brocktoon

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True, and maybe I needed to make that comment to process something in order to let it go and realize no one else can fulfill me.
J, I came across this exchange and had to say that I wouldn't yield so quickly to someone trying to convince you that you really don't need others to find happiness/fulfillment. People weren't meant to be lonely. If I could conjure up true happiness from within, I certainly would -- but that just hasn't worked for me. As sentient humans we ultimately need to reach out to others to feel whole, to feel fulfilled. It's not easy bc, as you say, many have their guard up or are have issues that limit them...but that doesn't mean the quest to connect isn't essential. :emoji_thumbsup:
 

InChristAlone

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J, I came across this exchange and had to say that I wouldn't yield so quickly to someone trying to convince you that you really don't need others to find happiness/fulfillment. People weren't meant to be lonely. If I could conjure up true happiness from within, I certainly would -- but that just hasn't worked for me. As sentient humans we ultimately need to reach out to others to feel whole, to feel fulfilled. It's not easy bc, as you say, many have their guard up or are have issues that limit them...but that doesn't mean the quest to connect isn't essential. :emoji_thumbsup:
I agree we need connection. I guess I was mainly thinking about my internet relationships, the ones I rarely if ever meet in person or even talk to on video chat. I want to make these relationships real but it just hasn't worked out. Tired of putting my heart out there to people who don't feel the same.
 

brocktoon

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I agree we need connection. I guess I was mainly thinking about my internet relationships, the ones I rarely if ever meet in person or even talk to on video chat. I want to make these relationships real but it just hasn't worked out. Tired of putting my heart out there to people who don't feel the same.
I see where you're coming from. FWIW, I appreciate your sincerity.
 

REOSIRENS

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This. In particular when you explain the correlation between chronic high stress and in turn what people and the world look like to you!! They recently did this study (which we all know) that happiness or lack thereof, contributes to health:

Happiness can contribute to physical health

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170717100550.htm

"Two great emotions that cause the absence or presence of stress are love and hate. The Bible makes this point over and over again. The message is that if we don’t somehow modify our behavior, we arouse fear and hostility in other people...The more we can persuade people to love us rather than hate us...the safer we are... And the less stress we have to endure."

Dr. Hans Selye
 
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lollipop

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"Two great emotions that cause the absence or presence of stress are love and hate. The Bible makes this point over and over again. The message is that if we don’t somehow modify our behavior, we arouse fear and hostility in other people...The more we can persuade people to love us rather than hate us...the safer we are... And the less stress we have to endure."

Dr. Hans Selye
Interesting quote @REOSIRENS. My initial thought is for each individual the importance of having others love us varies from person to person. Also the perceived stress of not being loved thus unsafe might have to do with neurochemical mix in our brains. I also wonder if feeling isolated relates to the brain mix of chemicals and thus even what brings happiness. All rather fascinating.
 

REOSIRENS

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Interesting quote @REOSIRENS. My initial thought is for each individual the importance of having others love us varies from person to person. Also the perceived stress of not being loved thus unsafe might have to do with neurochemical mix in our brains. I also wonder if feeling isolated relates to the brain mix of chemicals and thus even what brings happiness. All rather fascinating.
All human beings need love ...some are more needy because their stressful background childhood or even adulthood... Stress makes you crave for love but at same time makes you not believe you can be loved or that people can really love and be selfless... Chronic Stress damages trust and erodes empathy ... And you are right brain plays a role on this but not only brain(all physiological machine is involved)...but in brain you can see the damage caused by stress... Frontal cortex shrinkage is a symptom of high chronic stress and lack of love and real emotional connections... This kind of brain damage causes mistrust making individuals act like selfish human beings(run and hide) ... But at same time it makes them act like needy in a relationship or not caring at all...


PS: just a smile hug or caring touch greatly activate frontal cortex on positive way.... So environment plays a very important role in protecting brain plasticity
 

REOSIRENS

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"Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness."
Hans Selye
 

Regina

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"Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness."
Hans Selye
Amazing commentary REOSIRENS. Thx!
 

Ideonaut

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It would be great to be social if one has a healthy family to be around and healthy people; a happy community who have similar views and strive towards the same goals.
However when one lives in a degenerate society, where there are no common interests, it probably is better for you to be separated from them.

Many scientists and other great minds have accomplished much when alone.
Good thoughts. Good old Marxian "alienation" seems like a more fruitful concept than "loneliness". Just what is meant by "loneliness" is unclear to me.
 
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lollipop

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All human beings need love ...some are more needy because their stressful background childhood or even adulthood... Stress makes you crave for love but at same time makes you not believe you can be loved or that people can really love and be selfless... Chronic Stress damages trust and erodes empathy ... And you are right brain plays a role on this but not only brain(all physiological machine is involved)...but in brain you can see the damage caused by stress... Frontal cortex shrinkage is a symptom of high chronic stress and lack of love and real emotional connections... This kind of brain damage causes mistrust making individuals act like selfish human beings(run and hide) ... But at same time it makes them act like needy in a relationship or not caring at all...


PS: just a smile hug or caring touch greatly activate frontal cortex on positive way.... So environment plays a very important role in protecting brain plasticity
Fantastic @REOSIRENS - love the idea that:

"PS: just a smile hug or caring touch greatly activate frontal cortex on positive way.... So environment plays a very important role in protecting brain plasticity"
 

Regina

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...and vice versa. I have suspected for a very long time that pathologically selfish people may have a mental disorder of some sort or at least be under some kind of environmental pressure to develop such extreme behavior. Now, this new study says that selfishness may simply be a self-preservation mechanism as a result of extended periods of loneliness. Ironically, the resulting selfishness triggers further loneliness likely because the selfish people are both being avoided more by others and also because they actively isolate themselves from others by recognizing that selfishness is not a desirable trait that will draw mates/friends. Furthermore, selfishness and loneliness are really detrimental to health in the long run. More importantly, as the study itself said, when humans are at their best they are very helpful and cooperative. So, cooperation and altruism are the natural state of human affairs when health is good and we are surrounded by good people.
Hey, @Such_Saturation I think you will like this in light of the recent post you made on cooperation vs. competition.

Loneliness contributes to self-centeredness for sake of self-preservation

"...Research conducted over more than a decade indicates that loneliness increases self-centeredness and, to a lesser extent, self-centeredness also increases loneliness. The findings by researchers at the University of Chicago show such effects create a positive feedback loop between the two traits: As increased loneliness heightens self-centeredness, the latter then contributes further to enhanced loneliness. “If you get more self-centered, you run the risk of staying locked in to feeling socially isolated,” said John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. Cacioppo and co-authors Stephanie Cacioppo, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the UChicago Pritzker School of Medicine, and Hsi Yuan Chen, a researcher at the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, published their findingsin Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on June 13. The researchers wrote that “targeting self-centeredness as part of an intervention to lessen loneliness may help break a positive feedback loop that maintains or worsens loneliness over time.” Their study is the first to test a prediction from the Cacioppos’ evolutionary theory that loneliness increases self-centeredness. Such research is important because, as many studies have shown, lonely people are more susceptible to a variety of physical and mental health problems as well as higher mortality rates than their non-lonely counterparts. The outcome that loneliness increases self-centeredness was expected, but the data showing that self-centeredness also affected loneliness was a surprise, Stephanie Cacioppo said."


“Humans evolved to become such a powerful species, in large part due to mutual aid and protection and the changes in the brain that proved adaptive in social interactions,” John Cacioppo said. “When we don’t have mutual aid and protection, we are more likely to become focused on our own interests and welfare. That is, we become more self-centered.”

"...In modern society, becoming more self-centered protects lonely people in the short term but not the long term. That’s because the harmful effects of loneliness accrue over time to reduce a person’s health and well-being. “This evolutionarily adaptive response may have helped people survive in ancient times, but in contemporary society may well make it harder for people to get out of feelings of loneliness,” John Cacioppo said.

"...When humans are at their best, they provide mutual aid and protection, Stephanie Cacioppo added. “It isn’t that one individual is sacrificial to the other. It’s that together they do more than the sum of the parts. Loneliness undercuts that focus and really makes you focus on only your interests at the expense of others.”"
To be honest, it is the reason I stopped composing. The kind of music(maximal) I write requires me to really turtle myself--which I am proned to do anyway. (I was hypoventilating before many here were born :lol:). I don't think the great works of music and literature were collaborative (so to speak). Even when we talk about Blake, Ray mentions the arduous task of dry-point engraving (a sort of Zen negation) and writing in reverse on copper plates. Conceiving of and hand-notation of dense orchestral/ensemble scores can only be done in long hours alone.
btw: the anti-serotonin strategies you've cited have done wonders for my lungs!! It's helped put the wind back in my sails.
 
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haidut

haidut

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The Mystery of Urban Psychosis

Why are paranoia and schizophrenia more common in cities?

There is a study somewhere on the forum saying that psychosis occurs whenever the discrepancy/gap between expectations and reality reaches certain threshold. That gap seems to be really high in big cities IMO and there is also the isolation and "stranger danger" factor. So many people around you in the big city, none of them relatives or even friendly, and the few friends tend to be quiet shallow. In my experience true friendship does not happen very often in big cities so a person is really alone and under constant stress to compete while getting constantly hammered with disillusionment.
 

Regina

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I guess I am pretty conditioned to cities. NYC can be very lonely. But you soon realize how to be (and what not to do) and find people you want in your life. I prefer it to hive mind or enmeshment.
Other than a shady contractor or two (who come in from suburbs, mind you), I have never been a victim in either NYC or Chicago. Counter-intuitively I have found more authentic people in cities than outside them--where it is hit or miss.
I find people less judgmental and with authentic compassion in cities. You are more sorted out and individual.
 

Makrosky

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"Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness."
Hans Selye
+100
 

Makrosky

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There is a study somewhere on the forum saying that psychosis occurs whenever the discrepancy/gap between expectations and reality reaches certain threshold. That gap seems to be really high in big cities IMO and there is also the isolation and "stranger danger" factor. So many people around you in the big city, none of them relatives or even friendly, and the few friends tend to be quiet shallow. In my experience true friendship does not happen very often in big cities so a person is really alone and under constant stress to compete while getting constantly hammered with disillusionment.

Totally agree with this. After having lived in a 3 million population city and changed to a 20k population city. When I went back to 3 million city I could feel exactly that feeling of strange danger. "Who is all these people ?" "Where are they going?" "What do they want?" I was feeling in tension all the time, like if something bad were gonna happen to me out of a sudden. Anyway I think it also depend on metabolic situation, a good stress resistance should buffer all those reactions.

Oh, another remarkable thing I noticed the first time I went into the subway after months living in the small city. Faces of people. Oh my god. Nightmarish. As soon as I stepped into the wagon I spontaneously asked myself "why is everybody depressed here?" I never had noticed that while I was living there before, I guess I was the same.

Other than that big cities are also good because they provide much more opportunities and stimulus for many things including jobs, courses, workshops, different people, etc.

I'm starting to think that the best thing is to live in a very small city/town close to a big one. You get best of both worlds.
 
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lexis

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I'm starting to think that the best thing is to live in a very small city/town close to a big one. You get best of both worlds.

Living with extended family in a big house may be an option rather than living in micro appartments in the city
 

Makrosky

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Living with extended family in a big house may be an option rather than living in micro appartments in the city
Extended family ? sure.. the idea is good. However depending on the family relationships it can be a nightmare, that's for sure. I don't think it's easy to transition from nuclear family back to extended family. We've changed.
 

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