happiness. It seems that some people are / can be 'inherently' happier than others.
This is not true at all, in my opinion.
I used to believe everyone has approximately the same life satisfaction after their needs are met. I've always been quite happy, but I became much, much happier after I moved across the country and made really close friends with whom I spend a lot of time. Meanwhile, my old roommate still spends 8-5 in the office and then comes home and plays League of Legends. There is no way our life satisfaction is the same. Don't get me wrong, I was pretty happy going into the office and seeing my friends for an hour or two each day. But now that I have a life with much more time spent with deep friendships, I see that life satisfaction is not zero sum. You can be a certain amount of happy. And you can be even happier than that at no cost.
That wouldn't correlate with smaller lifespan and worse health outcomes for people with less social contact pretty consistently observed (filtered for objections like "they have less social contact because they are sick, not the other way around").
>There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.
In other studies, above a certain level like starvation and homelessness, "basic necessities" are not even the biggest factor in happiness. Meaning, social circle, and status are.
You didn't filter for "friend noticed there was something physically wrong and got them to go to a doctor". Plenty of people's lives have been saved, or have been made healthier, because of such interventions.
n = 1 here, all basic needs met… still working on the happiness thing
The study was to see how different people from differing socio-economic backgrounds turned out as they got older...
When I was about ~16/17 I told them to kick rocks.
They used to show up every year and interview me for an hour about how my life was progressing...
I lived on a famous hippy commune in Lafayette California until I was 4 years old... My mom knew Jim Jones (of the koolaid fame) and a bunch of other famous people from San Francisco in the 1970s...
Later, I found an article in Playboy Magazine (yes, no funny joke there) which was taken with the founder of the commune, Vik Baranco (I dont know how to spell his name) where he recvealed that the commune was being followed by the CIA...
I think the study from UCSD was a CIA front as I spoke with other kids from the commune and the weird shit that happened to them....
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EDIT: my mom was doing acid with the grateful dead, fleetwod mac, and a bunch of other people... who probably dont want to be named...
anyway - the 1970s and 1980s were briliant for computers.... BECAUSE OF ACID...
Look at Cisco, they developed the core of BGP while on acid in a hot-tub in Sunnyvale...
So much of tech is tied with psychs.
Parent didn't say anything about any "weird stuff" being by the CIA.
They said the "study by UCSD" might have been a front for CIA.
Can I write you a book on growing up in a family that built California?
You know why there are so many places and streets named 'Folsom' <-- my great-great-uncle
I know a lot of shit.
My great grandfather was ticketed MANY times when they were first installing street lights in SF to "NO MACHINE IS GOING TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO"
(I kinda inherited that)
But their interests are narrow. What about that would have piqued their curiosity? If you are right, does that mean one of the hippies was some Soviet asset? And even then, that's got to be the worst cover story ever. On the other hand, the Feebs were really bad at counterintel tradecraft, but it's difficult to imagine them being sophisticated enough to pull off an academic cover like that.
Maybe I was harsh. Near as I can tell, almost all of those agencies were into some seriously stupid shit (when did they give up on psychic phenomena research again?), but it still just doesn't strike me as plausible. I've having trouble processing it.
If you ever do write that book, plug it here so I have a chance of noticing it, would ya?
Ever know about Charlie Manson's CIA fixers, for example? (haight street SF) - I dont have time to give you a history lesson on the CIA and silicon valley...
Go apply at palantir if you want to know what is going on....
Plot twist: or, perhaps, even after that!
And youre not going to like this, the TV station was called "CLIT"
(my first job was in middle school de-soldering mem chips from app mainboards (un-related to the above, but still related in more ways than one)
As kids we didn't really know what was going on over there, but we knew it was something a bit...unusual.
I have many stories.
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my dad was his personal body guard... if you want to hear crazy stories from the 1980s, Tahoe, and Cocaine and the bay area, ... uh... yeah...
these bitches were flying TONS TONS did I make that specific? Tons
into trukee ( south lake tahoe )
where do you think all the coke in vegas came from?
Meanwhile there's us 3 developer dudes who all get along fine but our relationship goes about as far as "all good?", "yep you?". And then of course talking about IT geek stuff. Kind of general problem with men I think. Very difficult to open up to other men.
Or maybe it's just a me thing.
Like, at work for me I would be most rewarded by other people who are engaged in that common work cause and interact within that context. Not with stories about family life or opening up about whatever.
Hanging out with friends is kind of pointless without a common cause. To do play some game or sport or actually do something that's worth doing and is fairly collaborative.
To me a friend is like "hey I'm building a fence, wanna help?". And the ability to be building a fence yourself and asking the same. Or whatever project you can imagine.
The "you good" shit is mostly a consequence of lacking that sort of common cause, at least in my experience.
Or just watching other people do stuff is good too. "Hold my beer" silly stuff that you can watch and joke and one up each other about.
But if someone started that family huggy stuff (barring needing help or talking about their problems) I'd be distancing myself from that hard. In my experience those people are out to get you, smile on a snake.
I'd've missed out on a lot of good feelings if I had thought this way.
"Good feelings" as in I feel supremely content and I love my friends and they love me.
To be fair, I didn't say you have to have a good common cause. Just something to do in some capacity.
Like, you don't need help, it's fun to hang out and it's an excuse to get help.
My point is to say the relationships are different rather than transactional. Focused on a common cause and that sharing of it rather than relationships directly.
Hanging out with friends to enjoy each other’s company is the common cause.
Do you think this is really true, or just how it is in some societies? There's been a lot of talk about suicide rates in men and lack of social connections. Maybe this is just wrong, and as others have said, pure social connection without having to "do" something is the point.
A lot of old guys out there dying alone because they can no longer "do" and don't have an idea of just how to "be."
Absolutely not. Relationships need to be nurtured. Hanging out with your friends without any specific plans is great and I can't imagine not doing it regularly.
I have been going through mid-life issues lately. Its been hard to talk to friends about it. I have talked to older men as well as peers. I have made it a point to overcome the fear of opening up personally (make no mistake, its a fear that kept me from opening up to others before). I am a strong believer in letting it out there in the hopes that others are able to help. To many of the men I know do not want to show weakness. They try and look tough/strong/having it together, but really they are lonely because they have no one to help them through their struggle. The hardest part is that they choose this by deciding its more important to look strong them to have encouragement from friends.
I have seen a discouraging trend. Those that are not able to open up about their own issues are the ones that are not able to help me when I am going through issues. They don't know how to relate and its almost that some of them are afraid to enter into a deeper need. They have nothing to say, even if they can relate their words are empty because there is not a deeper bond there. The friends that have helped me are the ones that have actually reminded who I am and what I have already come through.
I am not saying we have to be a touchy feeling but when my friend is in a dead end/low paying job (in his mid 40s), had a side project partner back out on him, has to move out of his apartment because of new renters, and has a wife that is in increasingly dissatisfied with apartment living and tells say "I'm doing ok" on the phone... He is dying inside and won't let others in.
I am not afraid to go there with my buds. I will also so say that the men I go deep with always walk away from the conversation thanking me and grateful for the friendship.
But I eventually realized that I was just the most convenient guy/person (most of her immediate coworkers were men) for her to complain about work while stuck at work. We never did anyhing together otside of work contexts.
I know for me the heart of what I am isn't about 'opening up', it's about things like that IT geek stuff (but translated into what I do).
It feels like an emotional Dunbar number: I do best when there's just a couple people with whom I keep track of how they're doing in a personal way, and it matters a great deal but I won't feel at all the same way about twenty people at once. It seems like women are more likely to keep track of how large numbers of people are doing, in a social way, which won't always mean trying to HELP people: they can get caught up in drama when there's conflict among the people, and it takes on great importance.
I'll have a much smaller number of people like that, and will bind more loosely to them, and I think it's the same mechanism but it just doesn't scale the way it does with women. I don't see it as a problem, more as an observation.
I think men generally are about doing things together as opposed to 'just' being together. "Talking" isn't really counted as an activity for men, but is for women.
Get a bunch of guys together for paintball, or hunting, or sports, and relationships will form.
Just yesterday at work I stayed until 9pm because a friend was waiting on some CI shit, I stayed to do today's work in advance. We were close before but we talked about a lot of personal stuff to each other, it's nice advancing the friendship to new levels.
But I also talk deep stuff with my male friends. It's not really with everyone but there's plenty of people who are ok with that.
guys bond over tasks, machines, sports, ect. you can talk about whatever you want with mates, along the 'plotline' of fixing a car.
prioritizing 'work families' at work sends the wrong signals. start a union if you want to intertwine your lives to the quality of a 'work family'.
The trick to understand all of this is to realize that humans are a tribal species. I don't mean in the in-group versus out-group stuff (though that is also a big piece of the human behavioral puzzle). What I mean is that for all of our most recent evolutionary history, our survival did not depend on our individual performance as much as it did the performance of our tribe.
A solitary Homo sapiens on the savannah is as dead and useless as a worker bee without a hive. Our entire cognitive and emotional systems have evolved to understand that deep truth. To be abandoned by the tribe is an existential threat, and to be accepted and valued by the tribe is winning.
Once you realize that, so much of human behavior makes more sense.
I think it really says something about modern American culture that we find the answer "surprising". For almost all of the history of Western civilization, it was so obvious that it didn't even need questioning. We're like fish flopping around on land who are finally realizing what water is.
Discovering that the 'reach' of my work has extended farther than I expected… for instance, someone who's asked for particular code turns out to be in a homeless shelter as I once was, many years ago, and their connection is giving them hope for their future, or for another instance, someone's shouting me and my work out by name in a BBC radio interview and seems to get what I'm trying to accomplish… these things hugely add to my identification of my life as fulfilling and meaningful.
The one is very personal, and the other is easily understood as celebrity and promotion, but they're the same. If the purpose to life is making connections, a large circle of social friends (or a siamese-twin relationship with a romantic partner) isn't the ONLY option. There's all sorts of ways to connect, and finding meaningful work will almost certainly mean functional or even parasocial connections with lots of people.
And parasocial relationships are still relationships in this sense: they're one-to-many, in which you can't give what's normally understood to be friendship on the one-on-one level, but it doesn't work if you haven't got love for the collective entity of your fandom. I think parasocial relationships become more intense when the celebrity center of the relationship is really hungry for it. Modern examples aren't the only examples I can give: consider Johnny Carson, king of the parasocial relationship :)
1) You must consider the dynamics of rejection. People may recognize and seek relationships, but find themselves unable to build them. However much you might want to have a relationship with someone, they have to reciprocate. And if there's something "wrong" with you, you're going to find that a lot of people will not want your company. Additionally, thanks to network effects, one person taking this stance can close a large swath of relationships that might otherwise come into being; being on the bad side of someone who is popular or well-connected can quickly turn you into a pariah.
2) Relationships don't just magically make you happier or healthier; they provide access to goods and services that fulfill needs, because affinity prompts people either to provide them directly or to direct you to places where you can get them. Not every relationship is equal, either, but having more of them means a greater chance of having some that cancel out or improve upon deleterious relationships or the lack of a relationships. Some relationships take more out of you than they give.
When I used to live in small towns, I would have a strong need to periodically visit a big city to restore my emotions. I love the feeling of being in a crowd even if I never talk to anyone. I love the bustle and noise and potential for new encounters.
Nature feels isolating to me. I wonder if I’m wired this way because I grew up in a big city. We’re wired to look for places where we can feel we’re “at home”, and that’s usually a function of childhood experiences.
I come from survivalist stock where my parents escaped smaller more rural places to make it in the city hence the opposite orientation. When my family moved from the downtown core to a more sparsely populated new development closer to nature (forest preserve next door) for my dad’s job, my grandmother and rest of the family felt it was “too quiet”. They missed the connections they had with the fishmongers and shopkeepers and the thriving commercial activity and convenience of being able to buy stuff.
I suspect there is a bias that we see online because those who comment on sites like this and Reddit tend to be introverts and there’s an intrinsic bias toward solitary activities like being in nature. I find the numbers to be more even in the non tech forum population.
There is nowhere on earth I am happier than at a family member's camp, deep in the woods away from everyone all by myself. Ultimately I think your last point is absolutely correct. I doubt I'd feel this way if this wasn't a lived experience while growing up.
When I told them about my dream home being a 500 sq ft apartment in the middle of a bustling metropolis, they said the first thought they had was “claustrophobia”.
But for me, small spaces in dense areas give me joy — living in the midst of an exciting morass of people where people collide in Brownian motion and new ideas form feel like happiness. This notion is much more common in denser places like Europe and Asia.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sonder#:~:text=(file)-,Verb...)
If you are struggling with connection, stop thinking. Really. Stop thinking about whatever is going on with you and start listening. Talk with people and get to know them. Use that to determine if you would like to keep that person in your life or not. Connections are easy to make when you aren’t trying to force it. Just let that guard down, realize we all have a story, and ask folks who they are and they will gladly tell you. If you struggle with making conversation then I suggest you start there. Say Hi to anyone within 20 feet of you today. If they are there longer than 5 minutes, strike up a conversation. Make a joke. Commend them on their clothes or shoes or something visible. Show some empathy for what they are going through at the moment and you’ll be making friends in no time.
Like, "5 questions to ask someone you've just met." It might not be the best approach but I'm sure it's better than standing around. Some examples that spring to mind. "What brought your here to day?", "what's the best way to remember your name?", "where was the last place you went on holiday?". Etc.
I suspect that for people who are "bad" at connection any practice is good. I like to keep a pack of cards in my pocket for a couple magic tricks, as I can always then ask "would you like to see a trick?" Very rarely is the answer no.
But then could I honestly say any of this moves the dial drastically? Probably not, but I do meet more interesting people than I think I would otherwise.
What tricks do you do? Sleight of hand stuff?
Just before I left I returned to a larger base with many more people and I felt the loneliness wash over me like an ocean current. The day I was assigned to burn duty, which I'd done before as a community responsibility, because I was late to something put me in tears, mainly because I realized the people I worked with at a larger base were not actually my friends and we did not share a bond. I had left those people behind.
My theory is that the forest requires you to do certain things every day so that you survive, which was one component of my avoided loneliness. If you do just this for a long time I'd suspect loneliness will still set in. You need people and, probably, a variety of them.
This is weirdly concerned with other people in the context of mental health advice for someone. "You're a bummer, go hide in a forest so we don't have to see you."
It’s funny because I found myself feeling very isolated and lonely the last few few weeks and without even thinking my body just packed a bag and drove out to this spot. And I have to say, I feel a million times better if anyone out there is craving the same thing.
if a person makes you uncomfortable then it's probably better to stay away from them. only if you can't do that, then it may be worth it to reevaluate why it is they make you uncomfortable and see if you can change that.
When giving advice on a public forum, it is very important to have similar understanding of words as others.
Ok, then, can you explain to me what exactly it means?
Because the rest of your comment kinda boils down to "it means whatever you want it to mean" which renders it effectively meaningless.
no, it doesn't. i am not talking about the definition of "toxic". i am talking about what is toxic to you or to me. if something is toxic to me, then that doesn't mean it has to be toxic for you. i admit, my original statement was confusing. i didn't mean to say that it matters how toxic is defined, but: "what matters is, what is toxic or hurtful to you"
the definition of toxic (or my definition, if you prefer) is that toxic is anything that continuously hurts a relationship.
again, what is hurtful to me is not the same thing as what may be hurtful to you. we all have different vulnerabilities, and are bothered or hurt by different things.
You could be toxic, and they could just be pointing out things you need to hear.
People here the BS gurus to "clear the toxic people from their lives" and often estrange themselves from the people who actually care most for them...
You are not dumb, lazy, toxic, etc, but occasionally you do or say dumb, lazy, toxic things
I think for certain habits, beliefs, etc. people who avoid you aren't simply "unwilling to overlook this one bad thing". Maybe that one bad thing is actually just bad enough to poison you the person. [hypothetical you]
I totally agree for the other, more general case though. Not all catholics are pedos and I know plenty of catholics super frustrated with their leadership, excellent and loving people catholicism included.
I never considered that benefit of religious organizations, but it's very true. It's rare to find another place in society with so much diversity.
But if ones goal is to actually build relationships, built on anything other than lies or deception, and one doesnt actually believe the religion, its going to be difficult to do that at a religious institution.
I’m sure it varies by church, but in the large city churches I attended nobody would have cared — or likely even noticed — that you didn’t also attend mass.
I don't know what to make of that - either I've been really lucky or the folks whose apriori stance is that there's no higher power and religion is bad, try to spin it that way.
But on the whole as I grew up and the conflict ended I still saw, for example, women's rights being denied, fast rights being denied and scientific fact (young earth, anti evolution) being denied by religious figures with political authority.
From what I see around the world via the media much of these same values are limiting the same rights in the US, and even more so in the Islamic world.
I've had many good experiences in churches myself and with being around religious people, but I'm also very aware of the experiences women and LGBTQIA+ people have in these environments and of how often church authorities have abused their power from covering up sexual abuse to exerting undue political influences or participating in what I would see as cultural genocides in the form of missionary colonialism.
I should also have mentioned that I was raised in the church, my mother was a Sunday School teacher and my grandgather operated a charity helping raise funds for churces in Nigeria. I'm far from an a priori athiest.
When you say it's not something you've experienced but you hear athiests talking about and then add that you wonder if the athiests are inherently biased, maybe ask yourself if you're not exhibiting a similar kind of bias by denying their concerns and their own lived experiences on the basis of a single data point.
Glad you're having a great experience, don't assume it's remotely representative.
Like if I went to a super active model airplane hobbyist meetup group filled with interesting kind people, so I could get the social benefits, but I actually believed model airplanes were silly and even more so that they don't actually exist
You can’t lift anyone’s load, but sometimes you can get them to acknowledge them, and occasionally clear roadblocks.
It’s a an extremely odd feeling because from the outside I’m sure it looks like I have a great social life and good friends, but I’ve never felt more alone in my life. And I’m not sure how to address this conundrum, on one hand I want a stronger friendship with this new group of friends and don’t want to be alone, but at the same time it seems as if I would be happier if I disconnected myself from the group and was actually alone.
I think that a lot of people have a difficult time understanding that good intentions can lead to bad outcomes.
We're evolutionarily hard wired to do what's best for ourselves, which often includes being altruistic to gain more social acceptance. That's why being "lonely" is a problem at all, we feel emotional pain to get us to work with the group, since that's what's always meant longer survival.
Determining which is which is a very hard problem. One strategy might be, "Don't do anything unless I'm absolutely certain it will lead to a good outcome." If you do that, you'll miss out on many opportunities that would have good outcomes but who's certainty isn't up to your standards.
So while the intention behind pointing out that good intentions can have bad outcomes is good, the outcome is bad.
Reminds me of "interrogative greetings" : WHAT'S UP?! HOW YOU DOING??! WHAT'S GOING ON??!!
My vision of the future is a big, smiling, full-eye-contact WAZZZUP!!!! in your face, forever.
It's easy to imagine everyone is 'always loved' if you grew up in a stable, supportive family in a safe neighbourhood, but that is not the experience for everyone.
In the end, I'd rather people try than not. Because I am observing that the more common trend is to not bother, because you're not going to get it right anyway.
If I say that I really care for the plight of conjoined twin myslexia sufferers, but just throw a big parade to raise awareness of them, while never asking the sufferers what they actually would like, what does that say about me? Ref: the Nurse Gollum episode of South Park.
As an aside, if you've ever had people tell you they really care for you yet they never put any effort into communication/empathy/understanding, you'll recognise this pattern as the same. Basically, charlatans. They want the praise of doing good without any of the effort or risks.
It seems more likely that a lot of these people actually do want to help others but simply didn’t consider the possibility that what seemed helpful to them wouldn’t be. You can want to help someone without being good at it.
Some kind of help is the kind of help we all can do without. I wouldn't encourage a well-meaning student to do my surgery if a gruff-looking surgeon who has taken their Hippo is around. Same goes with getting my car repaired, or discussing touchy topics like depression. It's fine if you want to help, but I'd rather you didn't if you have no idea what you're doing.
Another brief anecdote: my high school growing up had been hit by a wave of bullying that left the staff extremely insecure about the way they handle mental health. So one year I showed up to school and they had a photo of every student in the halls on the wall, with enormous posters declaring "You are Loved" and other pithy quotes. Needless to say, 4 weeks later those same halls were utterly vandalized, with the posters tattered, threats scrawled under people's faces in Sharpie and some taken down entirely (often by bullying victims themselves). The administration didn't look before they leaped, and ended up using their authority to shoot themselves in the foot.
If you saw someone broken down on the side of the highway, and decided you would "help" by pulling over and rummaging around in their engine bay with a cheery attitude, then by your metric this is fine because it requires effort and arguably some risk. Who wouldn't want this kind of help, right?
People with mental health issues oftentimes don’t know what their problem is or how they can be helped. Sometimes they can’t conceive of solutions outside their current mental space or understanding. Additionally, sometimes simply asking them what amounts to “I noticed something wrong with you and I’d like to help” exacerbates the feeling of “something is wrong with me” rather than “I’d like to help”.
The above is true for more issues than just mental health issues, as well. I definitely support asking people what they need and tailoring solutions to their individual or group needs, but it’s not as easy as your post makes it sound.
If you or others have advice regarding specifically how to help people struggling with mental health, I’d love to hear it. I have a lot of loved ones who have struggled or are struggling with mental health issues, and I haven’t found any approach which does work.
For these volunteers that are trying to improve the mood of those struggling with no prior credibility or relationship, my best guess would have been organizing something like a series of cafes where people can come and pet consenting animals. Have volunteers be available for conversation, but defer agency in that process to participants. I would consider things like have a rotation of volunteers semi-clandestinely engage in alone time with the animals so that socially anxious participants don't feel overly conspicuous if they also need to be alone. I might also have some PPE on-hand for those especially anxious about hygiene. I'd probably look a bunch of stuff up to see what accommodations are helpful to people of various mental struggles, figure out a subset that seems plausible and give it a shot. That's my best guess.
I spent my time at university doing way less (drinking mostly). These folk actually had to make a decision to give up their time for something more than themselves. They found something that a) probably gave them a sense of purpose and b) they thought was helping.
I'd assume for those involved someone told them "this is our plan, this will help people, here's what you need to do." Because they didn't talk to those suffering, or go away and research it doesn't mean they didn't think it was helpful, even if it was misdirected help.
The difference in interpretation is that one is about actually helping, while the other is about having an earnest desire to help and taking action which may not actually help or possibly be detrimental.
You are thinking like an engineer, you analyze the problem, and try to find the most efficient solution. It is also my line of thought.
But many people don't think like that. They value action and instinct above thinking and planning, and to be fair, sometimes, it is for the best. But sometimes, they do counter productive things that are infuriating for people with the mindset of an engineer.
It doesn't mean they are not good people. They can be the kind who will run to save you while the engineer type will be stuck there thinking about the best course of action. I think society needs both.
It doesn't mean they're good people either. I am having a hard time believing that a person who would come up with such an idea is well meaning.
Sounds like attempt to collect points for "trying to help"
That they didn't know better is an explanation, not an excuse. If you are trying to intervene in other people's lives, it's on you to understand whether or not you are doing harm. And please miss me with the false dichotomy between "cluelessly cause harm" and "do nothing ever again". It's not hard at all to ask, "Would it help if..." or, "Was it helpful when I..." and then listen to people.
In other words, what's P & Q here:
for personThoughtVec of peoplesThoughtVecs:
impact += P * dot(personThoughtVec, thought2vec("switch flip..."))
- Q * dot(personThoughtVec, thought2vec("Ew..."))
They don't quantify morality but they may explain the logic behind some moral judgment, and allow for extrapolation.
> They don't quantify morality but they may explain the logic behind some moral judgment, and allow for extrapolation.
Kind of, but this is a bit fuzzy langauge.
Game theory can, if one assumes rational choice theory as a given [0], re-explain what purport to be moral judgements on other bases as utility-maximizing decisions and infer actual premises from them, and Bayesian statistics can be used as part of that, or to reason from probabilistic factual premises to probabilistic factual conclusions as part of combined fact-value judgements. Maybe Bayesian statistics can even be applied to get from probabilistic value premises to probabilistiv valie conclusions in some moral frameworks (but only ones that explicitly incorporate Bayesian logic as a moral premise to start with.)
[0] which may be a bad idea, because while it is sometimes a useful approximation, and is extremely convenient and tidy, rational choice theory is clearly false in the general sense.
There has to be some name for this phenomenon in psychology.
> It's easy to imagine everyone is 'always loved' if you grew up in a stable, supportive family in a safe neighbourhood, but that is not the experience for everyone.
Maybe there is a cycle with families similar to the idea that good times create weak people which create hard times which create strong people who create good times.
A loving family creates people who only know love and don't understand disfunction of a family, who then create disfunctional families by not knowing how to avoid the pitfalls, which then creates people who have to struggle out of disfunction who then know how to create a loving family by avoiding the pitfalls of disfunction.
> There has to be some name for this phenomenon in psychology.
Narcissism? I don't believe everyone that does this is one, but it's a narcissist trait.
When you’re impressed by those who have struggled out of dysfunction and became stellar people because/in spite of it, that could be selection bias.
Not everything they do will be useful. Sometimes they don’t know what to do or are directed by others. When things don’t work well, those folks should be redirected to more useful things and not chastised (which can kill motivation).
Just my 2 cents
Having an overly-loving, overprotective mother does not allow the child to establish boundaries in the same way as an emotionally abusive mother. Perhaps these children would become codependents or have fake, overdone empathy.
There are two sides to the trauma coin! And with just two comments into the post, perhaps we've already seen both?
In this statement, you're subtly doing the same thing - assuming the motivation of the volunteer.
I agree that "help" without actually understanding the need, or without the invitation of the helpee, tends to be more meddlesome than beneficial.
Living near traffic noise increases your chance of stroke
Probably not the best place to be putting impressionable young people looking for connection
"Living near traffic noise increases your chance of stroke. Probably not the best place to be putting impressionable young people looking for connection"
This isn't about _living_ near traffic noise (which is what has been "proven by scientific research). It's about some young people doing an event for a few hours in a city setting.
The chances of young people in general having a stroke are near 0, and the concern of them having a stroke because they stayed near traffic noise for a few hours is so low and misguided, it doesn't even make sense. Might as well worry about falling pianos when standing near buildings.
It's also doubly irrelevant, as the "high traffic areas" in the story refers to pedestrian traffic, not motor traffic. Simply, they set them up where many people pass, so they can find people to shout that slogan to.
Second, not everything is about cars and bikes and shit, my god.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/worker-refusing-contribute-towards-...
Having someone with an objective position who can help you see things differently is extremely powerful.
The reason I haven't done it earlier is because back in those days I had no health insurance and I knew it would be cost-prohibitive for me.
Even if I am a Canadian I am so grateful to have gold plated private drugs insurance as one drug she currently takes is not reimbursed by the public regime (they cost around 6000$cad/months) and neither are my therapy sessions but both are covered by my policy.
Hope you find someone who can work with you in a productive way, best of luck!
The professional can actually help in a way that random people can't.
Looking for professional help can be even more depressing. Besides the money issue it’s very hard to find a therapist you click with. I went to quite a few therapists. Some felt almost hostile or dismissive towards me and others just useless.
I've tested out some of the current LLama fine tunes that went in that direction and it's looking promising, if a bit crude and not quite smart enough yet at the moment. There's something far more comforting about having a non-human entity to talk to since it's always helpful, never dismissive, has no ulterior motives and it won't remember anything afterwards.
It does a good job at the role of "friend that never gets tired of listening to you", because it's programmed that way. Which is kind of sad, I suppose. But I'd rather not burden my human friends with that stuff.
(On a peculiar note, I really hope it isn't sentient! I wouldn't feel so comfortable "wasting its time" or asking stupid questions if it was!)
With respect, I think it says much more about the person receiving the care than does therapists or AI.
I'd say "go talk to a professional" is more or less the only useful advice one can give there.
I'd wager many depressed people would benefit from interacting with people who are not their psychiatrist.
> Or is it just the safe thing to say without sticking one's neck out?
If you want to stick your neck out in that situation you could offer making a therapist appointment for that person. It lowers the barrier to getting help a lot and imho feels more understanding and supportive than trying to cheer them up or whatever else one might come up with. YMMV of course.
Ignoring who is giving this advice and the actual state of the person being given the advice, this is more of a side effect of the poor (for patients) health care system in the US and negative perception of mental issues compared to physical issues.
Untrained people can give bad support, especially to someone who is clinically lonely or depressed.
pay someone
On the physical side of companionship there is the paid-for "Girlfriend Experience" in the same vein.
These are truly depressing considerations.
It's like the difference when somebody gets hurt. Younger kids run to the hurt one to see if they're OK. The older kids tend to scatter and disappear as quickly as possible.
Definitely not my experience growing up. I'm sorry.
When I was young it was drilled into me about making sure everyone is accepted and has friends, all that. So I would be the kid who would go make friends with the lonely kid.
But then I would learn why they don't have friends, and I wouldn't want to be their friend either. Which makes the whole thing even worse, because now you came to them and then left them. So I kind of gave up on it.
Is it going to happen every time? Nope. But lots of people are not going to initiate an interaction, even if they are lonely. If someone else does, though, they will engage.
I'm saying this as someone who has pretty bad social anxiety, doesnt really like talking to strangers, and someone who has pretty bad depression.
I can't. If you have trouble making friends that's obvious long before college.
> But lots of people are not going to initiate an interaction, even if they are lonely. If someone else does, though, they will engage.
People shouting nice words at me gives me the same vibes as a stranger asking "how are you?" as a greeting, just more aggressive and annoying. I may engage in a conversation but not if it's generic smalltalk.
Everyone’s different, I guess.
The trouble is that this very much isn't what was happening. There was no room to respond, and in general I they think they weren't even yelling at any particular person. You certainly could stop and talk to them, but anyone willing to do that wouldn't be the kind of person who didn't know how to start a friendly interaction.
You are making a big leap here. There are lots of folks who are capable of having a conversation but dont feel comfortable engaging first with people they dont know.
The majority of our group was definitely in the camp of "I want to give to other people the help I needed." We ran a stupid amount of events -- everything form mental health counseling with the campus counseling services people, collabs with a queer healthcare providers, open dinners with free catered food, cooking classes, open parties on weekends which alternated between dry/not-dry, sponsored (like one of their friends would contact us) dorm cleaning/decorating to deal with depression tornadoes, open study sessions during exam season, we had "rent-a-spotter" (obviously actually free) in the gym for people who didn't anyone to go with, a few of the guys were in the campus runners club so they did open morning jogs, holiday parties for people who couldn't or ya know couldn't go home, and yes standing in the quad with signs giving out high fives and hugs.
We could have done without these kinds of events but they were super visible and honestly the best marketing we had. We never pitched other events while we were there but it got people to recognize our fliers and look us up on IG/the club website.
I always felt hungry all the time, it wasn't till i started taking Semaglutide that hunger totally go away. When that did the thing I found was an understanding of people who don't have as much hunger as I used to, all saying things like "just eat less".
For those people who say Just eat less, they don't understand that for those who have a hunger issue.. that it's not making them feel any better.
Same with people who feel lonely or depressed... "Just smile or something"... That does the opposite of what you want it to do.
Try to maintain composure for as long as possible.
I now actively try to avoid using that turn of phrase, and when I catch myself about to say/saying it, I check myself and remind myself that I'm also susceptible to this blind spot.
The old adage, “the worst beginning to a sentence is, ‘Why can’t you just…’” is something we understand viscerally. Seemingly doesn’t stop us from doing it to others.
Depressed people often deal with intrusive thoughts. The last thing you want is someone lying in bed, alone, while everyone else is asleep, entertaining those thoughts.
One of the archetypes of depression+sleep disturbance is people staying awake until they are absolutely exhausted and then collapsing into a sleep that the apocalypse could not rouse them from. That’s not a bad habit, it’s a coping mechanism.
that deep sleep you described is something else... it's what I call my petit mort (and yes, that's an intentional misnomer).
Like the GP, I am now on semaglutide, and the difference is remarkable. I now have a new sensation where I just don't want to eat more -- it takes mental effort to force down additional food even if my stomach is mostly empty. It's still easier to eat sweets than healthier food, but the overall reduction in appetite more than makes up for it.
Whereas people like my wife can feel satisfied before they are full. After Semaglutide, I now feel satisfied before I'm full, and then the full feeling comes after.
Effectively stopping me from overeating both the amount in a single meal, and then the meals in between.
I have a severely obese friend who got such a surgery. He is substantially healthier now, shedding over half his original body weight.
EDIT: But see other replies on satiation vs fullness.
"Just eat less food" might as well be "just maybe don't have as much (insert addictive drug in here)"
I never realised how much of a problem my hunger was until it went away. Now I don't know how I managed to do it.
The whole point of all of this is that it's important to put yourself in others shoes, understand their perspectives. So, with that said... If it was easy to just not eat food, don't you think they would?
Post COVID I’m subconsciously holding my breath every time I walk past someone in a store. If I had to think about it I’d never get anything else done.
For food it’s right there near the top of your task list every time you hit an interruption. Am I thirsty? Do I need to pee? Am I hungry? Did I promise anyone anything today? Is it time to feed the pets, pick up the kids? It’s not “just” impulse control. It’s interfering with all of your other impulses.
I don’t think neuro-boring people realize how many people around them spend their day trying to look normal instead of just being normal. It’s an elaborate ruse and things like being hangry or in a loud venue make the facade crack and fail.
There are some fat people for whom hunger is instant and incessant and a constant distraction, and perhaps losing 5 years of life at old age is worth it.
For other people, maybe someone who's 20 lbs overweight and would like to be able to play with their kids without running out of breath, maybe the annoyance of being hungry isn't actually that bad for them.
Pain is subjective. One person's excruciating pain - the same stimulus could be a mild annoyance to someone else. I've been tattooed for 6 hours and was able to easily distract myself and laugh while listening to a comedy podcast, other people can't handle holding their finger over a flame for more than a millisecond or can't eat a hot slice of pizza out of the oven.
Pain and annoyance and discomfort can also be acclimated to. What might be really difficult and distracting might become something you get used to and learn to tune out. But then again, to be fair - maybe not. Maybe for some people that hunger is not something they can learn to live with.
It definitely belies a level of privilege that some people must intentionally seek out discomfort or pain in order to begin to even approximate the agony others are inherently forced to live through. I don't believe privilege is itself a moral failing, or we're stuck with whole categories of 'original sin'. It's what objectives its used to enable that potentially indict those that possess it.
Some of those urges may be stronger for some people than for others.
The same way that urges of hunger can be experienced differently by differently people (at both a signaling hormone / chemical level as well as a psychological/willpower equipment level).
Are you suggesting that the feeling of hunger experienced by overweight and obese people is universally a higher standard than any other discomfort or natural drive humans experience?
That’s not a weight-loss plan though, that’s a fit-back-into-your-current-wardrobe plan. People with “weight problems” are generally on an upward slope and a point source puts a notch in the graph, it doesn’t zero the slope or take it negative. What it does say, if anything, is that there are factors we can control that moves the needle, but they are the journey not the destination.
You get used to it. People who claim to get "hangry" (like in those Snickers commercials[1]) need to get a grip. If hunger is all it takes to make you a shitty person then I think hunger isn't actually the primary issue.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shOiXy5b5Ro&themeRefresh=1
I suspect the divergence in opinion comes from the how one defines well-being. Hedonic well-being tends to focus on fulfilling one's appetites, whether hunger or sex or whatever. The problem with that is humans tend toward hedonic adaptation and it can become an endless treadmill to try and feel "full". In a resource rich environment, this can obviously lead to a lot of bad outcomes.
The parent poster is arguing that for some individuals, the experience of being hungry would be preferable to the experience of being obese. Would you disagree with that?
For some overweight and obese people, there are costs like sleep quality / apnea that CPAP might not solve (leading to all sorts of health issues), there can be sexual dysfunction (erection quality, difficulty even accessing the genitals or having sex in many positions), there can be shame and embarrassment (regardless of if you think society SHOULDN'T have that shame, the reality is many overweight or obese people feel it, and avoid certain settings and activities because of it), there is just the raw feeling of physical tiredness, back pain, knee pain, etc. that can come along with the physical stresses it puts on your body, I could really go on.
For some people, those things ARE worse than feeling hungry most or all of the time. For some people, they CAN tolerate a mild or moderate feeling of hunger by distracting themselves or avoiding dwelling on the feeling, and they might find the other parts of their lives improve enough that it's worth it.
Look, I used to be in better shape than pretty much anybody here. Unless you’re an Ironman veteran I have nothing to learn from you about exercise and I can probably teach you a few things. But health problems, especially joint injuries, happen to old people, and they happen much more often to people who are rabid about exercise. I’m not you ten years ago. I’m you twenty years from now. So drop the smug bullshit and learn something.
I'm someone who loves running, always have, the weight gain happened in my 30's, either because I had a kid and suddenly my ability to just run when i had free time disappeared, or because my metabolism slowed down, or most likely both and more.
That said... Now I've started running again daily for the last year, one thing I've noticed. Beginning to exercise whilst overweight is SIGNIFICANTLY harder than it was when normal weight (or because i was 40, probably another "both" here too).
One of the things that made me realise how much harder it is, was some fitness YouTuber put on 20kg of weights and ran, he noticed a number of things were different. Once I saw that it gave me enough fuel to continue ignoring the hunger for another month or so.
If I recall correctly runners estimate about 1 second per km per extra pound carried. That might not hold for body weight (cyclists had an old 1:2:10 rule of thumb that suggests that it might be better to lose 5 lbs than spend a fortune on a pack/bike that weighs 1 lb less, but that rule has been challenged and I don’t know what the new wisdom is.
Edit: kilometers not miles.
It's not well understood by people on average (and those dieting) how to mitigate hunger when restricting calories or how to successfully diet, but they are correct that a deficit is required to lose weight. That's physics and biology. The problem is the knowledge gap leading to strong-willed efforts that can actually backfire.
For instance, there's body fat set point theory and metabolic adaptation. The more severe a caloric deficit, and more frequently a person diets, the worse your metabolic outcome. Your body will try to slingshot you back to your "original" weight (the one it's used to), with leptin as a regulator. But if you lose weight slowly, and leverage resistance training, it leads to a better outcome.
A prime issue is sustainability. Most people on a diet do succeed in losing weight; it's just that they gain it all back, and they can end up with a worse metabolic rate than they started with, making it that much harder to lose weight again. Metabolic rate can actually recover, but the length for this seems to depend on the severity. Assuming a slow rate of weight loss, it can take almost just as much time as the diet period to recover metabolic rate. For the "Biggest Loser" contestants, it took several years.
Leveraging the satiating and thermogenic effects of protein, fiber and resistant starch in diet also helps, for satiety.
All of which to say, it's possible to lose weight in a sustainable way without drugs - notwithstanding the failure rate. The people who succeed in doing so are not necessarily "more disciplined", or "less prone to hunger", but they tend to have certain behaviors in common. One of them is exercise (particularly resistance training).
I also think going from an in shape 220->165 was way harder than going from obese->healthy. It involved cannibalizing tons of muscle instead of fat, and your body will fight to preserve muscle.
It wasn't no ice cream and soda, it was only having one plain hard boiled egg instead of two, pounding celery and sparkling water to fend off nighttime hunger, freaking out because I only poop once a week, having no energy or motivation and squashing philosophical doubts about the meaning of life.
If I can do it just to climb rocks easier it feels realistic for obese people to do it to improve their health.
Moreover, I find the word "just" to be problematic. It often acts as a command to disregard all other possibilities, indicating a lack of interest in delving deeper. Perhaps this perception is influenced by my experience as a non-native speaker. In my previous meetings with numerous venture capitalists and “advisors”, some would evaluate my project and suggest that I "just" fix xyz. Is it really that straightforward? Have they considered other factors like abc? Do you want to learn more?
But for native and non-native speakers alike, "just" acts as a dangerous semantic stop-sign. It's a command that's not even recognized as being a command, because it frames the discussion so that you have to argue for both the converse of the proposal and that the proposal is challenging for some reason that can't be obvious to the "just" user. It mis-primes even the speaker's train of thought to not to ask what would obvious follow-on questions.
Also, claiming the diets are "ridiculous" means you must have a better understanding of the human body than them, right?
As someone who struggled with weight loss, and got it (and kept it off for many years) via keto and intermittent fasting, perhaps the SAD is the ridiculous diet.
I know I've felt depressed in my life. I can tell you, during those times, I almost certainty wouldn't have even noticed people shouting at me. At worst, it would have been a neutral effect, if it registered at all.
As an uplifting note, I’m happy and much less lonely 20+ years later :)
"Apparently everyone else is loved"
My extroverted friend was so bad during Covid sometimes he would go to business just to be able to talk to someone.
I have never felt any reason to have it any other way.
I already read that humans are "supposed" to be social, but then why am I happiest alone. I don't worry about it and I just live the way I like to live and it's worked out great.
I do wonder whether much of the introversion/extroversion problem boils down to those who have a rich inner life and can become lost in thought for hours and those who require constant external stimulation. It is likely a spectrum.
People used to look at me really strangely when I said "I'd been hoping for this since I was fourteen" about the stay home measures during Covid.
I think I'm reasonably fun at parties/events/neighbourhood conversations, and I'll go, have a good time, converse and joke around and whatever, but then I need a couple months to come back from it. I have near zero desire to be with people. It's exhausting.
There are 3 or 4 people in the world that I spend time with that don't make me feel like that. Good thing my wife is usually one of them.
> These findings suggest that simply spending time with others (vs. alone) is not associated with a reduced burden of loneliness and may even backfire.
As a member ranking pretty low on the socialization needs scale, I would suggest that the regular barrage of "you need a social life / people in your life at the end of your life" media isn't actually balanced with "learn how to be happy by yourself, and with yourself" counterparts.
But I will concede this: I'm pretty happy being by myself most of the time. I miss my son when he's gone but I look forward to using my solo time fruitfully (if even that means vegging on the couch binging something).
But what can feel distressing, and loneliness inducing, for me is when I get the urge to be social and can't drum it up. It sometimes feels like the urge to be gregarious arrives inversely proportional to its opportunities... the few people in your life just aren't available, and sometimes you visit a coffee shop or a grocery store and no one will make eye contact with you, and sometimes you try and run a few quick errands in peace and everyone seems out to chat with you.
I've learned to experience each with grace, but neither flow really changes what I usually need, and how much of it.
You know how “humans are social creatures”? A sort of corollary to that is that people define what a normal person is. And very subtle-like too. No one needs to spell it out one-on-one. But it’s always there. A constant reminder of how you might not conform, might not be good enough, might not have the right connections, might have the wrong interests. And once you check enough of those anti-boxes you realize that neither you nor other people have anything to offer each other. You are a bore, and they are there just to remind you of your failures.
That one can be lonely or feel bad in a crowd of people might be counter-intuitive to many because the narrative goes that loneliness is a disease that inflicts the individual and is only about a lack of people. But isn’t that hypocritical? How can you say that “humans are social creatures” and just outright deny all the negative signals that people (us) send to each other all the time?
Emotions aren't the truth. This is just a particular psychological hangup.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Enneagram/comments/o7huc5/russ_huds...
> When SX is our blind spot, the self attack is along the lines of "I am hopelessly boring. I can't imagine anyone taking much interest in me, & if they do I suspect there is something wrong with them. Thank God I can be useful because few would be interested in me otherwise.
Some things aren’t just taken out of thin air. Part of being a “social creature” is that you pick up on what other people think of you by observing how they talk about other people that you have something in common with. And that doesn’t have to be something wishy-washy like “being boring”; it could be very concrete, objective things, like being X or having Y. Then you go, huh, that’s me as well. And then you listen to them say that oh, people who are X, Y, and Z are A and B. And that’s you as well.
But no (someone says), they’re wrong: it’s just their opinion. It’s entirely subjective and partial.
... But don’t you see? That’s what being a social creature is—being at the whims of the opinion of others. How can you possibly claim that Humans Are Social Creatures, and then blame the person who is affected by What Others Think of Them?
I didn't presume you did. And honestly it may not be worth your time learning about it. Fortunately the three instincts aren't a part of the enneagram proper, just another temperament system frequently used with the enneagram of personality to fill in an orthogonal hole.
> Part of being a “social creature” is that you pick up on what other people think of you by observing how they talk about other people that you have something in common with.
One thing I have noticed is that quite often people will badmouth a type of person, but when it's pointed out that so-and-so is also that type of person, they'll immediately say that so-and-so isn't and cite a bunch of 'redeeming' qualities. Socially inclined people seem to see nuance in those close to them that they don't see in those further away from them.
> Part of being a “social creature” is that you pick up on what other people think of you by observing how they talk about other people that you have something in common with.
Social is my blind spot. I don't, and really can't. I have never been able to answer questions that ask what other people think of me, at least not without days of thought about it. And even then I'm just guessing somewhat randomly.
Russ Hudson posits three "zones" of the social instinct, "reading people, creating connections, & contribution". The only one I have any real facility with is "contribution".
What he says about having a social blindspot:
> SO blind spot often manifests as an exaggerated self-consciousness. It's hard to relax & be w. people. We are afraid of making mistakes--"faux pas." It feels easier to simply avoid human contact than to risk being humiliated. But then we do not get practice or develop skills.
> We may justify this by thinking people are boring, shallow, clueless, etc. But w. awareness, we see these as defenses against our fears about ourselves. Again, the voices are NOT telling the truth. We discover we connect ABOUT something interesting/important to us. We share.
So at least part of the bad feedback you're getting is probably people projecting their own fears defensively.
> How can you possibly claim that Humans Are Social Creatures, and then blame the person who is affected by What Others Think of Them?
Personally I've long argued against humans as Social Creatures. Many of us are, but I believe large fractions of us are closer to presocial or solitary-but-social creatures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociality ).
There's not blame here. Merely recognition of sometimes maladaptive psychological quirks. Our psychologies exist for very good reasons, but we are hardly universal beings. Sometimes our minds use the wrong inference tool for the job.
- Robin Williams
My time is filled with activities and projects so I barely have enough time to just sit with a cup of coffee. When I do, I have a whole backyard full of flora and fauna to look at and listen to, like one of those YouTube channels streaming nature sounds. Country folk have the right idea living out here. You don't miss what you don't see.
That is, connectedness requires an external structure to synchronize everyone's rhythm. This can be a sports team, a religion, a shared love the same anime or breed of dog, etc...
Loneliness feels more pronounced when in the presence of these illusions. It's not easily solved because from the pov of the lonely person, he/she is asked to believe the equivalent of "2+2=5" in exchange for that kind of connection. It feels like an ask to self-lobotomize. (even if from the pov of say a therapist, the client is actually just in a different kind of illusion)
* "illusion" can have negative valence so an alternative here is "story" or "pillar of meaning"
It's why so many people don't want to go to the movies or to the restaurant alone.
If you go to the park and see many happy couples on benches kissing and you've been single and alone for a while, it's gonna be soul crushing.
On the other hand if you go to an event where everyone goes alone or doesn't know anyone, you don't feel bad at all.
One of life’s great gifts.
For some reason, that never felt weird to me. Unless it's a super hero movie or something similar, that kind of movie is more fun with friends.
I've been alone my whole life and wouldn't want it any other way.
I go to the movies alone, go out to eat alone. Who cares? Certainly not me.
I do what I want when I want and it's fantastic. I couldn't care less that other people around me are "together". I've never had any desire for that.
Going out alone where everyone else is together feels terrible. It's part of why I despise work parties at Christmas, because in that case feeling terrible is mandatory.
I suspect that alcohol and caffeine-induced negative emotion is widespread. Even a glass or two of alcohol can affect your sleep, and less REM sleep means less emotional regulation. I know basically everyone's on caffeine, but ingesting that can accentuate the peaks and valleys of one's emotional experience. The alcohol and caffeine-induced troughs may be sub-clinical, but they're probably real for a lot of people.
What works for you doesn't work for everyone.
My baseline "sober" -- no caffeine, no anything -- is crippling, paralyzing depression. Hiking is my drug of choice, but I need to be hiking all day, nearly every day, for months for it to take action, and that is not compatible with existing in society.
Without hiking, and without any other support, then I revert to existing as a pool of dark sludge on a bed all day. I spent years this way before I decided to set aside my pride and accept that having a little help -- caffeine at a minimum -- to be functional is better for my health than any perceived ideas around addiction or "purity".
Coffee / caffeine can take me from a non-functional, paralyzing mental disability to being able to move around and have momentum.
And yes, there are circumstances that can change where this wouldn't happen and I wouldn't need a support like that: a world-wide revolution resulting in the liberation of all mankind from the dystopian hellscape we are in / plunging ourselves further into would do it.
Short of that, I'll stick with a couple cups of coffee a day, thanks.
Other than quitting the two aforementioned drugs, what helped a lot for me was living in a more evolutionarily consistent way. Especially around nutrition, sunlight, and sleep. I made this the focus of my life for about a year because the alternative was, well, you know about that.
Good luck.
Your experiment is great because now you know what works best for you. The way you talk about it seems to indicate that you use the experiment as a basis for knowing what is best for the population at large. A scientific study is a much stronger piece of evidence for shaping our views on how alcohol/caffeine effect the population.
But it's better than noone votes on you, it's real loneliness.
Does anyone know if this rate-limiting is temporary measure or if I need to abandon decade old account if I want to have the full functionality back?
Similarly, depression has nothing to do with alone-ness. It's being perfectly sad. Depression is the only cause of perfect sadness, and sadness is never the cause of depression. Healing depression cannot be done by healing sadness. Your triggers and the cause of your condition could be many things, but until you figure those things out, nothing will undo your depression or sadness.
I worked 3 year in an office in two different countries where the prevailing mode was absolutely silence, no socialization, no connection, no words beyond pleasantries about nonwork things. One office spoke my native language, one didn't. Those were both really dark depressing experiences. I often felt distressed by loneliness, of being a ghost haunting the human world.
Currently I'm doing the nomad thing, don't speak the language for crap, and spend 3-10 hours a day in coffee shops working. I order at the kiosk so no human interaction. I people watch and feel fantastic. I have been here 6 months and haven't interacted with anyone during this time.
Best guess: In the offices I feel like I had a strong expectation for my life to play out like an American office sitcom. I have no such expectation for random people in a coffee shop to ever speak with me. I think expectations alone determine the result, even for someone 9/10 on the psychologists neuroticism scales. If I hadn't experienced this first hand with years of personal evidence behind it to show, I wouldn't believe it could "all be in my head". But that's the only theory that works
When you're in total abstinence, you can forget that the thing even exists. It ceases to occupy your mind, so you don't feel like there's a want going unfulfilled. When instead you have just a little bit, far too little to satisfy you, the difference between the amount you're getting and how much you'd like causes intense anxiety that you have to deal with somehow.
1 person I know IRL has read the books which matter to me.
0 people I know IRL have watched the animes that matter to me.
0 people I know IRL read Hacker News.
0 people I know IRL really play the video games I like.
0 people I know IRL have travelled to the places I have and seen the things I've seen.
Thousands of hours of my life are spent on things for which no one else I know can moderately appreciate. That is the essence of my loneliness.
Also, 0 men I know IRL were raised by a single mother, so my social inclination and lifestyle are hard to relate to.
Warning - the next bit talks about s-icide.
Also, I can't talk to people I know about s-icidal thoughts. My father killed himself a decade ago, and it's apparent to me that the idea spreads like a virus. For someone to really understand my feelings and view on it would likely make them s-icidal too, which I can't bear the thought of. My fiancee has had an experience where a SO offed himself, so talking about it with her is triggering. She's also got anger management problems that make a lot of communication difficult. These are other contributors to feelings of social isolation and loneliness.
Consider that if you're feeling depressed and lonely and otherwise miserable, and seek out the company of others to alleviate your own negative emotional state, then you're essentially treating other people like a drug you take to improve your mood. Others will tend to see you as needy, demanding, a downer, etc.
The solution is to first figure out how to be happy on your own, to improve your mental and emotional state, such that other people find your company pleasant and agreeable - then they'll actually want to share your company. It's a bit like physical hygiene - if you smell bad, people will keep their distance. Mental hygiene is the same concept.
Unfortunately, consumer society is based on exploiting people's negative emotional states to improve sales - go shopping to alleviate loneliness, buy a bottle of pills to improve your mood, etc. It's not a very healthy system, and it's not surprising many people are so alienated.
If you look at the old world, one would spent a considerable amount of the day in the physical world with real people just to function. Work, do groceries, go to the movies, go to church (like it or not, powerful community builder), go to bars, the like.
Only now do we start to understand how this "limited and inflexible" world had benefits we took for granted.
Now many people can work from home, use food delivery, watch Netflix, then doom-scroll. In the rare cases that they are in public, they are rushed or buried in their phone, so unavailable. In the form of AI (hyper-personalization) and VR, more is on the horizon to complete our project of making the ultimate hyper-individualistic anti-social convenience consumer.
We sold our humanity for convenience, short term urges capitalized by a handful of mega companies.
Yes I'm dramatizing, but not that much, the trajectory is clear: loneliness might become the default.
An example is vinyl. They collect it, and it's not just a hipster thing. This rationally makes no sense if you consider that Spotify will have any song at your fingertips wherever you go. Yet it totally makes sense. Digital music is dead, it has no soul, it's not real.
If I tell you that I listened to a song on Spotify (out of 50 million of them) this is supremely meaningless. Yet if you visit my home (which is a vast improvement over a chat message) and I show you a real object with cover art and we both share the experience of listening to it, it's much more real. It's physical, and a shared experience.
Likewise, if I'd share my Spotify playlist with somebody, that doesn't do much. Nobody's going to analyze a digital list of music forwarded by somebody else, especially without any background or curation. Yet if you look at a person's physical collection and they excitedly tell you about it, it's much more inviting to browse and explore.
It's like a little piece of you, whilst digital belongs to nobody.
Many of them also seem to play board games, whilst they could have played a million digital games.
Anyway small sample size, but we need more of this.
--Bob Dylan, Marchin' to the city
In other words if we could stimulate the same somatic experience in people then some may find relief and others distress and others may not notice it amounts the billions of sensory input in any given moment.
Want to feel (dis)connected. Change the somatic experience? Change the environment/context? Change the interpretation?
My mantra for a while
“I am a tree in woods” ( reminded that I’m part of a connected system)
“I am a tree in a field” ( I’m unattached )
How can one day, the HN consensus seems to be that Psychology is a pseudo-science filled with con-men.
Then the next day there is a new Psychology study submitted, and suddenly HN totally forgets its pseudo-science, now it is 'oh, let me talk about my experience with X'.
(In other words, like every other site on the internet, and gnashing its teeth at the reality of that statement with a lot of "I'm not like other girls" energy.)
Your Cool Aid tornado feels like a lonely folks re-education camp already.
"The worst thing isn't being alone. The worst thing is being surrounded by people who make you feel alone."
Go ultra light. Essentially become homeless. Own at most two pairs of clothing. Don’t worry about showering daily (or weekly), but keep your face clean and your teeth brushed. Don’t let the gear&food on your back exceed 35lbs (15kg). Sleep under the stars when it isn’t raining.
How I felt during: pretty rad. there’s this surreal thing that happens when you spend all day in direct contact with the sun and the moon. You feel physically connected to the solar system. You sense the Sun behind the earth at night. You get a real emotional connection with the environment and that has made climate change a bit more personal for me. In general, I’d never felt as much joy as I felt then. There’s this other surreal thing that happens. If you quit your job to go hike, you start seeing the weeks in front of you as bare and free, and the present becomes one long continuous moment.
I also spent a lot of my spare time reading old classical Greek and American philosophy. Seneca, Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Ayn Rand, Thoreau, Emerson. It plugged me into the “meta-game” aspect of life, of course we’re all living but how could we live.
Takeaways: society is full of strings, things you don’t actually need to survive. time is better spent learning or exploring. it’s okay to abandon people that you feel you’ve outgrown. People my age (mid 30s) talk about how stressed they are and I can honestly say my attitude was permanently changed by that trip. I suppose Im a happy nihilist. Nothing matters, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m not hitting all of my goals, but my understanding of what reality is has been fundamentally altered where I know it’s not all about me, so losing is actually not a problem. It’s a lesson for me in the present, and my loss might become somebody else’s gain.