{"id":149,"date":"2017-04-06T15:51:23","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T22:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/?page_id=149"},"modified":"2017-04-30T17:27:27","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T00:27:27","slug":"lonely-facts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/lonely-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Lonely Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Loneliness <\/span><b>is<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the experience of wanting more social connection than you have. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Loneliness VS Solitude: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our language has wisely sensed the 2 different aspects of being alone. Loneliness is the pain you feel when you are alone. Solitude is the pleasure that you feel when you are alone. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Lonely people\u00a0tend to experience the world in negative terms<\/strong>, and to both expect and remember negative encounters. This creates a vicious circle, in which the lonely person grows increasingly more isolated, suspicious and withdrawn. \u00a0This causes lonely people to act in ways that reinforce their loneliness. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Loneliness causes a stress hormone (cortisol) in the body that keeps us alert and anxious<\/strong>. This is why lonely people are restless sleepers. It\u2019s also why loneliness accelerates ageing, and acts as a precursor to cognitive decline. Because of the stress damage that loneliness causes on the body, it can prove fatal.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Loneliness is the toxic equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day!<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The way to treat loneliness is by having quality relationships<\/strong>\u2026 quantity is not important. So Being around people all day doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re not lonely. \u00a0Basically what matters is not whether you had a conversation with someone, but whether you felt the conversation was meaningful.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>40% of people in North America are lonely<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at any given time. This number is up from 20% in the 1970\u2019s.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Nearly 70% of students at Canadian universities self describe as &#8220;very lonely&#8221;.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Roughly 25% of people have no real friends or family<\/strong> that they can discuss important matters with. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>45% of Vancouverites live alone.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Most people in North America spend over 10 hours a day looking at a screen.<\/strong> This is vastly more time then we have available to spend hanging out with each other.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Loneliness is so painful that, throughout history, solitary confinement has been used as a form of torture.<\/strong> \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Loneliness is major risk factor in suicide. <\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is less child abuse, lower teenage pregnancy rates and less substance abuse in close-knit communities. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Loneliness is contagious.<\/strong> If you are lonely and misinterpret your friends as not wanting to hang out with you, you are less likely to hang out with them. This makes your friends more vulnerable to loneliness as they no longer have you to hang out with!<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Many pain killers successfully treat\u00a0loneliness.<\/strong> Opiates are so successful in knocking out loneliness that heroine addicted mothers neglect their own children because they don&#8217;t feel lonely\u00a0for them!\u00a0Tylenol also works.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Ironically, we should be grateful for loneliness<\/strong>; it\u2019s what gives us our human desire to <b>connect <\/b>with each other. Without loneliness, we wouldn\u2019t want to connect with people; we would neglect our lovers, our children and our friends. <strong>Loneliness is part of what makes us social animals!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Loneliness is the experience of wanting more social connection than you have. Loneliness VS Solitude: Our language has wisely sensed the 2 different aspects of being alone. Loneliness is the pain you feel when you are alone. Solitude is the pleasure that you feel when you are alone. Lonely people\u00a0tend to experience the world in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-149","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/149\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lonelyzombies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}