Essay on Loneliness: types, caused and how to deal with it.

Usually loneliness is considered as a component of unhappy life or depression, which is why all of us try to avoid it. It is defined as an unpleasant feeling of isolation and lack of communication, but it should be noted that the feeling of loneliness can be familiar to people even if they have family and a lot of friends. This means that the issue is quite complex and should be researched deeply in order for us to understand its roots and nature. Here are some pieces of useful information, which you can use for your essay on loneliness.

Reasons for Loneliness

• One of the reasons for feeling lonely is a lack of friends and communication in childhood. This has a strong impact of mature life and social relationships in adulthood.
• Losing an important person can also cause the feeling of loneliness. As a response to missing, the human mind starts reacting in a negative way, and the impression of discomfort develops. What is more, the loss of beloved ones can be a grief for a person so the solitude becomes even more difficult to handle.
• There are certain significant events which are rather stressful for a person, and the stress may result in such reaction as the feeling of isolation. Typically, those events are expecting a baby, getting married, retirement, changing a workplace, etc. This might sound weird as usually we do not consider those events as unhappy ones. However, the point is that they make significant changes in our usual lifestyles that cause discomfort for our minds or bodies, which, in its turn, result in stress. One of the stress exposes is loneliness.

Types of Loneliness

There are 6 most common types of loneliness. Here is the classification:

1. Psychological: it is usually caused by a certain psychological shock or trauma. This makes a person isolate from the surrounding, which provides him/her with the feeling of safety first, but can later develop into unpleasant solitude.
2. Social: this type of loneliness is connected with the process of the person’s involvement into certain social groups. When the person is a part of a group, he or she ordinary feels comfortable. But when one is excluded from or is rejected by the group, the feeling of loneliness appears.
3. Interpersonal loneliness: it is a result of the loss of a close person, usually a friend or relative. Missing the beloved ones causes stress, depression and loneliness, consequently.
4. Intellectual: loneliness of this type is caused by a state or feeling of being better educated of intellectually developed than friends, members of family of colleagues. It usual causes a discord in the social group, the person belongs to.
5. Existential loneliness: it is the most specific and serious type of the issue discussed. People that feel lonely in existential sense confront death during their life.
6. Cultural type of loneliness: this class is an interesting case for psychological, sociological and cultural studies. When a person is a representative of a different culture in a certain social setting, he or she may feel isolated and uncomfortable in this situation. Also, it can happen to people that found and present new branches or movements in culture.

However, Is Loneliness Really Bad for You?

All these sayings about loneliness may gradually begin to seem insincerely sad or, on the contrary, too sugary to be treated as really sad, especially when there are plenty of them around you. Due to this fact, the idea about the bright side of human loneliness can hardly occur to you. Nevertheless, regardless of whether you accept or refute the possible advantages of staying alone (at least for some time), scientists have proved that loneliness can actually be good for your mental health.

According to what some psychologists claim, you need to spend about 2 hours a day with your thoughts and emotions only. No people. Pets are welcome though. You may remember that you usually sleep 5-6 hours (maybe less), and, undoubtedly, this is the sacred time when nobody and nothing can interfere the realm of your dreams leaving all alone in your own world. However, scientists believe that even good sleep, when all you are actually unconscious, can’t be equated to the state of conscious loneliness.

The main divergences between the effects of healthy sound sleep and those of, let’s say, 2-hour loneliness can be mostly explained by the fact that your brain works differently under these two conditions. If while sleeping you almost can’t control and analyze your emotions and thoughts, you can do this when you are walking down the street with your favorite music playing in your ears.

So, let’s have a look at a few real benefits which you can and should take from that precious time when you are on your own.

• It gives you an opportunity to communicate with yourself.
• Consequently, you can analyze your mood and find out what could let you down or cheer you up recently.
• You can also ask yourself questions and come up with the answers that will help you solve some issues or make right decisions.
• Your loneliness can show you the direction or the choice you need.
• Last but not least, it can reveal your creative skills.

Remember that loneliness is just a temporary state of your mind and soul. Of course, it should never grow into depression, so you must know how to manage it before you realize that this gets too unbearable. One of the wisest considerations ever expressed states that as soon as you teach yourself to value the state and feeling of loneliness, you will never be lonely any more.