Causes and effects of chronic loneliness

I have come across with the study of Spithoven and others (2017) while looking for cognitive biases. I may very well be classified under chronic lonely adjective so it is quite an attractive study to me as well.

Briefly, I can say that loneliness is a thinking management problem, not an illness, not a clear stupidity. Social people may assume in those way and even tease or harass lone people, yet they miscalculate one thing: Interpretation of the language is different between different individuals, and as also illustrated in cited study, this is also the case for lonely and non-lonely ones.

It is hard to accept in the beginning, as the findings so far clearly suggest that "lonely people fear rejection, so they eliminate any kind of perceived rejection probability by completely eradicating themselves from society", or simply by rejecting themselves before others have a chance to do so. Especially the part with "prevention-oriented goals", claiming that lonely people have goals more to avoid rejection than having satisfying relationships, seemed quite familiar with me. In last times, maybe for a month or two, I realized that whenever I have some goal in my mind to climb the academic career ladder, I simultaneously had the feeling of hitting the ceiling. There was a serious probability of rejection or at least inadequate recognition of my work by thesis committee members. As a result, I was really reluctant to make required works to be able to present on the thesis committee, as if I am dragging myself to a dangerous place. I associated this as a comfort zone related problem once, but it was totally ridiculous as there is simply no comfort in my current state. Still, knowing or not knowing the real reason, I forced myself to move forward. I had the worst presentation of my life and still, bad memories cling to my head, yet only going against my loneliness related perceptions gave me the possibility of advancing my career.

Finally, I can say that every person in the world has quite many cognitive biases, this exhaustive looking Wikipedia list (2018) is very good in explaining this fact. Everyone should strive to diminish these biases, and lonely people are also no exception, albeit they may have some different biases than others. This approach will make our situations or states not an obligation of our emotional or social problems, but our mindful preference.

References

Spithoven, A. W. M., Bijttebier, P., & Goossens, L. (2017). It is all in their mind: A review on information processing bias in lonely individuals. Clinical Psychology Review, 58, 97-114. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2017.10.003

Wikipedia. (2018). List of cognitive biases. Retrieved September 13, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases