Glitching the loneliness virus in reality
I Studied Happiness and Accidentally Found Something Much Stranger About Loneliness
I wasn't actually trying to study loneliness.
I was studying happiness.
I wanted to know what kept appearing when you stopped listening to everyone's individual theories and instead looked across large happiness surveys, population research, psychology, relationships, personality, behaviour, health, sleep, exercise, meaning, environment and social connection.
Basically:
What does the data keep pointing to?
Loneliness kept turning up.
So I followed it.
And eventually I realised I had been thinking about loneliness completely wrong.
Because the opposite of loneliness isn't necessarily having people around you.
And that changes almost everything.
The experiment that happens naturally every day
Imagine two women.
Both live alone.
Both wake up on Sunday morning with nobody else in the house.
Neither has plans until Tuesday.
Woman A makes coffee, puts music on, walks around in her underwear, spends six hours doing something she's obsessed with and thinks:
God, I love my life.
Woman B wakes up in essentially the same external circumstances and thinks:
Nobody wants me.
Same number of humans in the room.
Same relationship status.
Same Sunday.
Completely different psychological reality.
Now reverse it.
Put both women at a dinner table surrounded by eight people.
Woman A feels loved.
Woman B feels invisible.
We've changed the number of people from zero to eight without necessarily changing loneliness.
That is extremely important.
Because it means loneliness cannot simply be the brain counting nearby humans.
Something else is being calculated.
So what exactly is the brain measuring?
This is where the research became fascinating.
Loneliness is generally understood as a subjective discrepancy between the connection someone wants and the connection they perceive themselves as having.
That word perceive matters.
It doesn't mean loneliness is imaginary.
The feeling is completely real.
It means the variable isn't simply:
How many people exist around me?
It's closer to:
Does the connection I need feel available to me?
And suddenly a lot of strange human behaviour makes sense.
You can have 500 Facebook friends and be lonely.
You can have one person and not be lonely.
You can be married and lonely.
You can spend three days alone and feel fantastic.
You can be adored and still feel unwanted.
You can receive affection and somehow not experience yourself as loved.
That last one interested me most.
What if connection can arrive and still fail to register?
Imagine somebody compliments you.
One person receives:
She likes me.
Another receives:
She's just being polite.
Someone doesn't reply for three hours.
One person thinks:
They're probably busy.
Another thinks:
I knew they'd lose interest.
A friend cancels.
One brain records:
Plans changed.
Another records:
People always leave me.
Same incoming information.
Different interpretation.
Different emotional result.
And importantly, probably a different next behaviour.
The second person might withdraw.
Stop messaging.
Become guarded.
Seek reassurance.
Test the relationship.
Interpret ambiguity more negatively.
Or avoid another situation in which rejection might occur.
Now the internal expectation has started changing the external environment.
That is where this became extremely interesting to me from a manifestation perspective.
The loneliness loop looks suspiciously like a reality loop
There is psychological research suggesting loneliness can involve increased vigilance for social threat and more negative expectations or interpretations of social information.
Think about what that could create.
I expect rejection.
↓
I become more alert for evidence of rejection.
↓
Ambiguous behaviour is more likely to feel threatening.
↓
I protect myself.
↓
My behaviour changes.
↓
Connection becomes harder.
↓
See? I knew people would reject me.
The prediction just acquired evidence.
Now imagine running that program for ten years.
At some point you may stop experiencing it as an expectation.
It simply becomes:
This is what people are like.
Or:
This is what always happens to me.
That is exactly the kind of thing I look at in manifestation.
Not merely what someone consciously says they want.
What have they come to expect reality to do?
This may explain one of the strangest things about loneliness
Why can two people with seemingly similar lives have radically different loneliness levels?
Because their external circumstances aren't the whole equation.
Personality matters.
Relationship quality matters.
Belonging matters.
Social expectations matter.
Past experiences matter.
Interpretation matters.
Whether somebody believes support is available matters.
Whether affection actually registers as affection matters.
And emotional stability appears to matter too.
When I looked at happiness more broadly, neuroticism was particularly interesting because it relates to the tendency to experience negative emotion, worry and distress more readily.
Its opposite end is usually described as emotional stability.
That doesn't mean emotionally stable people have magically perfect lives.
It means the same uncertainty doesn't necessarily generate the same amount of distress.
That's an enormous distinction.
Because uncertainty exists in every relationship.
Every friendship.
Every business.
Every future.
If uncertainty itself feels dangerous, life provides unlimited material for distress.
Maybe loneliness isn't always saying “I need more people.”
Maybe sometimes it's saying:
I don't feel held in the world.
That's different.
You might try to solve the first problem by adding humans.
But the second involves things like:
belonging.
trust.
security.
being understood.
being wanted.
having someone dependable.
having somewhere to turn.
recognising affection.
believing support will still exist tomorrow.
And perhaps something even more fundamental:
the expectation that reality contains warmth for you.
That phrase kept staying with me.
Because I realised you can theoretically have connection without having that expectation.
And if your expectation is the opposite, every connection has to fight uphill against it.
Then I found something else hiding inside happiness
The happiness research didn't just keep pointing toward relationships.
It kept pointing toward an ecosystem.
Sleep.
Movement.
Purpose.
Autonomy.
Positive relationships.
Social support.
Meaning.
Emotional stability.
Enjoyable activity.
Something worth anticipating.
The ability to experience positive emotion.
This gave me another thought.
Perhaps severe unhappiness sometimes involves several systems failing simultaneously.
Imagine:
You don't sleep properly.
You aren't moving much.
Nothing feels meaningful.
You don't anticipate anything enjoyable.
You don't feel supported.
You feel unwanted.
You don't trust the future.
You're hyper-alert to rejection.
You feel you have little control over your life.
Now somebody tells you:
“Think positive.”
Positive about WHAT?
The architecture underneath happiness hasn't changed.
This completely changed how I designed my new subliminal
Originally the obvious approach would have been:
I am happy.
Again.
And again.
And again.
But after studying this, that suddenly seemed almost ridiculously incomplete.
If the subconscious answer is:
No I'm not, because nobody wants me
then happiness isn't the only belief involved.
So I started writing underneath happiness.
Not just:
You are happy.
But:
You feel like you belong.
You are wanted.
You feel connected even when you're alone.
That one is particularly important.
Because it separates connection from the requirement that somebody physically be beside you at this exact moment.
Then:
You expect warmth from people.
That's an expectation statement.
You recognise genuine affection when you receive it.
That's a perception statement.
You have exactly the right kind of connection that feels right for you.
That's not simply more people.
It's quality.
You have a strong social safety net.
That's perceived available support.
You feel secure in uncertainty.
That's emotional stability.
You don't worry easily.
Again — emotional stability.
Then I added things that don't appear social at all:
You have meaningful choice daily in life.
Autonomy.
There is something worth getting up and doing every day.
Anticipation and engagement.
You have a sense of meaning and purpose to your life.
Meaning.
You have regular physical activity that makes you feel happy.
Movement.
You feel well rested on a regular basis.
Sleep.
You laugh and smile every day.
Positive emotion and behaviour.
And then one of my favourites:
There is nothing missing from your life.
Because maybe something is missing is itself one of the deepest programs underneath chronic dissatisfaction.
The Happiness Glitch
That's why I called it The Happiness Glitch.
I'm not interested in forcing somebody to perform happiness over the top of misery.
I'm interested in the architecture producing the experience.
If loneliness can persist in the presence of people...
If affection can exist without registering as affection...
If uncertainty can become danger...
If expectations can influence perception...
If perception changes behaviour...
And behaviour changes what happens next...
then the interesting question isn't:
How do I force myself to feel happy?
It's:
What is my system currently programmed to expect from life?
Coldness?
Abandonment?
Nothing to look forward to?
Nobody dependable?
Something always missing?
Or:
Warmth.
Belonging.
Support.
Affection.
Purpose.
Safety.
Enjoyment.
Connection.
Something good tomorrow.
That's where psychology and manifestation become incredibly interesting to put beside each other.
I don't need them to be the same discipline.
They're asking different questions.
But both make me interested in the relationship between internal expectation and lived experience.
And maybe that's the most interesting thing I found while studying happiness:
Sometimes changing your life isn't only about obtaining what appears to be missing.
Sometimes it's also about becoming capable of recognising, receiving and expecting it when it arrives.
And that is a completely different experiment.
— Karissa The Enchanted Path
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