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Loneliness a Bigger Health Risk than Smoking or Obesity

rockfox

rockfox

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I ran across this interesting discussion about how Loneliness a Bigger Health Risk than Smoking or Obesity.

Highlights & Comments:

We are social creatures. Our status in society has direct real affects on our health at the biochemical level and its not healthy for us to be estranged from the pack so to speak.

This speaks to the real harm churches do when they drive out people over tangential theological disputes; and the importance of places like this!

Emotional pain lights up the same brain areas as physical pain. It actually hurts.

This could also be titled: Calhoun was Right or Cell Phones will Kill our Civilization. We are more connected than ever before yet loneliness is on the rise. I've been watching symptoms from Calhoun's Mouse studies increasingly popping up in our society. While its well known as an overpopulation study, the operative cause of problems was the number of social interactions rising above a certain level. Cell phones and social media artificially saturate our social interactions independent of actual population densities and with the rise of AI chat bots eventually independent of population itself.

Inline video:

 
Mojo said:
I wonder how much the school shootings are influenced by loneliness.
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I'd say virtually all of them were socially rejected. Which suggests an evo psych explanation.

Ejection from the tribe equals death. In modern America with our digital lives, small families, and dead community life, school represents nearly the sum total of ones social connections, opportunity for mating, education, and life success. So to be rejected at school feels equivalent to ejection from the tribe.

And what do young roaming males facing this do in the wild? They react with violence towards the social order: out of survival, or to challenge the social hierarchy, or to force their way into the hierarchy of a new and different tribe.
 
I agree, loneliness keeps you captive to your own thoughts, thoughts become your reality, reality becomes your destiny. I have yet to meet a shut in that is a happy person. Life is a choice when you cut yourself off from it you die. It may not be an imediate death, sometimes it is a slow lingering painful sorrowful death.
I love life and everyday each of us has a choice.
 
Patricia C said:
I agree, loneliness keeps you captive to your own thoughts, thoughts become your reality, reality becomes your destiny. I have yet to meet a shut in that is a happy person. Life is a choice when you cut yourself off from it you die. It may not be an imediate death, sometimes it is a slow lingering painful sorrowful death.
I love life and everyday each of us has a choice.
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Well said.
 
Well, I'm so glad I didn't get off BF tonight when I thought I would. Unlike other nights, I decided to check out some of the other forums. This title peaked my interest and I'm sooo glad I've spent some time here. After reading the comments, I just finished the video. Thanks Rockfox for posting the video. This is major stuff!!

I don't even know where to begin, and I won't weary you all with all my thoughts, just a few. Without coming to terms regarding the cause of the loneliness you feel, it will literally destroy your health. Just because you are a believer doesn't mean you'll get it figured out before your body tanks. There are so many reasons for why one feels lonely. One of the most amazing realizations for me was that I could be a member of a very large church, be surrounded by brothers and sisters who said they believed the same things I did and had the same core values, yet walk in, sit down, listen to the message, walk out and feel so totally isolated. I would walk by people, some times our eyes would meet, and sometimes not, but unless I initiated the greeting or conversation, it was as if I didn't exist. I watched this play itself out week after week, tested my theories, sat by myself, tried sitting with other people, tried greeting every person I came in to contact with, tried not making an effort to initiate even one conversation just to see who would and who wouldn't, tried hanging around after church hoping to have some communication, tried leaving as soon as church dismissed. I finally became so despondent and discouraged I had to ask myself, "What is wrong with this picture?" Is it me? Is it them? Is it both of us? Is it all of us? Surely this is not the way the early church body functioned!?! It seems that everything in our churches, schools, jobs, and most relationships is so superficial today.

Most shut-ins are not so by choice. They've been forgotten by family, church, and society. Perhaps their health, or finances, or life style has placed them in a "box". A famous quote: "No man is an island unto himself." If we didn't need each other, God would have placed each one of us on our own island to live out our life in solitude with just our knowledge of Him. Wm Paul Young has some great stuff on loneliness. His explanations, the importance of "being present"--mentioned in the above video also, the absolute need to know that as a child of God you are NEVER truly alone, began to help me turn things around. It wasn't that I wasn't reading my Bible, that I didn't have a prayer life, that I didn't know whose I was--the exact opposite of all this was true.

The loss of a loved one(s), children growing up and leaving the nest, friends saying goodbye because their lives take them in a different direction--these all create a physical aloneness that triggers grief and requires recovery--healing. Something must fill the void, otherwise it becomes a vacuum--a black hole. The twist of the knife comes--creating a larger and deeper wound than normal--when the physical aloneness is caused by betrayal (infidelity), putting away (divorce), being ignored (the worst sort of abandonment), deceit (underhanded or ulterior motive driven action), rejection (kicked out of or put out of your sphere of acceptance), being violated (sexual abuse, verbal battering, physical destruction).

The Creator intended for humans to love and be loved. We must see that Yeshua "so loved" us and be willing to freely share that love with and encouragement with those He allows to cross our path on a daily basis.
 
Tears, tears and more tears. Thank you for sharing. I'm not sure of the video you are speaking of but sounds as though it is thought provoking.
I love William P. Young! Truly used by God.
 
Patricia C said:
Tears, tears and more tears. Thank you for sharing. I'm not sure of the video you are speaking of but sounds as though it is thought provoking.
I love William P. Young! Truly used by God.
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Patricia, Go to the very top of this thread. Rockfox is the one who started the topic thread. He has a vidoe imbedded in this post. You'll see. Just click on and watch it. I've prayed for you. Hope you've had a very good day. Are you able to come to the upcoming retreat?
 
Not all people that are "shut ins" are that way by choice. I have five medical problems effecting the components of my ribcage, costol syndromes. It's very painful. The only cure is bedrest.
Tietze syndrome
Costchondritis syndrome
T4 syndrome
Innercostol neuritis
I have suffered with these conditions for the past year.
Doctors are under educated about these conditions, because there is no way of diagnosing, or so they believe, except through ruling out by biopsies, or injection in effected areas. Both of which are not things I am willing to be done to me.
Before I got hit with all this, I was an outgoing businessman moving hot tubs, and other huge heavy things.
I had a lot of fun, loved it. Meeting new people everyday, and entertaining customers as a salesman, or to take their minds off how dangerous moving a hot tub is.
But moving the tubs did this to me.
Now it's time to heal. I get very depressed being alone and not working.
Selling my house to start new ventures that will require my brain.
I am ready to get to the work I am set to do.
 
rejoicinghandmaid said:
Patricia, Go to the very top of this thread. Rockfox is the one who started the topic thread. He has a vidoe imbedded in this post. You'll see. Just click on and watch it. I've prayed for you. Hope you've had a very good day. Are you able to come to the upcoming retreat?
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Wow I just saw this. Sorry, thank you for replying.
 
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