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Comment by btipling | Hacker News Reader

In a very good sociology course I took in college the professor drew an upside down bell curve on the board. The y axis was risk for suicide and the x axis was social interaction. The extremes of social interactions, very low or very high amounts, led to being at greater risk for suicide according to research quoted by the professor. Average amounts of social interactions had the lowest risk for suicide. I don't remember the specific studies or evidence, but it still resonates with me today.

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FTA: 'Loneliness “is not synonymous with being alone, nor does being with others guarantee protection from feelings of loneliness,” writes John Cacioppo, the leading psychologist on the subject. Cacioppo privileges the emotion over the social fact because—remarkably—he’s sure that it’s the feeling that wreaks havoc on the body and brain. Not everyone agrees with him, of course. Another school of thought insists that loneliness is a failure of social networks. The lonely get sicker than the non-lonely, because they don’t have people to take care of them; they don’t have social support.'

From experience I definitely agree that having very little/no social interaction is not synonymous with loneliness.

I'm curious whether the social interaction/suicide relation is correlation or causation.

Neither.

This kind of loneliness has as much to do with rejecting oneself as it is being rejected by other people.

Each of us have emotional wounds inside that are sensitive. We typically wrap layers and layers of personality, activities, and rationalizations to protect it. And if it gets through that, it triggers some protective emotional outbursts or behaviors. Or we shut down, like the woman in catatonia.

It is usually painful enough that the mind does not want to be aware of it, and when hitting upon that, will naturally veer away from it.

You can be fundamentally lonely in a crowd of millions. You can be the meditating sage in some isolated cave for years, because you know at the core you are not alone.

Insightful emotional intelligence you don't see often on HN. Where/how did you learn that?

I got my ass kicked several times by a goddess. ;-) Each time, I saw a lot of things about myself I didn't want to see. I got inundated with feelings I didn't want to feel. I've felt what love feels like, and I know it's there even in the most painful and horrible places. I know we're never truly alone or abandoned; I've wept for the people still wandering lost, not knowing what they seek is right there with them. I've learned how to meditate and have been practicing it for a while. This is all still an ongoing transformation. Feel free to email if you want details.

For "too much" interaction, which way does the causality run though? These people could be attempting to compensate for feelings of loneliness or other unhappiness with more social interaction.

I remember anecdotes about increase in stress and social obligations, which makes sense I think. You can imagine maybe a failed business person with unwanted attention as in the case of Bernard Madoff son, or the story of exemplary high achieving students who unfortunately end their life. Such a case was in my local news recently in Albany, CA, and when I heard of her tragedy I thought of this then too.

I was STAR student, national merit scholarship winner, etc and also an abused child who attempted suicide at age 17, which was treated at school like I was an embarrassment and fuck-up rather than being met with concern. I walked away from the limelight and chose a quieter life. I am 47 and (obviously) still alive. Many years later, I also went through lengthy withdrawal from medication rather publically (online). Again, people were mostly assholes rather than supportive.

If you are a "public" figure of some sort, the public is invested in you in a way that makes them feel entitled to an opinion and entitled to an explanation and entitled to butt in, but they do not genuinely care about you. It only compounds any problems you have.

Is there anything positive for you about being in the public with your story? If it were all negative, why continue with it?

edit: this might sound judicial, which is not what i intend. What I want to say is: you do continue to be in the public - what is your motivation to do so?

Yes, there have been positives and continue to be positives. I don't really think I owe you an explanation or justification for my participation here, assuming that is what you are refering to. I currently get a lot less attention (generally) than I used to. I am okay with that changing, but the circus that used to follow me around is substantially quieter.

Could you clarify a) why you are asking and b) where this remark is really coming from since it does not sound to me like it is about just the specific statement I made above.

Thanks.

Maybe he was referring to your blog rather than your comments here.

I have several websites. They get a really piddling amount of traffic, more than they used to but really, really piddling. I don't really think of that as significant public exposure. And I would prefer the OP clarify. I can make wild guesses of my own.

Thanks.

Interesting. This makes sense from a layman's reasoning perspective as well. People who spend an extreme amount of time with others don't spend enough with themselves and probably lose their identity. I guess my question is, what constitutes interaction? Does the brief conversations with my coworkers count? What about a phone call to my mother? Does all of this interaction being analysed have to in person and in depth?

> People who spend an extreme amount of time with others don't spend enough with themselves and probably lose their identity.

It's a bit more nuanced than that: there is a type of person who knows so many people that they really don't know any of them. Thus, it can be desperately lonely to be so well-connected, too: a lot of depression-suicide cases are from people who were major event organizers or well-known micro-celebrities who had completely failed to actually make friends.

> I guess my question is, what constitutes interaction? Does the brief conversations with my coworkers count? What about a phone call to my mother? Does all of this interaction being analysed have to in person and in depth?

It doesn't have to be in person, but it does have to have depth or at least remind you of depth. If you and your mother are close, a phone call probably suffices. (Unless you're the type of person who thrives on physical contact, as I am.) If you never got along and the conversations are always tired retreads of "yes, I'm doing fine", then probably not.

I wonder how romantic relationships fit in. I don't have that many friends, but I have someone to talk to every day and I can be around my family.

But not having been in a relationship for many years, or rather, not ever having been in one that could be called serious has started to occupy a lot of my thinking time. It's something I'm reminded of everyday, like it was a disease.

It is often said that one has to be happy alone to be happy together. But might it be that even someone who is creating happiness for himself loses it because loneliness is its antagonist?

I smile when I walk trough the rain, I laugh when I hear a joke, I cry when I watch a touching movie. Isn't that a sign of happiness? Why does it feel so worthless if I'm not able to share it with someone I love?

> Why does it feel so worthless if I'm not able to share it with someone I love?

Oh man, the answer to that is mysterious and beautiful.

Let's separate two things: romance and love. We think we want romance but we really want love.

We think we need another person to love, but the truth is, Love Is. It's present wherever you are, whatever moment. It's just, we usually have our heads stuck up our asses and so we don't feel it. Then we wander blindly around the world looking for our lost love. Which then gets distorted by notions of romance.

Or put it in another way

    The minute I heard my first love story,
    I started looking for you, not knowing
    how blind that was.
    
    Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
    they're in each other all along.
    -- Rumi

Something that touched me was: "Love is the evidence of the oneness of all things" ... how to say it, there really is only one thing, the universe, and the ego notions that we have of our separateness are an illusion.

When you and your couple "become one" you're just like drops of water running together. Love is the good feeling of like rejoining with like.

When you are in a couple, you still can be "couple lonely" -- you seek out other "couple friends" ... maybe have kids? You want more love, you want to continue joining together with other pieces of the universe.

It's not "interaction".

It's presence of mind. Awareness.

I've seen this happen a lot with ... non-pathological loneliness. I mean that, generally everyone is lonely in the way Fromm-Reichmann is saying, but because it at a socially-acceptable level, then it looks normal.

For example, I've been at parties and places where friends "hang out". No one really talks about much. No one is really engaging in anything. The jokes people are saying are not there to connect with someone, and more to fill the air with something to say.

This is in contrast with, say, you go to this party, and on an off chance, you start talking with someone. And it feels like a very different experience, like you are fully connecting. You're no longer waiting for the other person to shut up so you can say something. The conversation flows, but the content doesn't really matter. It could be a deep discussion about math or philosophy; it could be sharing some life stories; it could be swapping some of your wild, youthful adventures.

You're not going to be able to measure presence of mind. But you know when you are present vs. when you are not.

>>>Does all of this interaction being analysed have to in person and in depth?

I'd say depth matters more. It's not sufficient to just be seen. People want to be understood, or seen fundamentally.

Related, the Principle of Psychological Visibility from Nathaniel Branden (fyi, I am not an Objectivist): http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=...

It could be people who seek out socializing are trying to distract themselves or are seeking for something external when they're needing are internal skills to manage life and the internal issues (emotions, etc) they create.

Exactly!

Generally speaking, the vast majority of people are actually insane. We're just insane in socially-acceptable, normalized ways.

Looking into yourself is hard. It is the hardest thing you will ever do.

Or being hyper-social puts way more pressure on you in the form of keeping up appearances and maintaining expectations.

The Middle Way works for a lot of things (aka goldilocks, all things in moderation).

Everything in moderation.. except moderation.

Including moderation.

Definitely seems to be the least dangerous/boring path.

Suicide is a very narrow thing, however. It's also not necessarily related to "loneliness". The article is (using research) making the argument that loneliness affects medical outcomes for people. Is there a causal link between loneliness as suicide? The little bit I've studied suggests suicide is more closely related to depression. The causes of which remain something of a medical mystery.

But can you not take any (or many) two different data sets that sort of relate and create such graphs? Social interaction and Suicide, Sex and Suicide, Education and Suicide, Work load and Suicide, XYZ and Suicide.

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