A journey from loneliness to laughter.

We live a social life, a family life, a professional life & a personal life. Put together all these stages, we commonly call that we are living. But, do we really feel that we live all the stages! How many of us? Certainly a minimum percentage. Do you know, why? Because we mostly live two stages together consciously. Think deeply, you’ll get the clue.

In student life, we live family and social life. After attaining adolescence, most of us start to draw a boundary line to create personal life. When this happens, adolescents generally decrease connection either with friends or with family members. They cut down social or family life to create more space for personal life. Adolescence comes with lot of hormonal changes resulting in change of psychological crux. Some new understandings, new information, new inner feelings make it more exciting. We tend to enjoy those feelings uniquely and individually. That’s where personal life gets more priority. Then we chose surroundings where our newly acquired concepts get entertained and discussed. If we get support from friends, we like to spend more time with them, if from family members, we prefer to withdraw ourselves from outer world. It’ll become easier to maintain harmony between family & personal life as it’s only on either side of a closed door. Don’t you see it? A teen is very cheerful?with friends but very silent at home. Another teen is so homesick that his/her friends find him/her rarely & in an introvert mood. It’s all due to choice of stages.

Gradually when we enter into professional life, we start to operate in a broader spectrum and we acquire variety of experiences at home, at workplace, at social gathering and from different approaches from family members. It actually helps us to opt life stages. Before marriage it’s personal & professional, after marriage it’s personal family and professional, after 15/20 years of marriage it’s more social and professional with family responsibilities. As we grow older, our priorities start to switch. We start concentrating more on family and social life. It’s a cycle we commonly go through. Certainly exceptions are there for many different reasons.?There are surprising equations which induce diversion in life.

Question is about those surprising equations, which actually redirects the flow of normal living by instigating softest emotions in our mind. The most dangerous emotion is LONELINESS.

Loneliness is an emotional shut down. Rather it’s a state of mind linked to wanting human company but end in perceived isolation. In other words loneliness can be described as a social pain which motivates people to seek for more human connection and somehow fail to get it. [ Don’t misinterpret ALONE with LONELY. These are two different feeling altogether.] loneliness is a perception and judgment, not an objective state. Possible cause of loneliness has been described as the discrepancy between desired and achieved level of social contacts depending more on quality f social relationships than quantity. One can be lonely in a crowd or with full social schedule or even in a marriage.

Great psychoanalyst Freda Fromm – Richmann said that loneliness is the worst part of mental illness. The seriously mental ill person can’t trust his/her perceptions and emotions, nor they can share immediately because of inexpressible uniqueness of broken mind.

One of the saddest thing about loneliness is that it leads to what is psychologically called "negative spiral”. Negative spirals are those patterns that make us slip from feeling positive and capable of getting results into a negative fog that makes us feel that all our actions are pointless and doomed to failure. People who feel isolated come to dread bad social experiences and they lose faith that it’s possible to enjoy as good company.

How to identify loneliness?

1.??????Surface level connection with friend and family.

2.??????Nothing like “close” friend.

3.???????Feeling of isolation irrespective of places, occasion and surrounding.

4.??????Self doubt.

5.??????Lack of reciprocation.

6.??????Burn out in initial social engagements.

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There’s a common psychological saying that, “PERSON WHO LAUGHS ON STUPID JOKES IS VERY LONELY”

Well, have you ever heard anyone sitting behind you in a funeral laughing individually! Have you seen anyone piled in a group of laughing people with doomed face? Have you seen anyone on dining table having foods silently but suddenly starts laughing without any legitimate clue? Thinking pattern in our brain what we usually call mind is a huge mystery. There are lot of unexplored dimensions which can ignite the feelings that provoke us to smile or laugh. But it’s confirmed in studies that expressions like laughter?represents a person’s?inner happiness caused by some external supply of materials or ideas or accomplishments. Then why lonely people laugh suddenly? Let’s get into deeper understanding about laughter.

In general conception, laughter has a positive vibration which can spread fast. Say, you hear someone laughing behind you on the street. You immediately start to draw a picture in your mind that the person must be laughing with friends or on phone conversation. These type of thoughts may make you smile at times because sound of laughter can be experienced as a worm and positive feeling inside. But reality is something different. According to science, laughter can be classified into different types ranging from spontaneous to simulated, stimulated, induced or even pathological. Imagine that a person laughing is just walking around alone in the street. Surely this laughter don’t seem so inviting. Isn’t it?

Laughter and appreciation of humor are important components of adaptive social, emotional and cognitive functions. It actually helps us to survive amidst such a competitive world where everyone is struggling for existence. That’s why laughter works as a community bond which can diffuse stress and anxiety to a significant level. But it’s for general instances. Laughing out loud on awkward situations shows that there is sheer disbelief on own emotions and to authenticate those disbeliefs. A lonely person laughs out loudly as if there is any hilarious joke or can remain utterly silent in a group of people who are enjoying collectively. Actually their conscious acceptance level don’t have any connection with happening reality and mostly poised with feeling of isolation and subconscious stigmas.

Do you feel likewise? Do you have any friend or known person who has this tendency? If yes, take immediate steps to see experts of concerned field. Otherwise you’ll never understand when the person’s perceptional misjudgments will convert into conceptual hallucination and living a life becomes a comedy. Because all thoughts and plans of self harm starts from this point. Get a guard before it’s too late.

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