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ttqs84
Deinonychus
Joined: Dec 07, 2008
Age: 28
Posts: 363
Location: Reality
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 Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:05 pm Post subject: Is it possible to live a life alone? |
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| knowing the fact that no one likes you or don't love you 'cos you're weird, can life be lived with little or no contact with people at all? |
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DJRAVEN66
Raven
Joined: Oct 14, 2011
Posts: 110
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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| If I don't want talk or interact with people I don't. So, I would say yes it is posibale to live with little or no contact with people at all. |
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Claradoon
Supporting Member
Joined: Aug 24, 2006
Age: 62
Posts: 2445
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 3:00 am Post subject: |
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Yes it is possible. Whether it's pleasant is another matter. I've been wrestling with that question recently. I can usually manage to seem normal for an hour at a time. So maybe I could join the book club. Or not. If it doesn't work out at the book club - well, I'll have to reinvent myself. But as what?
I do know that volunteer work really helps. It helps me and it helps the other person(s). I volunteer on-line. This is the site I use - you can pick a place or virtual, and what you'd like to do.
http://www.volunteermatch.org/
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Vito
Blue Jay
Joined: Dec 20, 2011
Age: 21
Posts: 99
Location: Czech Republic
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 6:54 am Post subject: |
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Actually, I considered that option very recently. Whether I would like NOT to spend my whole life alone, for me, it is still the better option than to spend my life surrounded by a*******  |
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auntblabby
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief
Joined: Feb 13, 2010
Posts: 18240
Location: the island of loveable toy humans
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 7:53 am Post subject: |
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being a hermit amongst the smogberry trees is a lot better than being in so-called "civilization" among the brassholes.  |
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jagatai
Idiot
Joined: Feb 22, 2010
Age: 48
Posts: 1312
Location: Los Angeles
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 7:56 am Post subject: |
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I assume there are some people who can tolerate isolation better than others. I like a lot more solitude than your average NT but I start climbing the walls if I don't see people much. When it gets really bad I start reading and responding to posts on WP.
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namaste
Enigmatic Charismatically Odd
Joined: Apr 15, 2011
Posts: 1841
Location: Hindustan
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 8:07 am Post subject: |
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I would go mad if left totally isolated
some volunteer work, 1-2 people to talk with keeps me sane 
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TenPencePiece
Curiosity Killed the Cone
Joined: Dec 12, 2009
Age: 18
Posts: 44015
Location: Greater Manchester, United Kingdom
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:59 am Post subject: |
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I couldn't bear it
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Luska
Snowy Owl
Joined: Nov 13, 2011
Posts: 160
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:36 am Post subject: |
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It's hard. I'm always viewed as nice but after a few months people find me strange and before finding out about Asperger's I was always wondering why i couldnt "connect" with people even if I was talking to them. Eventually they also noticed my autistic traits making relationships difficult. And I was always viewed as 'weird'. I remember when I was in preschool I used to stare at blocks. play with magnets, study how toilets worked, playing with moving parts. For me that was 'play' for everyone else, 'playing' was in a playground or with other people.
As I got older I always questioned why I was different and why i had intense interests. They changed from time to time but i wondered why my mind was so focused and devoted on them and not to people.
Until today i find it difficult to 'connect' with people. I now realize that 'talking' does not equal 'connecting'. Fish in a school dont talk but for some reason nature makes them connect effortlessly. This has nothing to do with 'social akwardness'. Everyone is socially awkward at some point even most NTs are socially awkward or have social phobias, but there seems to be this natural 'connect' ability in animals that is so impaired in someone with autism.
I mean I have made efforts to make friends but so many of them fail. I wont give up but I just hate being alone. |
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SanityTheorist
Wandering Artist
Joined: Feb 14, 2012
Posts: 2098
Location: The Akuma Afterglow
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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Possible but not healthy. Look at people in insane asylums for proof.
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Luska
Snowy Owl
Joined: Nov 13, 2011
Posts: 160
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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Read the rest of the articles at Livescience.com
http://news.yahoo.com/why-loneliness-deadly-163201593.html
Why Loneliness Can Be Deadly
By Katherine Gammon | LiveScience.com – Sat, Mar 3, 2012...
Loneliness can send a person down a path toward bad health, and even more intense loneliness, studies have shown. But while some have assumed the culprit was a dearth of others to remind a person to take care of himself or herself, new research suggests there's a direct biological link between being lonely and ill health.
Loneliness can set into a motion a barrage of negative impacts inside the human body — but with additional social contact, some of the ill effects can be stopped.
John Cacioppo, a University of Chicago social psychologist who studies the biological effects of loneliness, presented some of his latest research at the Social Psychology and Perception meeting in San Diego in February.
He has found, for instance, loneliness is tied to hardening of the arteries (which leads to high blood pressure), inflammation in the body, and even problems with learning and memory. Even fruit flies that are isolated have worse health and die sooner than those that interact with others, showing that social engagement may be hard-wired, Cacioppo said.
In one study, Cacioppo and Steve Cole of UCLA examined how the immune system changed over time in people who were socially isolated. They observed a change in the kinds of genes that lonely people's immune systems were expressing. Genes overexpressed in the loneliest individuals included many involved in immune system activation and inflammation. In addition, several key gene sets were underexpressed, including those involved in antiviral responses and antibody production. The result is that a lonely person's body has let its defenses down to viral and other invaders. [7 Personality Traits That Are Bad For You]
"What we see is a consistent pattern where it looks like human immune cells are programmed with a defensive strategy that gets activated in lonely people," Cole told LiveScience.
Here's why: The immune system has to make a decision between fighting viral threats and protecting against bacterial invasions because it has a fixed fighting capability. In lonely people who see the world as a threatening place, their immune systems choose to focus on bacteria rather than viral threats. Without the antiviral protection and the body's antibodies produced against various ills, the result means a person has less ability to fight cancers and other illnesses. Those who are socially isolated suffer from higher all-cause mortality, and higher rates of cancer, infection and heart disease.
In addition, loneliness raises levels of the circulating stress hormone cortisol and blood pressure, with one study showing that social isolation can push blood pressure up into the danger zone for heart attacks and strokes. It undermines regulation of the circulatory system so that the heart muscle works harder and the blood vessels are subject to damage by blood flow turbulence. Loneliness can destroy the quality of sleep, so that a person's sleep is less restorative, both physically and psychologically. Socially isolated people wake up more at night and spend less time in bed actually sleeping, according to Cole and Cacioppo's research.
http://www.livescience.com/18800-loneliness-health-problems.html
The cycle created by loneliness can be a downward spiral. Studies by Cacioppo and others before him have found that lonely people tend to rate their own social interactions more negatively and form worse impressions of people they meet.
"Much like the threat of physical pain, loneliness protects your social body. It lets you know when social connections start to fray, and causes the brain to go on alert for social threats," Cacioppo told LiveScience. "Being lonely can produce hyper-reactivity to negative behaviors in other people, so lonely people see those maltreatments as heavier. That makes it possible to fall more deeply into loneliness."
The reasons trace back to humanity's evolutionary history, when people needed each other to stay alive. Loneliness doesn't just make people feel unhappy, it actually makes them feel unsafe — mentally and physically. This powerful evolutionary force bound prehistoric people to those they relied on for food, shelter and protection, to help them raise their young and carry on their genetic legacy. Cacioppo surmises that the distress people feel when they drift toward the edges of a group serves as a warning — like physical pain — that they need to reengage or face danger.
Everyone feels left out for some period of time, be it moving to a new city or starting college. Typically the feelings subside by themselves within six months. But when it comes to treating chronically isolated people, some interventions work better than others. In a large meta-analysis done last year, Cacioppo and colleagues found that two of the best ways to treat loneliness are to train people for the social skills they need to view the world in a more positive light, and to bring people together to share good times.
http://www.livescience.com/697-loneliness-kills-study-shows.html
It's true—you might die of loneliness, but not until you're older.
In a new University of Chicago study of men and women 50 to 68 years old, those who scored highest on measures of loneliness also had higher blood pressure. And high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, the number one killer in many industrialized nations and number two the United States.
Lonely people have blood pressure readings as much as 30 points higher than non-lonely people, said the study leaders Louise Hawkley and Christopher Masi. Blood pressure differences between lonely and non-lonely people were smallest at age 50 and greatest among the oldest people tested. |
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ttqs84
Deinonychus
Joined: Dec 07, 2008
Age: 28
Posts: 363
Location: Reality
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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| okay. but no matter how or when you do interact with others you still won't have friends or lovers because of Autism/Asperger's, how can that be possible? aren't we condemned to be lonely because of our disability? isn't that what they're trying to say? sorry if i'm exaggerating. |
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zzmondo
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 19, 2012
Age: 19
Posts: 866
Location: Columbus, Ohio
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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| You could, but I wouldn't go through life by myself personally. It would be unbearable to me, I like being around people even here on this forum. |
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wornlight
Deinonychus
Joined: Sep 10, 2010
Age: 29
Posts: 322
Location: CT, USA
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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| alone and lonely are not the same. you can stop being lonely by examining the beliefs that support that state of being. people are more resistant to questioning their beliefs than they are to the stress required to maintain them, so many suffer needlessly their entire lives to maintain the identity that those beliefs comprise, even to the point that it kills them. if you sincerely wish for your happiness to depend less on specific conditions, examine every perception that elicits a feeling response, from every possible angle, and with as much honesty as you can muster. pay attention to how you are feeling. look where it hurts to look. look at the feeling first, until it passes, then look at what caused it. when you look at the feeling, let it be. do not suppress it. watch it and see how it feels and see what it does. see how thoughts form a narrative scaffolding around it. it feels right to think these thoughts when you feel this way, but you do not want to feel this way and these thoughts perpetuate it. when you stop getting caught up in it, relax with it and just watch it, it begins to lose some of its power. as you watch the feeling closely, it loses its influence on thinking. when you see clearly what bullshit it all is, that you really want to be happy, and since continuing to feed into this will not lead to that, you will naturally stop doing it. |
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nick007
old-skewl fan-boy
Joined: May 05, 2010
Age: 30
Posts: 9744
Location: was Louisiana but moved in with my girlfreind in Vermont
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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| ttqs84 wrote: | | okay. but no matter how or when you do interact with others you still won't have friends or lovers because of Autism/Asperger's, how can that be possible? aren't we condemned to be lonely because of our disability? isn't that what they're trying to say? sorry if i'm exaggerating. |
You can try looking for friends & a relationship here on WP; I'm looking for both BTW. Other Aspies/autistics might could better relate/sympathize with your AS/autism
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