Feeling lonely, it turned out, caused your cortisol levels to absolutely soar—as much as some of the most disturbing things that can ever happen to you. Becoming acutely lonely, the experiment found, was as stressful as experiencing a physical attack
Lost Connections ~ Johann Hari
The physical and the psychological are not as distinctively separate as we imagine them to be. In fact, we often think of them as working in contrast to each other: we have to choose between following reason or following emotion, following logic or following intuition, following sense or following the heart.
But that's not how it's supposed to be. Logic and feelings are different—that's not in question—but they're meant to work in tandem. They're meant to be complementary partners, not contrary opponents. Rather than detracting from one another, the two sides are made to unite for a common purpose: your wellbeing. It's for this reason that emotional distress can cause severe physical pain with very real consequences.
Another scientist, Lisa Berkman, had followed both isolated and highly connected people over nine years, to see whether one group was more likely to die than the other. She discovered that isolated people were two to three times more likely to die during that period. Almost everything became more fatal when you were alone: cancer, heart disease, respiratory problems.
Loneliness itself, John was slowly discovering as he pieced together the evidence, seemed to be deadly. When they added up the figures, John and other scientists found that being disconnected from the people around you had the same effect on your health as being obese—which was, until then, considered the biggest health crises the developed world faced
In the famous psychological study of Asch's lines, the scientist asked his participants to classify lines according to their lengths. There were also unknown actors who were asked to classify the lines, and they were instructed to deliberately choose incorrectly. The point of the study was to gauge the power of peer influence. And the results were fascinating.
A large majority of participants followed the unknown actors' incorrect answers. A small minority deviated. More interesting than their selections, though, was how the participants made their decisions.
The majority truly thought they were answering correctly. Peer influence can be so powerful that it actually changes physical perception, and, after hearing the actors' answers, the participants saw the lines differently. Conversely, for the minority who actually did answer correctly, deviating from popular opinion, their visual perception was unaffected, but their brain scans showed heightened activity in the amygdala, the emotional and fearful center of the brain. When the minority voiced their accurate but 'unpopular' answers, they were felt rejection.
The brain is the convergence of the physical and the psychological. For the majority in Asch's study, the brain changed its perception to preserve the person's group identity. For the minority, it preserved its perception but suffered the pain of rejection. As one scientist writes in her Aeon article, 'The brain makes no distinction between a broken bone and an aching heart.'
The physical and the psychological are not as distinctively separate as we imagine them to be. On the contrary, they are complementary partners. The physical response to psychological duress, such as experiencing loneliness and rejection, can take its toll on a body. One of the reasons we struggle so much to understand our pain is because we've failed to make the basic connection between the physical and the psychological
Deep grief and depression, she explained to me, have identical symptoms for a reason. Depression, I realized, is itself a form of grief—for all the connections we need, but don't have
Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash