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Loneliness is a measure of self-understanding

140 points by stasbar 4y ago

mihaic 4y ago
I've got a strong objection with "You don’t really understand something if you can not explain it using simple words." While understanding and being able to give a simple explanation are correlated, this statement doesn't take into account that some understandings are deeply personal, require a pre-existing experience, or maybe a minimum level of intelligence on the part of the other person. This type of reasoning usually makes me think the people doing it are clueless about life in general but are merely academically inclined.
IceDane 4y ago
Wow! You just solved loneliness using 5 lines of high school level logic! Give this man a nobel prize. This is embarrassingly over-simplified. Maybe don't immediately turn every half-baked shower thought into a blog post and post it online.
- stasbar 4y ago
  Is high school logic less sound, valuable, legit? Also, I would not be surprised if Nobel price ideas were invented under the shower. Actually it's the most likely that synthesis happens during the diffused mode of thinking, which happens under the relaxation like shower. I don't claim my idea is worth Nobel price. I just explained in succinct (possibly over-simplified) way my experience of feeling misunderstood for most of my life and the solution that finally helped me. I shared it to validate whether it's a solution to all causes of loneliness or just mine.
dusted 4y ago
Is there even any suggestion that people are capable of self-understanding? I've heard some people claim that they know themselves, but I don't believe they do, at least their own description of themselves seem vastly different from how I'd describe them (not that I claim to know them very well either). I kind of attribute the claim of self-knowing to a lack of reflection on the topic, and maybe mistaking ones values and ideals for ones actual behavior.
- Viliam1234 4y ago
  > Is there even any suggestion that people are capable of self-understanding? We certainly can improve at that, even if we never become perfect. Here is what I use to understand myself better: * Reflecting on my past behavior. No matter how much I may hate to admit it, if in situation X I repeatedly did Y, it is fair to describe me as a person who "in situation X does Y". This is probably too humiliating for most people to do properly. * Related: noticing long-term trends in my thoughts and behavior. What I feel today may be strongly influenced by what happened to me recently; tomorrow I can feel differently. But if I feel the same way or do the same things as I did 20 years ago, that probably means something important about me. * Comparing my past behavior to other people's observed behavior. This is important, because many traits are relative to the population. Like, if you were the only person alive, you couldn't really classify yourself as "tall" or "short", even if you knew your height precisely to a millimeter; it is the comparison of your height to other people's heights that makes you "tall" or "short". By reflecting on my past behavior, I know what I am, but by comparing it to other people, I know what I am in the context of the society I live in. The context is important, if I want to communicate who I am to other people.
  - dusted 4y ago
    Hmm, I wouldn't describe that as knowing oneself though, it's very external, very much like looking at any other person (with a slight bit of additional knowledge of internal state).. I mean, I can certainly say some things about how I react in certain situations, based on past observations, and I can also point out where those behaviours conflict with my own ideals, and how I will try to recognize and change that. But I can't tell how I react in radically different and new situations, I can base it off of old observations and mix in some wishful thinking about how I would WANT to react based on my values, but in reality, I don't _KNOW_, I don't know it the way I know math or the way I know how a piece of code will execute, even without executing. There are unknown variables and just too many variables in total. You know the phrase "you think you know people", it's the response to someone acting outside of your expectations, because we certainly also can't know other people, only their past behaviours and the pieces of their situations that we can observe or infer.
fallingfrog 4y ago
There are situations where this doesn't work- what if you are gay and surrounded by people who would beat you if they knew? What if you have ADHD and are surrounded by type A people? What if you are a bookworm surrounded by jocks? What if you are just so different from everyone around you that they are just baffled by your existence? Revealing your true nature can be not only difficult, but in fact dangerous. It can put you at great risk. And the sad thing is, if you grew up this way, you're going to learn to be very defensive and keep all your feelings secret and you're going to learn to blend in, and never let anyone see who you are, in order to protect yourself. And that will become a habit to the extent that anyone finding out anything about you is going to trigger fear rather than relief.
stasbar 4y ago
I'm curious what do you think about this relationship between loneliness and self-understanding?
- atoav 4y ago
  As a very language affine person with a MA in fine arts I don't agree with the step where the inability to put your inner workings into words equate a lack of self understanding. The true great art in any field other than poetry and literature lives from the fact that language cannot express everything in just words. You can of course explain or describe everything with language, but unless you are truly a great writer everything that is essential about your experience will be lost on the way to the receiver. And some things are not expressable in language at all (e.g. it takes music, film, a painting or other expressions to get there). Example: When we talk about a lonely old person that died recently and I would perfectly describe their inner workings, their thoughts and feelings to you in a empathic way, nothing would prepare you for the unique feeling you would get when you'd just pace through their now empty flat and wittness the way they decorated it. The materials, the objects, the traces they left would tell you another story, one they could never express with words and all of that would strike a different chord within you, maybe one you didn't even know existed. That being said, as someone with a pretty good self understanding who grew up in a rural space at and during the dawn of the internet: loneliness to me never was about a lack of self-understanding, it was about living in an environment that did not have the capacity to receive the expression I had in a y way that was meaningful to me. I understood myself perfectly well, the people around me were just too dull, without ambitions and with so simple images of the world that what I had to say would just confuse them, make them angry or make them shrug. Sure — like every rural person you learn pretty quickly to dumb it down just enough to make them feel comfortable, but that makes you even lonelier, because you are deeply aware that the dumbed down version is not you anymore. So sure, there is a link between being lonely and your ability to express yourself in a way that connects you with the people around you. But there is one additional, but crucial point: it needs to connect you to the people around you in ways that are meaningful to yourself, otherwise it will leave you empty and drained. Moving away was the best thing I ever did for myself.
  - 4y ago
aritmo 4y ago
This style of reason has very shaky foundations. Watch some videos by Gabor Maté. He links addition in adult life to childhood traumas. You can fit loneliness in there as well.
- jonsen 4y ago
  Many thinks traumas in adult life are linked to childhood addition.
  - gryn 4y ago
    Can childhood substraction also be the cause ? /s I'm guessing both of you mean addiction?
    - Joeboy 4y ago
      Maybe the problem is there is so much division these days.
      - maneesh 4y ago
        Parents always do seem to find meaning in life after they multiply
        factorPun 4y ago
        It's definitely one of the factors.
        freetime2 4y ago
        I find that loneliness is often caused by a lack of integration. P.S. Sorry if my comment is derivative.
    - aritmo 4y ago
      It was a typo, indeed I meant "addiction".
bingu 4y ago
This type of reasoning is so sketchy. Language is only roughly mapped to thought, it isn't an exact thing like mathematics.
- alsetmusic 4y ago
  I don’t know. I believe that language shapes reality. For example, I decided I wanted to let go of latent homophobia by dropping a word from my vocabulary that was seen as fairly harmless by sis males when I was growing up. After consciously avoiding it and choosing not to say it, even in my mind, for a while, it truly left my pallet of words for expression. I do think that had a perceivable (to me) effect on my attitude and thinking. How many esoteric words have you learned in life that helped you to better describe a situation? I look up any word I don’t know (in something of an OCD way). I’ve had many “aha“ moments where learning a word gave me a slightly greater ability to understand the world, hence “shaping” my view of it. It’s not exact, but I wouldn’t be so dismissive of the value in thinking about words and decisions on how to think about things.
civopsec 4y ago
Nice deduction with limited utility. Someone who feels alienated from others is most probably not in a place where they can just explain who they are to other people, even if they have perfect self-understanding.
holy_based 4y ago
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outsidetheparty 4y ago
I'm kind of already not on board with this based on definition 1; but even if we redefined the word "loneliness" to fit those terms, the remainder of the argument feels more like wordplay than insight, to be honest.
- stasbar 4y ago
  The definition comes from Alfred Adler, more precisely the book “The courage to be disliked”.
standardUser 4y ago
I really like the thrust of this argument (loneliness is about not being understood) but I think the solution is off the mark... > So it’s your task to make others understand you There is another task that is just as important. You need to find people who are capable of understanding you. It may sound like a cart/horse issue where you need to understand enough about yourself to find people who are receptive. That my be true to a degree. But no amount of self-understanding is going to change how people respond to you if who you are is not comprehensible to those people. As an example, imagine you are a straight man with many close friends who have known you for a long time. And at some point, you begin to grapple with the idea that you're not straight, but maybe bisexual. It is possible that some of your old straight friends will have the capacity to listen and understand and respond in ways that make you feel known. But it's not necessarily likely. And if those are the only people you are close to, no amount of self-knowledge is going to change their capacity to make you feel seen and heard. You're gonna need some new friends.
- Blackstone4 4y ago
  Making someone feel seen and heard is a skill…if one doesn’t have that in their family or friendship group then that is a real shame. I believe that nuance was missed in your analogy.
- stasbar 4y ago
  I agree with most of what you said; however, I believe that once you really understand yourself you also: 1. Understand others, therefore can describe them in a way suited to their way of thinking. This is probably controversial assumption but I believe people are unconstrained, everyone can understand everything, it may just require more time. If you believe people are constrained, or just don't want to spend time on them—find people who are capable of understanding you right away. By being honest about yourself you will attract like-minded people. The process of "explaining yourself" obligates you to approach new people (not only your current closest) and explain them your existence. If you feel understood only by your closest friends, then you are not good at expressing yourself. 2. become less self-concerned. You no longer seek validation and significance—you are fine with being normal. You no longer need someone who will make you less lonely, someone who will fix your flaws. You no longer focus on yourself (you know this guy good enough), rather, you pay all the attention to others, you become emphatic, which connects with others, and thus you become less lonely. 3. You can honesty communicate your needs, fears, desires, emotions. They are part of you, and hence it's your responsibility to explain them to others. Don't expect people to read your mind. Don't run away using abstractions, give concrete examples. If you believe in small lies for a greater good, then you are not communicating yourself. If you consider breaking up with your SO, talk about it with him/her, not your friends. If your boss annoys you, tell him which actions annoys you. It requires a lot of courage therefore little people do so, but not doing it results in loneliness. You have a choice.
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jamesakirk 4y ago
This notion reduces the totality of human interaction to language. Do you think proto-huminoids who hadn't developed complex language felt lonely because they lacked an ability to explain themselves? If I become a duller and less complicated person, will I be able to more easily explain myself, and therefore less lonely? Absurd. There are many ways to bond with others that are non-verbal.
coffeeInATeaPot 4y ago
Reminded of Russell’s teapot. If others think I have misunderstood myself, the burden of proof lies on them to prove the existence of such a misunderstanding.
ell1s 4y ago
Who or what am I is the ultimate spiritual question (i.e, self-understanding). When you understand that loneliness wouldn't even be a concern, because that is an issue for who?
TimTheTinker 4y ago
I like the structure and insight of the argument, but I think it needs some re-working. Definition 1 could be broadened to: "Loneliness is when we aren't known and loved by others." Loneliness can occur because we're socially isolated for some reason. It can also occur when we're with others who don't know us, because we're not willing or able to open up to them. This could be because we are afraid to be real with others, but it could also be because we're afraid to be real with ourselves. There's nothing like being real with yourself, being real with others, being loved by others who really know you, and knowing/loving them as well. Incidentally, this ties in with Christianity's value proposition: no human can both know and love you perfectly, but God can and will to those who receive his gospel.
- l- 4y ago
  One can be known and loved by others, but lonely, marooned & castaway on an island. Alone by definition is just "all one" - no others, which is not #1. One would be better off consulting a dictionary before going on a definition tangent.
throwaway11823 4y ago
Earlier today I sent my SO a long string of text messages about a problem that I was having, including one of them that said "I feel like garbage." I was feeling really down. They didn't respond to any of the text messages; when they got home, I asked them about it, and it seemed like they just sort of skimmed them and they didn't notice that one in particular. I didn't mention it; I just let it go. Do I "not understand how I feel" because I feel lonely right now? Or is communication not a one way street? Most of the time when I miscommunicate with someone, I find it's as much about their not wanting to understand as it is about my being unclear. As a man, I have lots of people in my life who love me, but they consistently fail to take notice of my emotional needs. When I express that I have emotional needs, all I get in response is a "deer in the headlights" look, from other men, from women, from parents, from friends, from my SO. So usually I just keep them to myself because I don't see the point in asking for something that someone can't offer me - a tremendously lonely experience. Do I "not understand myself?" Am I not speaking clearly enough? No, the idea that I might need something from the people who rely on me terrifies them, and they freeze up and stutter and generally are unable to offer me any assistance. And of course, I'm sure all of us experienced during the pandemic the loneliness of not having access to other people or being able to fulfill your social needs - distinct from the loneliness of being with people who don't understand you.
- isthisthingon99 4y ago
  I can relate (as a man) and can say it was only when I started hanging around other dudes who would relentlessly mock each other that my feelings improved.
- darepublic 4y ago
  I feel you. I am separated right now and sometimes I want desperately to be back in a relationship -- forgetting that even within a relationship it's no guarantee to not be lonely. Hope everything is okay with you. I just try to be stoical about everything and be not fight the negative emotions but learn to live with them. It helps.
- Fauntleroy 4y ago
  You might need to surround yourself with more compassionate people, if you truly feel that no one is willing to consider your emotional wants and needs.
xyzwave 4y ago
"Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- oneoff786 4y ago
  You seem to have misunderstood Emerson’s usage of the word understood here. No particular irony intended.
- yesenadam 4y ago
  I think he's referring to misunderstanding their message, which is...orthogonal to understanding them as people or not. Related: The entire introduction to the first edition of GK Chesterton's book on his friend George Bernard Shaw (1909): “Most people say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him.” https://archive.org/details/georgebernardsha0000unse/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/georgebernardsha0000unse/page/n9...
snozolli 4y ago
Definition 1 is wildly inaccurate. Even if we take it as valid, how are you going to communicate who you are to others who aren't equipped to understand? As an extreme example, consider being dropped into another nation where they speak a language you have no knowledge of. Without shared language and culture, you can't hope to be understood. Doesn't mean you can't be surrounded by helpful, caring people (friends?), though, which is why this argument is completely flawed from the get-go.
- Extropy_ 4y ago
  Consider being dropped into another nation where they speak a language you have no knowledge of. Without shared language and culture, you can't hope to be understood. Doesn't mean you can't be surrounded by helpful, caring people (friends?), though, which is why this argument is completely flawed Upon considering the scenario you described, my first thoughts were on how lonely an experience that would be. Also, helpful and caring people that don't understand what's wrong can't provide very effective support.
  - snozolli 4y ago
    Upon considering the scenario you described, my first thoughts were on how lonely an experience that would be. That's the point. You can't be understood to a gratifying degree by people who don't share your culture, and simple words aren't going to fix the disconnect. helpful and caring people that don't understand what's wrong can't provide very effective support. If you saw someone from another country looking starved and miserable, you couldn't buy them food and direct them to shelter? Loneliness means anything from not having enough people to chat with today to not having a soulmate who understands and affirms your every view.
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imarid 4y ago
Loneliness is a feeling, but since when locigal equations can equal to feelings, idk
- stasbar 4y ago
  Logical equations explain the principles of the universe, they made us travel to the moon, why wouldn't they be able to explain phenomena related to feelings?
000d 4y ago
I like the definition that loneliness is not having the social interactions you want, because you are rejected. Not being understood can lead to rejection, but I don’t think it works for many types of rejection such as bullying, racism, phubbing etc.
_8j50 4y ago
Gen Z spends the most on alcohol? Hard to believe.
bobkazamakis 4y ago
self is relative
fellowniusmonk 4y ago
This article touches on something interesting but is woefully inaccurate to the point of causing harm. It devolves into almost an entreaty to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and take responsibility for not being understood. Being understood is a complete joke, it's simply not important and for many of us on extreme ends of the bell curve is effectively impossible. I was born with multiple heart defects, I was constantly at the cardiologist until about 15 with multiple surgeries and procedures. In all likelihood I will die relatively young. My first memory and start of having memories was at 3, where I was about to go into surgery and might just die. A high probability of imminent death is the first remembered experience of my life. I was fully grown by ~12 as a result of the stresses of surgery. My parents both died when I was right around 20, a few years apart. I started working fulltime at 15 to keep a roof over my families head and food on the table because of a combination of my fathers depression, the lies an old friend told him, my mothers poorly timed diagnosis of cancer and the evil state of pre-existing coverage rules pre-aca. I was homeschooled after the age of 5. I was not allowed to lift anything heavier than a jug of milk until 16 due to my heart problem. I was not allowed to play organized sports. I never had a birthday party with friend until 30 due to my birthdate. My entire perspective on life is inverted, I am a dead person still living not an alive person avoiding death. This is fundemental and very very rarely understood. Do you think at 7 any of my peers could understand me? No. Ditto as a teen and even into today. I am an extremely clear and concise communicator but I cannot inject complex, time layered, developmentally critical... insanity into a concise story that conveys the truth of living it. Not even as a novel. The people I felt best understood by were a group I knew when I was 10 and they were in their late 70s and early 80s and about to die. They played cards together at a senior citizens center, some traumas and life perspectives cannot be understood, it's a bell curve like so many things. I am now in the top ~.5% of earnings for my cohort, this is also further isolating, I have a rare amount of resilience as well. There are other unsusual things that are more common but still rare in and of themselves and compound the lack of shared reference points. Small bits of my experience can be connected to by others now that I am older, the early loss of a parent, having a career as a child, the existential fear of returning to poverty, extreme poverty when young, homelessness, kids that had a leukemia relapse and the distancing that caused with their parents... but all together there is no one who can enter into my headspace, there is no cohesive framework of experiences for people to understand the extremes I have overcome. Some trauma and experiences can smooth your edges and help you have the compassion to better connect, but at the extremes you just have to realize that being understood and being loved are not the same. You can have a full life filled with love and many dear friends and community without being "understood".
_8j50 4y ago
Wildly inaccurate. Simply having a person exist across a room alleviates loneliness. "wilson" from "Castaway" comes to mind. Loneliness is when you desire company but are not able to find one. What the author is trying to describe is lack of intimacy which is what people normally desire after having company. It's weird how some people can't even conceive not being able to have an opportunity for others to get to know you to begin with. It's like a rich person thinking being broke means you have only one house.
moglito 4y ago
"Loneliness is when we are surrounded by people and feel misunderstood by others." By this definition a prisoner in solitary confinement is not lonely. That seems problematic. The overall argument might still be useful, but I wouldn't call these things definitions, just implications (IF you are surrounded by people and feel misunderstood by others THEN you feel lonely).
comment_ran 4y ago
Length is a measure of distance. You need a ruler to measure the distance. If "Loneliness is a measure of self-understanding", how can you measure it?
- stasbar 4y ago
  Psychometric tests or neuroscience may be the "thermometer" of both loneliness and self understanding, at least approximate one.
unmotivated-hmn 4y ago
[flagged]
nntwozz 4y ago
“If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
stonekyx 4y ago
> the lack of understanding you by other people is caused by the lack of skills to explain yourself to others This is the point where the argument went off, I believe. People only listen to what they want to listen, and generally they care less, or won’t bother to care at all, if the topic is not somehow related with themselves. So no, the lack of understanding you by other people is usually not caused by the lack of skills to explain yourself, but more often caused by human nature.
- stasbar 4y ago
  Thank you for your comment. My goal was to be as succinct as possible and cover most of the cases of “casual” feeling of loneliness. Although I still believe that self-understanding and communication are fundaments, other people are also important factor in this equation. I wrote complementary points in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34497083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34497083
- ehnto 4y ago
  Indeed, even my most empathetic, patient friends will struggle to care about a topic entirely unrelated to them for long. You do have to make an effort to find people who can relate to you in some dimension. That's why hobbies are a common suggesting for making friends, you immediately have common ground.
lvxferre 4y ago
Def #1 is way off. Loneliness is to feel that other people don't relate to you; to be misunderstood _can_ create this situation but so does different likes/dislikes, different moral premises, or even plain prejudice. Def #2 assumes that there's no such thing as non-verbal knowledge. I wouldn't be so sure; if there's one thing that all that qualia crap shows, is that some things cannot be communicated verbally. >the lack of understanding you by other people is caused by the lack of skills to explain yourself to others, Even if someone accepts the heavily questionable premises ("definitions") #1 and #2, this is still problematic because it is an unwarranted assumption. It is not a logical consequence of the premises, even if dressed as such. >Ultimately, you are the recipient of feeling understood or misunderstood, not others. So it’s your task to make others understand you. GI/GO. Questionable premises + faulty reasoning = dumb "advice". Some people will never understand you no matter how much you know yourself, and how good you are at explaining yourself to the others. And some people will never relate to you no matter how much they understand you.
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jimkleiber 4y ago
For me, loneliness is not a lack of understanding but a lack of connection. The main difference being understanding is often about "knowing" and connection is often about "not knowing" (or being comfortable with not knowing something). I personally have felt the most lonely when I feel disconnected from how I'm feeling AND how someone else is feeling. 1) If I get too focused on how I'm feeling and distant from how others are feeling, I can start to believe that no one will ever understand me, or "get me." 2) If I'm too focused on how others are feeling and not on how I'm feeling, then I may feel a lot of resentment towards them for not paying attention to me. 3) If I'm not focused on either how I'm feeling or how they might be feeling, I can feel quite numb and empty. So for me, what helps is trying to focus on how I'm feeling and how other people might be feeling, while also trying to focus on letting myself accept uncertainty for both of those things.
alecbz 4y ago
Not sure how seriously to take this but: 1) First of all, staying in the world of pure deductive reasoning, isn't this fallacious? > lack of skills to explain yourself is caused by lack of understanding yourself. It's: (can't explain) => (doesn't understand), not (doesn't understand) => (can't explain). (I.e., there could be other reasons you can't explain yourself well). 2) More seriously, I think the "if you can't explain it you don't understand it" adage is more about concepts than about people. A person is a complicated set of constantly changing thoughts and emotions, and I'm unsure that it's possible to explain the entire phenomenon of a given person "simply". That said, I think there's definitely a nugget of truth here. Often you feeling lonely may be the result of you not expressing yourself openly or honestly with people around you.
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
That's only one possibility, one might not enjoy either talking trivialities or sharing more substantial things without prior trust and shared context. Sometimes loneliness is preferable to unfulfilling socialization.
pxc 4y ago
This resonates with something I felt deeply as a kid and which stayed with me for a long time, into my early adulthood. But you can't actually guarantee that others will understand you, no matter how good you become at explaining yourself. At the same time, acceptance and even connection on the basis of imperfect understanding is very much possible— connection of a kind that is still deep and meaningful, and which abates loneliness. There is definitely some truth to OP, though. Feeling understood and correctly recognized absolutely does help with loneliness. I hope most people don't see their loneliness as a burden or personal failing, that they wouldn't have if only they were a perfect communicator.
jongjong 4y ago
I think the causality is inverted here. People who don't understand themselves will not understand others (and won't feel the need to). At the most superficial level, almost everybody is a nice guy... Dig deeper and almost nobody is. My loneliness is a measure of other people's lack of self-understanding. I know this because I get along best with people who understand themselves. These people are more genuine because they're not caught up in the pursuit of memetic desires. There are very few such people.
bmitc 4y ago
> You need to explain yourself to other people, you have to help them to understand you, you need to learn to communicate who you are. This is rather difficult in some cases because it requires not only that you understand yourself but that others understand themselves. For certain personality types, it is actually healthier to give up on the idea of having everyone understand you and the worrying that accompanies that. In other words, loneliness can actually increase because some will simply not understand you. It isn’t in their personality’s makeup, and frustration will arise in wondering why they can’t understand you. There is no one golden rule when it comes to personalities, loneliness, and self understanding. I recommend understanding your enneagram type, as it’s a great start into investigating your personality and self introspection.

140 points by stasbar 4y ago

I've got a strong objection with "You don’t really understand something if you can not explain it using simple words." While understanding and being able to give a simple explanation are correlated, this statement doesn't take into account that some understandings are deeply personal, require a pre-existing experience, or maybe a minimum level of intelligence on the part of the other person. This type of reasoning usually makes me think the people doing it are clueless about life in general but are merely academically inclined.

IceDane 4y ago

Wow! You just solved loneliness using 5 lines of high school level logic! Give this man a nobel prize. This is embarrassingly over-simplified. Maybe don't immediately turn every half-baked shower thought into a blog post and post it online.

stasbar 4y ago
Is high school logic less sound, valuable, legit? Also, I would not be surprised if Nobel price ideas were invented under the shower. Actually it's the most likely that synthesis happens during the diffused mode of thinking, which happens under the relaxation like shower. I don't claim my idea is worth Nobel price. I just explained in succinct (possibly over-simplified) way my experience of feeling misunderstood for most of my life and the solution that finally helped me. I shared it to validate whether it's a solution to all causes of loneliness or just mine.

dusted 4y ago

Is there even any suggestion that people are capable of self-understanding? I've heard some people claim that they know themselves, but I don't believe they do, at least their own description of themselves seem vastly different from how I'd describe them (not that I claim to know them very well either). I kind of attribute the claim of self-knowing to a lack of reflection on the topic, and maybe mistaking ones values and ideals for ones actual behavior.

Viliam1234 4y ago
> Is there even any suggestion that people are capable of self-understanding? We certainly can improve at that, even if we never become perfect. Here is what I use to understand myself better: * Reflecting on my past behavior. No matter how much I may hate to admit it, if in situation X I repeatedly did Y, it is fair to describe me as a person who "in situation X does Y". This is probably too humiliating for most people to do properly. * Related: noticing long-term trends in my thoughts and behavior. What I feel today may be strongly influenced by what happened to me recently; tomorrow I can feel differently. But if I feel the same way or do the same things as I did 20 years ago, that probably means something important about me. * Comparing my past behavior to other people's observed behavior. This is important, because many traits are relative to the population. Like, if you were the only person alive, you couldn't really classify yourself as "tall" or "short", even if you knew your height precisely to a millimeter; it is the comparison of your height to other people's heights that makes you "tall" or "short". By reflecting on my past behavior, I know what I am, but by comparing it to other people, I know what I am in the context of the society I live in. The context is important, if I want to communicate who I am to other people.
- dusted 4y ago
  Hmm, I wouldn't describe that as knowing oneself though, it's very external, very much like looking at any other person (with a slight bit of additional knowledge of internal state).. I mean, I can certainly say some things about how I react in certain situations, based on past observations, and I can also point out where those behaviours conflict with my own ideals, and how I will try to recognize and change that. But I can't tell how I react in radically different and new situations, I can base it off of old observations and mix in some wishful thinking about how I would WANT to react based on my values, but in reality, I don't _KNOW_, I don't know it the way I know math or the way I know how a piece of code will execute, even without executing. There are unknown variables and just too many variables in total. You know the phrase "you think you know people", it's the response to someone acting outside of your expectations, because we certainly also can't know other people, only their past behaviours and the pieces of their situations that we can observe or infer.

fallingfrog 4y ago

There are situations where this doesn't work- what if you are gay and surrounded by people who would beat you if they knew? What if you have ADHD and are surrounded by type A people? What if you are a bookworm surrounded by jocks? What if you are just so different from everyone around you that they are just baffled by your existence? Revealing your true nature can be not only difficult, but in fact dangerous. It can put you at great risk. And the sad thing is, if you grew up this way, you're going to learn to be very defensive and keep all your feelings secret and you're going to learn to blend in, and never let anyone see who you are, in order to protect yourself. And that will become a habit to the extent that anyone finding out anything about you is going to trigger fear rather than relief.

stasbar 4y ago

I'm curious what do you think about this relationship between loneliness and self-understanding?

atoav 4y ago
As a very language affine person with a MA in fine arts I don't agree with the step where the inability to put your inner workings into words equate a lack of self understanding. The true great art in any field other than poetry and literature lives from the fact that language cannot express everything in just words. You can of course explain or describe everything with language, but unless you are truly a great writer everything that is essential about your experience will be lost on the way to the receiver. And some things are not expressable in language at all (e.g. it takes music, film, a painting or other expressions to get there). Example: When we talk about a lonely old person that died recently and I would perfectly describe their inner workings, their thoughts and feelings to you in a empathic way, nothing would prepare you for the unique feeling you would get when you'd just pace through their now empty flat and wittness the way they decorated it. The materials, the objects, the traces they left would tell you another story, one they could never express with words and all of that would strike a different chord within you, maybe one you didn't even know existed. That being said, as someone with a pretty good self understanding who grew up in a rural space at and during the dawn of the internet: loneliness to me never was about a lack of self-understanding, it was about living in an environment that did not have the capacity to receive the expression I had in a y way that was meaningful to me. I understood myself perfectly well, the people around me were just too dull, without ambitions and with so simple images of the world that what I had to say would just confuse them, make them angry or make them shrug. Sure — like every rural person you learn pretty quickly to dumb it down just enough to make them feel comfortable, but that makes you even lonelier, because you are deeply aware that the dumbed down version is not you anymore. So sure, there is a link between being lonely and your ability to express yourself in a way that connects you with the people around you. But there is one additional, but crucial point: it needs to connect you to the people around you in ways that are meaningful to yourself, otherwise it will leave you empty and drained. Moving away was the best thing I ever did for myself.
- 4y ago

aritmo 4y ago

This style of reason has very shaky foundations. Watch some videos by Gabor Maté. He links addition in adult life to childhood traumas. You can fit loneliness in there as well.

jonsen 4y ago
Many thinks traumas in adult life are linked to childhood addition.
- gryn 4y ago
  Can childhood substraction also be the cause ? /s I'm guessing both of you mean addiction?
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    Maybe the problem is there is so much division these days.
    - maneesh 4y ago
      Parents always do seem to find meaning in life after they multiply
      - factorPun 4y ago
        It's definitely one of the factors.
        freetime2 4y ago
        I find that loneliness is often caused by a lack of integration. P.S. Sorry if my comment is derivative.
  - aritmo 4y ago
    It was a typo, indeed I meant "addiction".

bingu 4y ago

This type of reasoning is so sketchy. Language is only roughly mapped to thought, it isn't an exact thing like mathematics.

alsetmusic 4y ago
I don’t know. I believe that language shapes reality. For example, I decided I wanted to let go of latent homophobia by dropping a word from my vocabulary that was seen as fairly harmless by sis males when I was growing up. After consciously avoiding it and choosing not to say it, even in my mind, for a while, it truly left my pallet of words for expression. I do think that had a perceivable (to me) effect on my attitude and thinking. How many esoteric words have you learned in life that helped you to better describe a situation? I look up any word I don’t know (in something of an OCD way). I’ve had many “aha“ moments where learning a word gave me a slightly greater ability to understand the world, hence “shaping” my view of it. It’s not exact, but I wouldn’t be so dismissive of the value in thinking about words and decisions on how to think about things.

civopsec 4y ago

Nice deduction with limited utility. Someone who feels alienated from others is most probably not in a place where they can just explain who they are to other people, even if they have perfect self-understanding.

holy_based 4y ago

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outsidetheparty 4y ago

I'm kind of already not on board with this based on definition 1; but even if we redefined the word "loneliness" to fit those terms, the remainder of the argument feels more like wordplay than insight, to be honest.

stasbar 4y ago
The definition comes from Alfred Adler, more precisely the book “The courage to be disliked”.

standardUser 4y ago

I really like the thrust of this argument (loneliness is about not being understood) but I think the solution is off the mark... > So it’s your task to make others understand you There is another task that is just as important. You need to find people who are capable of understanding you. It may sound like a cart/horse issue where you need to understand enough about yourself to find people who are receptive. That my be true to a degree. But no amount of self-understanding is going to change how people respond to you if who you are is not comprehensible to those people. As an example, imagine you are a straight man with many close friends who have known you for a long time. And at some point, you begin to grapple with the idea that you're not straight, but maybe bisexual. It is possible that some of your old straight friends will have the capacity to listen and understand and respond in ways that make you feel known. But it's not necessarily likely. And if those are the only people you are close to, no amount of self-knowledge is going to change their capacity to make you feel seen and heard. You're gonna need some new friends.

Blackstone4 4y ago
Making someone feel seen and heard is a skill…if one doesn’t have that in their family or friendship group then that is a real shame. I believe that nuance was missed in your analogy.
stasbar 4y ago
I agree with most of what you said; however, I believe that once you really understand yourself you also: 1. Understand others, therefore can describe them in a way suited to their way of thinking. This is probably controversial assumption but I believe people are unconstrained, everyone can understand everything, it may just require more time. If you believe people are constrained, or just don't want to spend time on them—find people who are capable of understanding you right away. By being honest about yourself you will attract like-minded people. The process of "explaining yourself" obligates you to approach new people (not only your current closest) and explain them your existence. If you feel understood only by your closest friends, then you are not good at expressing yourself. 2. become less self-concerned. You no longer seek validation and significance—you are fine with being normal. You no longer need someone who will make you less lonely, someone who will fix your flaws. You no longer focus on yourself (you know this guy good enough), rather, you pay all the attention to others, you become emphatic, which connects with others, and thus you become less lonely. 3. You can honesty communicate your needs, fears, desires, emotions. They are part of you, and hence it's your responsibility to explain them to others. Don't expect people to read your mind. Don't run away using abstractions, give concrete examples. If you believe in small lies for a greater good, then you are not communicating yourself. If you consider breaking up with your SO, talk about it with him/her, not your friends. If your boss annoys you, tell him which actions annoys you. It requires a lot of courage therefore little people do so, but not doing it results in loneliness. You have a choice.

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jamesakirk 4y ago

This notion reduces the totality of human interaction to language. Do you think proto-huminoids who hadn't developed complex language felt lonely because they lacked an ability to explain themselves? If I become a duller and less complicated person, will I be able to more easily explain myself, and therefore less lonely? Absurd. There are many ways to bond with others that are non-verbal.

coffeeInATeaPot 4y ago

Reminded of Russell’s teapot. If others think I have misunderstood myself, the burden of proof lies on them to prove the existence of such a misunderstanding.

ell1s 4y ago

Who or what am I is the ultimate spiritual question (i.e, self-understanding). When you understand that loneliness wouldn't even be a concern, because that is an issue for who?

TimTheTinker 4y ago

I like the structure and insight of the argument, but I think it needs some re-working. Definition 1 could be broadened to: "Loneliness is when we aren't known and loved by others." Loneliness can occur because we're socially isolated for some reason. It can also occur when we're with others who don't know us, because we're not willing or able to open up to them. This could be because we are afraid to be real with others, but it could also be because we're afraid to be real with ourselves. There's nothing like being real with yourself, being real with others, being loved by others who really know you, and knowing/loving them as well. Incidentally, this ties in with Christianity's value proposition: no human can both know and love you perfectly, but God can and will to those who receive his gospel.

l- 4y ago
One can be known and loved by others, but lonely, marooned & castaway on an island. Alone by definition is just "all one" - no others, which is not #1. One would be better off consulting a dictionary before going on a definition tangent.

throwaway11823 4y ago

Earlier today I sent my SO a long string of text messages about a problem that I was having, including one of them that said "I feel like garbage." I was feeling really down. They didn't respond to any of the text messages; when they got home, I asked them about it, and it seemed like they just sort of skimmed them and they didn't notice that one in particular. I didn't mention it; I just let it go. Do I "not understand how I feel" because I feel lonely right now? Or is communication not a one way street? Most of the time when I miscommunicate with someone, I find it's as much about their not wanting to understand as it is about my being unclear. As a man, I have lots of people in my life who love me, but they consistently fail to take notice of my emotional needs. When I express that I have emotional needs, all I get in response is a "deer in the headlights" look, from other men, from women, from parents, from friends, from my SO. So usually I just keep them to myself because I don't see the point in asking for something that someone can't offer me - a tremendously lonely experience. Do I "not understand myself?" Am I not speaking clearly enough? No, the idea that I might need something from the people who rely on me terrifies them, and they freeze up and stutter and generally are unable to offer me any assistance. And of course, I'm sure all of us experienced during the pandemic the loneliness of not having access to other people or being able to fulfill your social needs - distinct from the loneliness of being with people who don't understand you.

isthisthingon99 4y ago
I can relate (as a man) and can say it was only when I started hanging around other dudes who would relentlessly mock each other that my feelings improved.
darepublic 4y ago
I feel you. I am separated right now and sometimes I want desperately to be back in a relationship -- forgetting that even within a relationship it's no guarantee to not be lonely. Hope everything is okay with you. I just try to be stoical about everything and be not fight the negative emotions but learn to live with them. It helps.
Fauntleroy 4y ago
You might need to surround yourself with more compassionate people, if you truly feel that no one is willing to consider your emotional wants and needs.

xyzwave 4y ago

"Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

oneoff786 4y ago
You seem to have misunderstood Emerson’s usage of the word understood here. No particular irony intended.
yesenadam 4y ago
I think he's referring to misunderstanding their message, which is...orthogonal to understanding them as people or not. Related: The entire introduction to the first edition of GK Chesterton's book on his friend George Bernard Shaw (1909): “Most people say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him.” https://archive.org/details/georgebernardsha0000unse/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/georgebernardsha0000unse/page/n9...

snozolli 4y ago

Definition 1 is wildly inaccurate. Even if we take it as valid, how are you going to communicate who you are to others who aren't equipped to understand? As an extreme example, consider being dropped into another nation where they speak a language you have no knowledge of. Without shared language and culture, you can't hope to be understood. Doesn't mean you can't be surrounded by helpful, caring people (friends?), though, which is why this argument is completely flawed from the get-go.

Extropy_ 4y ago
Consider being dropped into another nation where they speak a language you have no knowledge of. Without shared language and culture, you can't hope to be understood. Doesn't mean you can't be surrounded by helpful, caring people (friends?), though, which is why this argument is completely flawed Upon considering the scenario you described, my first thoughts were on how lonely an experience that would be. Also, helpful and caring people that don't understand what's wrong can't provide very effective support.
- snozolli 4y ago
  Upon considering the scenario you described, my first thoughts were on how lonely an experience that would be. That's the point. You can't be understood to a gratifying degree by people who don't share your culture, and simple words aren't going to fix the disconnect. helpful and caring people that don't understand what's wrong can't provide very effective support. If you saw someone from another country looking starved and miserable, you couldn't buy them food and direct them to shelter? Loneliness means anything from not having enough people to chat with today to not having a soulmate who understands and affirms your every view.
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imarid 4y ago

Loneliness is a feeling, but since when locigal equations can equal to feelings, idk

stasbar 4y ago
Logical equations explain the principles of the universe, they made us travel to the moon, why wouldn't they be able to explain phenomena related to feelings?

000d 4y ago

I like the definition that loneliness is not having the social interactions you want, because you are rejected. Not being understood can lead to rejection, but I don’t think it works for many types of rejection such as bullying, racism, phubbing etc.

_8j50 4y ago

Gen Z spends the most on alcohol? Hard to believe.

bobkazamakis 4y ago

self is relative

fellowniusmonk 4y ago

This article touches on something interesting but is woefully inaccurate to the point of causing harm. It devolves into almost an entreaty to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and take responsibility for not being understood. Being understood is a complete joke, it's simply not important and for many of us on extreme ends of the bell curve is effectively impossible. I was born with multiple heart defects, I was constantly at the cardiologist until about 15 with multiple surgeries and procedures. In all likelihood I will die relatively young. My first memory and start of having memories was at 3, where I was about to go into surgery and might just die. A high probability of imminent death is the first remembered experience of my life. I was fully grown by ~12 as a result of the stresses of surgery. My parents both died when I was right around 20, a few years apart. I started working fulltime at 15 to keep a roof over my families head and food on the table because of a combination of my fathers depression, the lies an old friend told him, my mothers poorly timed diagnosis of cancer and the evil state of pre-existing coverage rules pre-aca. I was homeschooled after the age of 5. I was not allowed to lift anything heavier than a jug of milk until 16 due to my heart problem. I was not allowed to play organized sports. I never had a birthday party with friend until 30 due to my birthdate. My entire perspective on life is inverted, I am a dead person still living not an alive person avoiding death. This is fundemental and very very rarely understood. Do you think at 7 any of my peers could understand me? No. Ditto as a teen and even into today. I am an extremely clear and concise communicator but I cannot inject complex, time layered, developmentally critical... insanity into a concise story that conveys the truth of living it. Not even as a novel. The people I felt best understood by were a group I knew when I was 10 and they were in their late 70s and early 80s and about to die. They played cards together at a senior citizens center, some traumas and life perspectives cannot be understood, it's a bell curve like so many things. I am now in the top ~.5% of earnings for my cohort, this is also further isolating, I have a rare amount of resilience as well. There are other unsusual things that are more common but still rare in and of themselves and compound the lack of shared reference points. Small bits of my experience can be connected to by others now that I am older, the early loss of a parent, having a career as a child, the existential fear of returning to poverty, extreme poverty when young, homelessness, kids that had a leukemia relapse and the distancing that caused with their parents... but all together there is no one who can enter into my headspace, there is no cohesive framework of experiences for people to understand the extremes I have overcome. Some trauma and experiences can smooth your edges and help you have the compassion to better connect, but at the extremes you just have to realize that being understood and being loved are not the same. You can have a full life filled with love and many dear friends and community without being "understood".

_8j50 4y ago

Wildly inaccurate. Simply having a person exist across a room alleviates loneliness. "wilson" from "Castaway" comes to mind. Loneliness is when you desire company but are not able to find one. What the author is trying to describe is lack of intimacy which is what people normally desire after having company. It's weird how some people can't even conceive not being able to have an opportunity for others to get to know you to begin with. It's like a rich person thinking being broke means you have only one house.

moglito 4y ago

"Loneliness is when we are surrounded by people and feel misunderstood by others." By this definition a prisoner in solitary confinement is not lonely. That seems problematic. The overall argument might still be useful, but I wouldn't call these things definitions, just implications (IF you are surrounded by people and feel misunderstood by others THEN you feel lonely).

comment_ran 4y ago

Length is a measure of distance. You need a ruler to measure the distance. If "Loneliness is a measure of self-understanding", how can you measure it?

stasbar 4y ago
Psychometric tests or neuroscience may be the "thermometer" of both loneliness and self understanding, at least approximate one.

unmotivated-hmn 4y ago

[flagged]

nntwozz 4y ago

“If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

stonekyx 4y ago

> the lack of understanding you by other people is caused by the lack of skills to explain yourself to others This is the point where the argument went off, I believe. People only listen to what they want to listen, and generally they care less, or won’t bother to care at all, if the topic is not somehow related with themselves. So no, the lack of understanding you by other people is usually not caused by the lack of skills to explain yourself, but more often caused by human nature.

stasbar 4y ago
Thank you for your comment. My goal was to be as succinct as possible and cover most of the cases of “casual” feeling of loneliness. Although I still believe that self-understanding and communication are fundaments, other people are also important factor in this equation. I wrote complementary points in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34497083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34497083
ehnto 4y ago
Indeed, even my most empathetic, patient friends will struggle to care about a topic entirely unrelated to them for long. You do have to make an effort to find people who can relate to you in some dimension. That's why hobbies are a common suggesting for making friends, you immediately have common ground.

lvxferre 4y ago

Def #1 is way off. Loneliness is to feel that other people don't relate to you; to be misunderstood _can_ create this situation but so does different likes/dislikes, different moral premises, or even plain prejudice. Def #2 assumes that there's no such thing as non-verbal knowledge. I wouldn't be so sure; if there's one thing that all that qualia crap shows, is that some things cannot be communicated verbally. >the lack of understanding you by other people is caused by the lack of skills to explain yourself to others, Even if someone accepts the heavily questionable premises ("definitions") #1 and #2, this is still problematic because it is an unwarranted assumption. It is not a logical consequence of the premises, even if dressed as such. >Ultimately, you are the recipient of feeling understood or misunderstood, not others. So it’s your task to make others understand you. GI/GO. Questionable premises + faulty reasoning = dumb "advice". Some people will never understand you no matter how much you know yourself, and how good you are at explaining yourself to the others. And some people will never relate to you no matter how much they understand you.

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jimkleiber 4y ago

For me, loneliness is not a lack of understanding but a lack of connection. The main difference being understanding is often about "knowing" and connection is often about "not knowing" (or being comfortable with not knowing something). I personally have felt the most lonely when I feel disconnected from how I'm feeling AND how someone else is feeling. 1) If I get too focused on how I'm feeling and distant from how others are feeling, I can start to believe that no one will ever understand me, or "get me." 2) If I'm too focused on how others are feeling and not on how I'm feeling, then I may feel a lot of resentment towards them for not paying attention to me. 3) If I'm not focused on either how I'm feeling or how they might be feeling, I can feel quite numb and empty. So for me, what helps is trying to focus on how I'm feeling and how other people might be feeling, while also trying to focus on letting myself accept uncertainty for both of those things.

alecbz 4y ago

Not sure how seriously to take this but: 1) First of all, staying in the world of pure deductive reasoning, isn't this fallacious? > lack of skills to explain yourself is caused by lack of understanding yourself. It's: (can't explain) => (doesn't understand), not (doesn't understand) => (can't explain). (I.e., there could be other reasons you can't explain yourself well). 2) More seriously, I think the "if you can't explain it you don't understand it" adage is more about concepts than about people. A person is a complicated set of constantly changing thoughts and emotions, and I'm unsure that it's possible to explain the entire phenomenon of a given person "simply". That said, I think there's definitely a nugget of truth here. Often you feeling lonely may be the result of you not expressing yourself openly or honestly with people around you.

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

That's only one possibility, one might not enjoy either talking trivialities or sharing more substantial things without prior trust and shared context. Sometimes loneliness is preferable to unfulfilling socialization.

pxc 4y ago

This resonates with something I felt deeply as a kid and which stayed with me for a long time, into my early adulthood. But you can't actually guarantee that others will understand you, no matter how good you become at explaining yourself. At the same time, acceptance and even connection on the basis of imperfect understanding is very much possible— connection of a kind that is still deep and meaningful, and which abates loneliness. There is definitely some truth to OP, though. Feeling understood and correctly recognized absolutely does help with loneliness. I hope most people don't see their loneliness as a burden or personal failing, that they wouldn't have if only they were a perfect communicator.

jongjong 4y ago

I think the causality is inverted here. People who don't understand themselves will not understand others (and won't feel the need to). At the most superficial level, almost everybody is a nice guy... Dig deeper and almost nobody is. My loneliness is a measure of other people's lack of self-understanding. I know this because I get along best with people who understand themselves. These people are more genuine because they're not caught up in the pursuit of memetic desires. There are very few such people.

bmitc 4y ago

> You need to explain yourself to other people, you have to help them to understand you, you need to learn to communicate who you are. This is rather difficult in some cases because it requires not only that you understand yourself but that others understand themselves. For certain personality types, it is actually healthier to give up on the idea of having everyone understand you and the worrying that accompanies that. In other words, loneliness can actually increase because some will simply not understand you. It isn’t in their personality’s makeup, and frustration will arise in wondering why they can’t understand you. There is no one golden rule when it comes to personalities, loneliness, and self understanding. I recommend understanding your enneagram type, as it’s a great start into investigating your personality and self introspection.