Issue #35: 5 loneliness 'cures' that have nothing to do with other people

From getting a better night's sleep to making friends with a robot, these ideas can offer a complementary, and perhaps more sustainable, resolution to the condition that at some point affects us all.

I’ve spent over four and a half years writing about solitude. Isn’t that insane? I could never have anticipated this topic would be the preoccupation of my late 20s/early 30s. To be honest with you, if I’d been given the choice in 2019, I’d definitely have wished for a smoking-hot husband, or at least to be London’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw, over coining, trademarking & leading the conversation around alonement. And yet, this conversation – and the related topics of loneliness and connection – is what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s what woke me up today, in fact, an hour before my alarm, with a fully-formed newsletter idea in my head. So here we go.

Let’s talk about loneliness. Finding purpose is, according to a new study, a ‘potent’ cure for this social disease, which one in two of us regularly suffer from (35.99 million, or 49.6% of the UK population, according to CALM data, with similar stats Stateside). It’s a bugbear of mine that loneliness, a condition that affects more and more of us, is so often discussed in an arms-length, and consequently unsophisticated, way. This is perpetuated by lazy government intervention (sorry, but what did the UK’s much-publicised Loneliness Minister actually do?).

Loneliness is solved by being around other people, popular wisdom dictates. Get a girlfriend! Join a club! Go play with your brother! Befriend your neighbours! In some respects, the notion that interacting with someone, anyone, solves loneliness is a big ol’ Should – and potentially a toxic one. Because sure, certain social interaction can be a really effective way to alleviate feelings of loneliness, but let’s go deeper.

How much time around others do we need? What kind of people do we need to interact with? And what about the quality of those connections? We don’t stress the skills to listen properly, to engage mindfully within those interactions. We don’t develop the tools that we need to prevent us coming away from social engagements feeling lonely; from feeling lonely while we’re still engaged in them, even. Johann Hari writes of junk values, defined as ‘desires that aren't deeply connected to anything we find important internally’; he compares it to how eating junk food often leaves us hungry (addicted, but hungry). I think we’re setting ourselves up for junk interactions, too: snackable, pseudo-connections that we come away from feeling dissatisfied.

But then, I’ve covered this already – and recently:

Today, I want to tackle those loneliness ‘cures’ that aren’t people focussed. That don’t hinge on other humans, but our own self-support. I want to stress that these suggestions aren’t being offered as a replacement for social contact, or as a superior solution. Yes, sometimes you just need a hug, but the below can offer a complementary, and perhaps a more sustainable, resolution to the loneliness problem that, at some point, affects us all.

5 loneliness 'cures' (that have nothing to do with other people)

Robots