Photo: flickr
New research shows that the brains of lonely people tend to respond more negatively to social stimuli.
It was found that electrical activity in the brains of lonely people occurred faster and was more extreme compared to non-lonely people when shown negative social cues. This shows that lonely people are constantly and subconsciously guarding against social threats.
It is important to be self-aware about what loneliness does to your brain—that it primes it to be hypervigilant to threats and go into self-preservation mode. Feeling lonely might mean you need to reinterpret your view of your social interactions, says Dr. Cacioppo.
Social cognitive retraining is one way to combat loneliness when you already feel lonely—or expect that you might soon be.
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Category(s):Social Anxiety / Phobia, Social Isolation
Source material from The Wall Street Journal
