HealthyGamerGG - Why Being Lonely Is An Advantage

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

In today's episode, we delve into a topic that often carries a negative connotation: loneliness. We're going to explore the potential advantages of experiencing loneliness, offering a fresh perspective on what is typically seen as a solely undesirable state. Our discussion will not only examine the various ways in which loneliness can have positive aspects. Learn more from Dr. K in his Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/3uXViuG Not sure which module to start on? Take our quiz: https://bit.ly/47dGzKj Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to where I'm finally like, okay, I got to leave the house, I got to make some friends. And then you go, you leave the house and then suddenly you're anxious and everyone's like kind of weird and like people or don't really treat you very well and people ignore your text messages and you have to message them first and they never message you back. And then you're kind of like, this sucks. And then you go back to retreating within yourself. And this becomes a vicious cycle that I've seen in memes. And there's also like the, you know, the purple, sorry, the pink blob mean where it's like, okay, I'm like isolated and lonely. Let me go out into the world and make friends. And it's like slam. Get back into your cage. And so it's kind of bizarre, right? Because we think about loneliness as a negative thing. But if we really stop and think

about it, anytime there's an ecosystem that has something that's on the rise, right? And loneliness is at epidemic level proportions. So any time something is on the rise, what we have to understand is within nature, that means that there is an adaptive advantage to that thing. And today we're going to teach you how loneliness is used as a powerful emotional regulation technique and a couple of things that we can do to harness the positives of loneliness while actually shedding out some of the things like the sadness and feelings of isolation. So let's start with kind of like a macroscopic view. Okay, so most of the time when people talk about loneliness, they say that, okay, the reason

that people are more lonely is because society is changing. So they'll say things like we're much more digitally connected, right? So you don't have to leave the house anymore to connect with people. And then people will also talk about things like the loss of third spaces. So these are spaces that you sort of have to go and interact with people, like places like community centers or churches or bars or like, you know, sports clubs or whatever, where you sort of are able to make friends. And there's sort of like a death of this third space. So you have work, you have home, but there's no other place for you to meet people. It's really hard to meet

people. And those are absolutely real problems and absolutely real things. But I think that part of the reason that loneliness is on the rise is because people suck more than they used to. I mean, like literally, like, not literally, metaphorically, but literally, like people like are crappier than they used to be. So if we look at the internet, what's the internet doing? The internet is making us more divisive, more self-righteous, more narcissistic. Social media makes everybody more narcissistic. And the most disturbing trend that I've seen recently within humans is that human beings expect other human beings to conform to whatever I want. So you are not allowed to say something or do something because it makes me feel bad, right? And so I'm not saying that like we should all be assholes

all the time, but what I'm sort of saying is that human beings are now outsourcing the regulation of their emotions to other people. Since I'm feeling hurt, that means you did something wrong. And if I'm feeling hurt, you should change your behavior so I no longer feel this way. So if we really look at what's going on in the world, sure, there's the loss of third spaces, but I think human beings are like becoming more narcissistic, becoming more emotionally dependent, becoming more emotionally infantic, And what that means for you is that like it's harder to interact with human beings. And you can see this with sort of the rise of Karens, right? So now we even have a term for people who are like so dysregulated and demand so much or so

entitled from the other people that we give, they have their own name. And they're male Karens too. It's not just about being a woman. And so we start to think about, okay, like why are people lonely? It's like, yeah, sure. I mean, it's hard to make friends and all that stuff. But part of the reason it's hard to make friends is because people suck and they don't text you back because human beings are replaceable right now, right? So if I don't text you back,

like, I can find someone else to hang out with. And the moment that you stop conforming to what I want, I'm going to just block you. And there's literally like a billion people that I can interact with to get my emotional needs met. There's a study which showed that 50% of people who use dating apps, women, use dating apps for psychological needs that have nothing to do with romantic relationships. Okay? And I'm sure that men use it for all kinds of stuff too. So what's going on is that human beings are like becoming more replaceable, we're becoming more dispensable. And so as a human, if you're out in this world where people are more narcissistic and people are more assholes, then why would you want to interact with them? Couple this with the fact that it is so easy to be alone. So not only have

human beings become harder to be with, but we need them way less than we used to. So I see this lot in the dating world where now it's no longer like, I need a partner to be happy. Now the issue is, is my life actually better with a partner than without a partner? You're not competing against other people. What you're really competing against is the solitude and peace of mind of the person that you're trying to date. Because without you and your drama, their life is pretty good, right? I can order food if I want. I can play fun video games if I want. There's an unprecedented. level of like fiction books that are being published and nonfiction books that are being published. You know, like the world is becoming a pretty cool place. You can travel alone. It's pretty safe.

Travel is also way easier. There's all kinds of ways that you can sort of do fulfilling creative work and you can take art classes and like, you know, life is so full of stuff right now that we don't need other human beings as much as we did in the past. So I think this is the kind of a macroscopic view that we have to start with, which is that first of all, loneliness may be more adaptive because relationships are kind of crappier now. In addition to the macro environment, there's also some really interesting stuff that isolation actually does to your brain

and your emotional state. So let's take a quick look at that. The first kind of distinction that we need to create is that there are high arousal emotions and there are low arousal emotions. And what does that mean? So if we look at our emotions, our emotions either put us in one of two modes.

They either activate our sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight or flight system, or they activate our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest or digest system. So just a quick aside about the autonomic nervous system. So we have two modes. We have fight and flight and rest and digest. So if you kind of think about, like, let's say I go out and I'm playing like Ultimate Frisbee with my friends, I'm activated, I'm excited, I'm sort of feeling a lot of positive emotion, but it's excitement. If I'm going out and I'm parting with my friends, we're also like we're living life to the fullest, right?

And then there are also positive emotions that are not high arousal, but are actually low arousal. These are emotions like peace, relaxation, Netflix and chill. Like even though the direction of the emotion is positive, it feels very different from excitement, right? This is kind of I'm chilling, I'm relaxing, I'm enjoying, right? So that's the parasympathetic nervous system or low arousal emotions. So we tend to think about emotions. as positive or negative, but we can actually further subdivide them into high arousal or low arousal. So high arousal positive emotions are things like excitement, joy, lust, right?

These are like good things like, yeah, like let's go, baby, come on. And then we also have positive emotions that are low arousal. So these are things like relaxation or feeling relaxed, contentment, peace. Okay? And then on the negative side, we also have high arousal emotions and low arousal emotions. So what are high arousal emotions that are negative? These are emotions that cause us to act or induce action, right? They want to activate us. We had to do something like anger, fear, anxiety, right? These things ramp us up. And we sort of know that all three of these emotions will increase our heart rate, increase our blood pressure, induce diapheresis, which is sweating,

pupillary dilation, right? Because we need to be able to see more and we need to be able to like pull in more light. So anger, fear, and anxiety, they all increase our sympathetic nervous system activity. They are high arousal. And then we have negative low arousal emotions like sadness and dullness.

Okay? So I'm feeling sad. I don't feel like doing anything, right? When we're depressed, we don't want to get up and do something. We don't want to run away or fight something. We want to just sit and we want to fast forward our day until things get better. So if we look at isolation, okay?

So I'm going to use this different word, isolation. We'll get to loneliness in a second. So if we look at what is the effect of isolation? The effect of isolation is that it moves us from high arousal emotions to low arousal emotions. Okay. So it does this for positive and negative emotions. This is what's really important to understand. All right.

So anytime we isolate, we feel less excitement and we feel less anger. We feel less joy and we feel less fear and anxiety. So isolation is something that we do that basically moves us from high arousal to low arousal. If we approach things from an emotional regulation standpoint, why do we isolate? So it turns out that the more negative high arousal emotion you experience, the more that your brain is going to want to tone that down by isolation. And if we sort of look at society today, what are the predominant emotion? we experience when we spend time on the internet.

They are all high arousal emotions. And companies have figured this out because they've sort of figured out that if they can make you feel content, you're not going to buy anything. But if they can make you feel anxious, if they can make you feel angry, if they can make you feel afraid,

oh my God, you're getting older. Like I've seen the number of women I've worked with who are under the age of 30 and are getting cosmetic surgery is rising astronomically. If you look at things like beauty products and all this stuff, everything is astronomical.

Everything is growing so fast. The beauty industry on social media is gigantic. And why is that? It's because if they can create insecurity, oh my God, you're getting old. You're getting wrinkles. Oh my God. You're getting wrinkles by this thing. This will make your wrinkles go away. Oh, thank God that someone is selling me something that will solve this fear that they've just created in me by showing me all of this social media kind of stuff. Oh my God. Thank God that they're selling this thing because without that I would have wrinkles. And heaven forbid, human beings are not allowed to have wrinkles. I'm not trying to be insensitive to people who have these problems, but I'm just sort of pointing out that this is what's being created by social media.

So the internet creates these really high intensity, high arousal emotions. And then what we end up doing is isolating to fix them. This also is like a perfect example of this whole cycle of, okay, I'm feeling lonely, lonely, lonely, sad, sad, sad. And eventually once the sadness builds up, right? So sadness is increasing over time. And then once it hits a critical threshold, then I'm going to go out into the world. And when I go out into the world and I interact with people, then suddenly my anxiety starts

increasing. And then what happens is the second that my anxiety outpaces my sadness, then I'm like more sad. And so then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to isolating. Right. So this is the vicious cycle that we create. And so what essentially is happening is we're ping ponging. between sadness and isolation and anxiety and being out in the public. So how do we fix this?

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It turns out that there is one really interesting thing that we can do. We can turn sadness and dullness into peacefulness and contentment. So here's the crazy thing. If you want to move from sadness and dullness to peacefulness and contentment, what you actually need to engage in is solitude. Now, this may sound insubleness. Because you're saying, I'm feeling lonely. The antidote of that is to spend time with other people, right?

That'll make the loneliness go away. But if you look at research on loneliness, what you discover is that people who are lonely are just as socially engaged as people who are not lonely. Social activity is actually independent of your degree of loneliness, except for in very severe cases, is my guess. So then the question is, well, hold on a second. How does that work? Well, just think about it for a second, right? So if you're sitting at home by yourself and you're kind of tired of being alone, and then you go out and you hang out with a group of friends, you're with eight of your friends, and they're all talking and what are you doing? You're just by yourself, right? You get ignored by the people around you. You engage in some degree of social activity, but you're texting them. They're not texting you. And then eventually, you'll go out for dinner. And then if you really look at the total amount of social activity that you may have, it's actually, it doesn't correlate with like the degree of loneliness that you feel. Because as, as as I'm sure you all know, you can feel completely alone when surrounded by a group of people.

And in fact, sometimes the times where you feel the most alone are when you are surrounded by a group of people who are in a completely different place from where you are. So the first thing to understand is that actual social activity doesn't necessarily correlate with the degree of loneliness that you feel. And so this is where solitude comes in. So this is something that's really weird about human behavior, but it makes perfect sense. a human being's choice in a particular thing is the most important thing for their mental state. So, for example, if I look at the physical state of getting fired and quitting, it's basically the same.

I don't have a job anymore. I don't go to work there anymore. Those are no longer my coworkers. But how I feel about that is very different if I chose to quit or if I get fired, right? breaking up with your partner and getting dumped feels completely different. And I'll give you all just another example, right? So people will do this thing called dieting. Have you all heard of dieting?

It's when you restrict what you eat and you stop eating the food that you want to eat. That's insane. Now imagine if someone else did that to you, right? If someone else fucking showed up at your house and got rid of all the bad food and was like, no, you don't get to eat that. You eat what I tell you to eat. You eat this fucking chicken breast, grilled chicken breast for the 86th time this year because you need protein this day, this month, whatever, this week, right? You're going to eat this crappy food. People would be rebelling right, left and center.

No, you don't get to control what I eat. Oh my God, this person is so controlling. We've seen posts about it on the internet. My boyfriend is so controlling. They regulate what I eat. Oh, my God, everyone's like break up with them. And yet you have an equal number of people who are doing the same things to themselves. So this is the key thing to understand.

okay, I know it sounds crazy. Solitude and loneliness are two versions of isolation. One is very healthy and will actually help you a lot. And the second is unhealthy and will screw you over. And then the problem, and this is why it's so mind-blowing, right? And this is why no one has figured it out yet. Because it's paradoxical because when I feel lonely, what does my brain tell me to do? It says, go engage with other people.

But we've already explored that. It's like go engage with other people, get smacked, and then go back into loneliness. So instead of what you need to do is engage in solitude. And what does that mean? So I'm not suggesting that you be alone for a long period of time. What I'm saying is 20% of the time that you are by yourself, you engage in solitude. And what does that mean? So what that means is for, let's say I'm sitting at home on my ass for 10 hours a day and I don't see another human being.

Okay? I've been in that state before. So I'm not saying that you, what I'm saying is for two hours of that time, you don't think about other people and you do things just by yourself. Very intentionally. Other people are not a part of it. So what can you do with you? yourself for those 10 hours. And a lot of you may say, well, that's how I spent, I spend the whole day with myself. No, you don't. Chances are you don't actively engage in solitude, right? You don't say,

this is what I want to do. This is what you are forced to do. So I would pick two hours a day if you're by yourself basically all day long to engage in solitary activities. So I'm going to brew a cup of tea. I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to sit down at a park bench. I'm going to grab my thermos and I'm going to read a book. So for a two-hour stretch, I'm just going to be by myself. And this is the really interesting thing, is when human beings engage in solitude, and there's a lot of research on this, it shows that they actually move into that column of low arousal, positive emotions. They actually become less sad and more peaceful in content, even though their circumstances are exactly the same. It's just like quitting versus getting fired. That which you choose,

mentally you will be okay with. So choose some degree of solitude, okay, for let's say two hours a day if it's 10 hours, so 20% of the time. The rest of the time, you can be lonely and by all means go engage with other people. I'm just saying encourage a little bit of solitude. Now, the really interesting thing is we've got some really good data, or not data, but anecdotal evidence of what impact this has. So the best example of this comes from monks. So monks don't really socialize much, right? It's not a big part of what they do. And so you kind of think about it, but if you of are like hang out with a monk, they're like so fun to hang out with. They tend to be peaceful, they tend to be relaxed, they tend to be pretty chill, like they're kind of joyous. And how do they

spend most of their days in solitude? And paradoxically, it makes them better at engaging in social activity. And this is the other really wild thing is solitude doesn't just reduce the amount of sadness and depression and dullness that you feel and make you feel more peaceful and content. There are research studies that show that solitude improves the quality of social interactions and improves the quality of connections you're able to make with other people. Solitude literally makes it easier to connect to other people. And you may wonder, well, like, hold on a second, why is that? And why are the monks so good at it? It's because when you spend time with yourself, you get to know yourself. And the more that you know yourself, the more that you can connect with

another human being. Because what makes connection with another human being hard? What makes it hard is that there's a pile of crap in here and then there's the mask that I put on. And so when I meet someone, what they're going to connect with is the mask. They're not going to connect with all the crap that I keep hidden, right? And so paradoxically, this is another problem that we see in our community is that people will get really good at acting social. But internally, they still feel incredibly alone. And so the really cool thing is that there's actually one thing that you can do. to really address this feeling of loneliness and actually lean into it a little bit even

because what we know is that loneliness helps us manage our powerful negative emotions, which is to engage in solitude. The other thing that you can do, which is really interesting, is that the more that you engage in negative emotions that are high arousal, the more solitude-dependent you will become,

or the more isolation-dependent you will become. Okay? So this is where, if you really think about it, after you spend an hour or two hours or three hours browsing the internet and reading like, am I the asshole or whatever kind of like dating subreddit kind of stuff? Like whatever you're, you know, Israel, Palestine, Hamas versus like the IDF, like whatever people are reading right now, it all gets you ramped up. And what do you feel like doing at the end of those hours, right?

What do you feel like doing? You're like, wow, I'm so glad I spent three hours browsing the internet. Man, let me call up a couple of friends and let's go do something fun. Let's go play some ultimate Frisbee or go for a hike. No, you're just like, ah, what do I do? Oh, my God. I guess I'll order something from food delivery because, like, now I'm hungry. And then you eat that and you feel like crap even more.

So the other thing that you can do is to sort of decrease the hunger for isolation by reducing your exposure to high arousal negative emotions. And if you all are able to do a couple of these things, you will be amazed at how much you can kind of utilize this isolation for your benefit. In a perfect world, you would do the following things. One is you'd limit your high arousal internet content. That'll reduce your need for isolation. The second thing is you spend more time with yourself, intentionally solitude, instead of being alone, right?

Technically or on the surface, it's going to look like the same thing because you're by yourself in either situation. But one is something that you choose to do by yourself. and the second is something that is forced upon you by the assholery of the world will completely change your perspective and will change the way that you experience it. It will even change your brain. The more that you spend time in solitude, the more peaceful and content you will be. The more peaceful, content and grounded you are, the easier it will be to tolerate the crap from other people, the more monk-like you will become.

And interestingly enough, it'll also help you connect with those people. So not only does it help you tolerate the bad, but it also improves. improves the quality of social interactions that you have, so you have fewer crappy social interactions. So I know it sounds crazy, but isolation actually has some advantages. The key thing, though, is for you to slip into solitude instead of loneliness. Hey, all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. It combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist,

and distills all of the most important things I've learned into a choose-your-own-adventure format. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we're fit for your ambitions, whatever shape they may take. Whether you're planning for today or tomorrow, we've got the flexibility and know-how to help you reach your goals because we're built for what you're building. First Citizens Bank, fit for your ambition. Learn more at firstcitizens.com slash ambition.