The phrase "thirsty" that feels lonely around others or "lonely among people" is very similar to the phrases used by material and rehabilitation when social distancing is common. Steve, professor of prevention medicine. Steve Sussman describes physiological symptoms related to dependence, rehabilitation and rehabilitation, including feelings of “inappropriate skin” and the desire for food or drinks to relieve that inappropriate feeling.
Interestingly, in emotional clusters related to loneliness, food or drinks are often used as metaphors, symbols and actual magazines that can relieve and comfort individuals and groups. Neuroscientist John. Kachiopo once compared loneliness to a psychological "contamination" that can spread between individuals, and he also called loneliness an internal "thirst". This is because in Kacciopo's social neuroscience research method, "detachment with others" is seen as "a life-threatening state, where loneliness can be used as a signal to change behavior - very similar to hunger, thirst, or physical pain".
Mental Health The charity organization Mind uses the same metaphor when suggesting how people can overcome loneliness: "Imagine feeling lonely as hunger, just like your body using the feeling of hunger to tell yourself: you need food, and loneliness is your body telling you that you need more social contact." The implicit meaning is: Just as we may feed our hunger bodies with food, we will also meet "more people or different people" to satisfy the thirst brought by loneliness.
Apart from food, another prevalent metaphor for discussing loneliness is temperature: literally and metaphorically "cold" and "hot". Loneliness is cold. Freda, a German psychiatrist who was in the same era as Freud. Frieda Frommm-Reichmann is one of the first to regard loneliness as a pathological psychological problem. In a 1959 article, she described a woman suffering from mental dementia once shouted, "I don't understand why people imagine the ground as a place full of heat and burning flames. That's not the ground. The ground is the place where you turn into ice. That's the place I went."
Recently speaking, when a person feels both dismembered and alone with others, physiological warmth has a material and symbolic replenishment effect. Although a hot bath may not cause internal warmth when a person feels he or she is connected to his or her friends, it will definitely cause physical and psychological changes in the isolated person. Just as reflecting the lack of social warmth, we have discovered that lonely people have greater desire for warm food, bathing and showering. These links to food are important; eating disorders are also related to feelings of isolation and loneliness, including gluttony.
The report shows that obese women feel more lonely than non-obese women; this is an understandable characteristic, given that the Western world has a high degree of social reputation for obesity. However, the same study showed that obese men did not show a higher degree of loneliness than non-obese men, reflecting the possible appearance expectations of gender bias. The differences between these experiences at
level and ethnicity are to be seen. For example, many psychological and social essays show that black women are “more satisfied with their bodies than white women”, so black women experience less insecurity related to body quality index and body image than white women.
We have also discovered the connection between insomnia, loneliness and obesity; as we understand more and more about the link between lack of sleep and weight gain, and the role of anxiety in hindering sleep, it is understandable that loneliness has an impact on basic functions such as eating and sleep. But psychiatrists believe that loneliness and sleep disorders can cause significant changes in the body because changes in the secretion of cortisol (the so-called "stress hormone") can affect insomnia and weight gain. This problem is particularly serious for young people.
In ancient and pre-modern doctors' "body habits" related to self-care, they include paying attention to eating and sleep. The so-called unnatural factors (extra-conditions that affect the body) not only include sleep and nutrition, but also sports, air quality and emotional adjustment. Before the nineteenth century, the body and its habits were very important to the discussion of emotional states. Doctors let patients bleed to remove "substantial blood" or provide ejaculation agents and urinary medicine to remove negative and stagnant fluids; although the fluid theory has almost completely disappeared by the 19th century, bloodletting methods continue to exist in different forms. In the eighteenth century, excessive independence is balanced through time methods such as movement and access to other people's bodies.
The physiological points about loneliness have been clearly seen in the history of treatment: non-pharmacological interventions before the 20th century were consistent with traditional concepts of unnatural factors, and included them: fresh air and movement (ultimately beneficial to hormones rather than body fluids), nutritional diet, adequate sleep, connection with people, and development of a balanced way of integrating into the world rather than exiting the world.
The 21st century treatment of stimulating the body rather than the mind is interesting in the possibility of being single. Touching and other movements provide a sensory way to communicate with others, whether it is swimming, dancing (with extra-sensory layers brought by music), walking or carving.
If loneliness is a whole-body experience, then its sensory interaction needs great attention. The sounds we hear, the smells we hear, the touch of another person (whether out of likeness, love, sexual desire) all play an important role in our self-experience, and our selves are embodied individuals that connect with others at the same time. When I lived in East Finchley, London, my friend's voices from the North Metro line at the end of the garden made her feel soothing: These voices reminded me that I was never alone, but part of a wider network of life that I could join or exit as I wanted at any time. It is important to have a choice.
Individual (even loneliness in the right environment) can enhance self-confidence and have emotional recovery, especially for the specific choice of independents. In the Western world, we often have completely negative thoughts about loneliness, but loneliness and indifference can be time-sensitive or even creative. This depends largely on whether loneliness is restrained, prolonged, longed for, or interpreted as a social and emotional sign of defects.
※ This article is excerpted from "The Birth of Loneliness: Why has loneliness become a modern epidemic? 》.
"The Birth of Loneliness: Why has loneliness become a modern epidemic? 》
Author: Fei Bond Ebeti
Translator: Tu Ying
Publisher: Shang and Zhou Publishing
Publication Date: 2020/12/05
"The Birth of Loneliness: Why has loneliness become a modern epidemic? 》Letter.
Pictures/Shangzhou Publishing Provided