Being alone can break your heart—literally. People who lack a strong network of friends and family are at greater risk of developing—and dying from—heart disease, research shows.
Feeling lonely can also have a negative impact on your mental health, especially if these feelings have lasted a long time. Some research suggests that loneliness is associated with an increased risk of certain mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, sleep problems and increased stress.
Long term feelings of loneliness and social isolation can also reduce cognitive skills, such as the ability to concentrate, make decisions, problem-solve, and even change negative self-beliefs. And it can ultimately lead to depression.
Your Brain Interprets Prolonged Loneliness as Physical Pain – Why? Scientists are finding that loneliness has real medical consequences, and the brain sees it as pain.
If you've experienced ongoing feelings of loneliness, it can have negative effects on your physical health. It could lead to weight gain, sleep deprivation, poor heart health, and a weakened immune system. Loneliness can also put your body under more stress than normal.
Write in a journal, listen to music, spend time with friends or family, and/or draw to express the emotion sadness. Think about the context of the sad feelings. Are they related to a loss or an unhappy event? Think about the feelings in a non-judging way and ride the wave of the experience.
Chronically lonely individuals are more likely to be high in negative affectivity, act in a socially withdrawn fashion, lack trust in self and others, feel little control over success or failure, and generally be dissatisfied with their relationships compared to nonlonely individuals.
Stage 4: Depression. The despair of loneliness is an all-encompassing emotion.
Loneliness can affect your health in lots of ways. You may not be able to get out to buy healthy foods - or you may not have the motivation to cook for one. And not getting enough mental stimulation increases the chance of depression and dementia.
Loneliness is toxic
Loneliness has clear consequences for mental health, aggravating anxiety, depression, and stress-related symptoms. Additionally, it sabotages our physical health. According to two leading researchers, loneliness triggers an inflammatory response and threatens our immune system.
There are different types of loneliness: emotional, and social and existential loneliness.
Poor social skills often lead to stress and loneliness, which can negatively affect physical as well as mental health.
Some people describe it as a dull ache, others as piercing, while still others experience it as a crushing sensation. The pain can last for a few seconds and then subside, or it can be chronic, hanging over your days and depleting you like just like the pain, say, of a back injury or a migraine.
People who have or had anxiety or depression may have a higher risk of broken heart syndrome.
The most common signs and symptoms of broken heart syndrome are angina (chest pain) and shortness of breath. You can experience these things even if you have no history of heart disease. Arrhythmias (abnormal heartbeats) or cardiogenic shock also may occur with broken heart syndrome.
Sadness may flood your body with hormones like cortisol. Excess stress hormones in the body can cause physical sensations in your heart and nervous system, like chest pain, itching, or a rapid heart rate.
When we feel heartache, for example, we are experiencing a blend of emotional stress and the stress-induced sensations in our chest—muscle tightness, increased heart rate, abnormal stomach activity and shortness of breath.
In a sad or miserable state, unhappily, as in He left her with a heavy heart, wondering if she would ever recover. The adjective heavy has been used in the sense of “weighed down wit grief or sadness” since about 1300. Its antonym light dates from the same period.
"Loneliness can change the neurochemistry of the brain, turning off the dopamine neurons, which trigger the reward response, and causing some degeneration in the brain when the reward response is not activated," says Katherine Peters, MD, PhD, FAAN, associate professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Duke University.
If you know someone who seems to spend a lot of time alone, it could be a sign that they are lonely. For example, if one of your colleagues always eats lunch alone or doesn't join in with office banter, it could be because they are nervous about diving in and need someone else to initiate.