Loneliness: What it does to your Mind

Loneliness is feeling of emptiness and void, this feeling can often be triggered by the feeling of isolation and it can be experienced in numerous ways.

The feeling of loneliness can make you feel sad, anxious, lost and even unloved. The above feeling is not good for your health.

Numerous studies have indicated that loneliness can result in negative effect on our well-being as well as quality of life.

Loneliness is feeling, it can happen to anyone

The above feeling is a complex phenomenon, which is related to numerous things such as one's environment, personality as well as social skills. This could be due to lack of stability as well as support in one's life, or it could be due to depression.

The effects of loneliness might vary from one individual to another and range from mild to severe.

Loneliness affects our mental health

Loneliness is associated with a whole host of mental health issues, starting from depression to anxiety. Loneliness is specifically hazardous, when it comes to mental health. Here are few ways loneliness can affect mental health.

Lowered self esteem

People who feel lonely often tend to have a lowered sense of self-worth and most likely to have higher levels of depression as well as anxiety than those who do not feel lonely. The drop in self-esteem can lead to increase in anxiety, which in turn can lead to numerous other mental health issues.

Impact on our emotional well being

Loneliness makes us more vulnerable to both stress as well as anxiety. When we are lonely, we find it harder to keep our attention on tasks and often tend to have harder time being happy. Researchers shows that individuals who are chronically lonely tend to have high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is thought to lower our moods and make us prone to depression and feeling of anxiety.

Feeling isolated even when surrounded by people

Research has indicated that loneliness via social networks can have a negative effect on our level of self-esteem and cause depression. Being surrounded by people online might also make us feel lonelier as we learn that we do not share the same values, experiences or quality of connection. Social media addiction can actually make us miss out on interacting socially in real time, as we are addicted to receive positive reinforcement through our " news feed and constant scrolling.

Impact on our cognitive functions

Loneliness makes our brain suffer from impaired performance of our cognitive functions. One of the brain's functions that it is expected to perform is our memory which has been thought to be negatively affected by chronic feelings of loneliness. Loneliness can lead to brain not performing as we expect.