There have been a few times in my life when I felt very lonely. I particularly remember my loneliness when I moved to New York City. I had a couple of friends in the city, still, it was a tune in my life when I needed to put forth some effort to form more meaningful relation-ships. But the more I went out to parties, the more disconnected and lonely I felt. Feeling lonely in a room full of people, or in my case, a whole city packed with people everywhere, was the loneliest I have ever felt.
So, rather than trying a new way to make friends, I was more likely to ignore phone calls from friends, and I looked at social invitations and opportunities to meet new people as drudgery(苦差事). Looking back on this period of loneliness,/I wonder at the way I isolated(孤立) myself instead of reaching out to those who were willing to keep me company and offer friendship.
What I have learned from my own experience and the experience of many of my friends is that more often than not, those who feel lonely choose isolation. Indeed, many of my own friends describe avoiding social life as a way of dealing with feelings of loneliness.
This behavior is somewhat common, and new research takes a big step towards explaining this behavior. According to leading experts on the loneliness, Stephanie and John Cacioppo, there is an evolutionary explanation for this tendency to isolate when we are feeling lonely. By monitoring lonely people's brainwaves, they found that lonely people tend to respond negatively to social life. "Loneliness causes some brain-related changes that put us into a socially nervous mode," Dr. Christian Jarrett explains.
Making ourselves aware of this evolutionary natural tendency could actually be the first step in fighting loneliness. Once we know that we are more sensitive to negativity during lonely spells, we can focus our energy on resisting the desire to put up walls.
