UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology_SS 2025_FOR PRINT - Flipbook - Page 10
Loneliness
SOMETHING TO ALLEVIATE OR HARNESS?
ven before the COVID pandemic, public health o昀케cials
E
a human condition. In the book, Deming states, “The e昀昀ort to
warned of a growing mental health crisis and loneliness
overcome loneliness both pulls it out of the shadows of ignorance,
endemic, an endemic that escalated quickly during
shame, and repression and reveals what makes us human. This
lockdowns and has continued in our changed world of increased
situation is what I am calling exquisite loneliness.” In leaving
screen interactions (for both work and personal communications)
loneliness in the shadows, have we as a society been tamping down
and increased isolation. If there is an upside to such a universal
our ability to turn loneliness into something constructive? Have we
acknowledgement of loneliness, it is the spotlight that is now
been starving within our loneliness?
directed on vital research into human connections, resilience, and
“Loneliness is a kind of pain in the same way that hunger is,”
the e昀昀ects of isolation and loneliness. These research studies, with
Deming shares, “and we eat because we’re hungry, and we
varied focuses, theories, and results, all seem to lead a reader to the
maybe reach out to other people because we feel that hunger for
questions: Have we been approaching loneliness all wrong? What
connection has become a problem.” The problem comes when the
if loneliness is simply part of the human experience like the need
food is empty calories, when the lines out to connect are either not
for food and water, and if so, what are new avenues into traversing
established or lack depth. Social media, for example, “gives the
loneliness in productive rather than deductive (or destructive)
ways?
illusion of there being conversation all the time,” he posits, but, he
In the Spring 2024 issue, we spoke with Yale professor and expert
and so it’s ultimately a natural response, then social media and
on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better
things like that are like Oreos. I mean, you can eat a lot of them.
choices, Dr. Laurie Santos, about how to allow rather than
It’s going to make you feel bad, and you’re not going to be really
suppress negative emotions and how to build self-compassion.
昀椀lled up.” He references Nietzsche’s phrase about “the after dinner
In our Summer 2024 issue, we spoke with Susan Magsamen and
nausea,” but goes on to say that when you are ingesting something
Ivy Ross about their book Your Brain on Art, neuroplasticity,
like Oreos and you can’t or won’t stop eating them, “We tend to
neuroaesthetics, and the importance of art, salient experiences, and
settle for that sort of thing. It’s easy. It’s at hand. It 昀椀xes us very
community. While loneliness was not the focus of either of these
quickly, but not su昀케ciently.” And since that is what happens when
conversations, loneliness is certainly being addressed by the work
relying upon social media or interaction for the sake of interaction,
all three women are undertaking. Of loneliness, Richard Deming,
it “pretty much exploits our innate need for connection.” In his
whose latest book, This Exquisite Loneliness, was released in
book, Deming shares social psychologists Daniel Perlman and
2023, tells me, “I don’t believe that it gets cured. It gets navigated."
Letitia Anne Peplau’s de昀椀nition for loneliness: “the unpleasant
continues, “The analogy I go to is, if loneliness is akin to hunger,
experience that occurs when a person’s network of social relations
In the book, Deming approaches the topic of loneliness from
is de昀椀cient in some important way, either quantitatively or
an academic-creative angle, saying, “I was coming from the
qualitatively.” Quality and quantity are certainly quali昀椀ers that
perspective of a psychoanalytic or philosophical mode.” His own
make sense when we look at our own communities and social
loneliness has been lifelong but is an experience he now views as
networks.
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