Loneliness Is Bad for your (Spiritual) Health

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I’m hooked on a Netflix series called “Alone.”

It’s about a group of 10 experienced outdoors people who are taken to remote areas, each left alone with limited gear, no food, and cameras to document their stay. They can have plastic tarps, bows and arrows, fishing line and some trapping equipment, and a telephone to be used only if they want to quit. This year’s show promises $500,000 to the last one to do so.

It’s fascinating to see how they go about planning their time and doing what is needed to survive in the wilderness. They are dropped off in the fall in isolated spots that are near bodies of water. They anticipate a brutal winter. Do you focus first on building a shelter or getting food?

Some build great shelters but are lax in the food-gathering department. Others ardently hunt and fish and try to guarantee a food supply and neglect their shelters. Most are chronically hungry and are reduced to eat such “delicacies” as squirrel eyeballs.

Reaction To Being Alone

But to me, what is most interesting is their reaction to being alone. The first to quit in the show’s season I’m watching was a man named Jacques. He’s only 23 years old but has lived, hunted and fished from a young age, and loved the first few days in the wild. But he couldn’t abide the loneliness, so after only 10 days, he gave up the quest for half a million dollars and bowed out.

I suspect he won’t be the only contestant to throw in the towel because of loneliness or homesickness. Several other contestants have already been telling their cameras how much they miss their loved ones.

I can relate. I vividly recall the loneliness I felt as a young priest stationed at a mission in Bolivia. For practical reasons, the two priests at the mission when I arrived went back to the U.S. and I was left alone in a remote area of the country. I loved the work and the people, but I was alone most of the time and that was my undoing.

Fact is, people aren’t meant to be alone. I believe solitude for prayer or meditation or just to bring a bit of peace is important, but a steady diet of involuntary solitude is harmful to our psyches and our humanity. There’s a reason that prisons use solitary confinement as the highest form of punishment.

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Despite texting, email, Facebook and other social media, loneliness seems to have reached epidemic proportions, according to people who study the matter.

“Loneliness is an epidemic,” says psychologist Amy Sullivan, writing on the Cleveland Clinic’s web site. “We’re the most socially connected society, yet so many people experience extreme loneliness.”

She believes that along with smoking, obesity and inactivity, loneliness is a risk factor for chronic health problems.

“When you’re experiencing loneliness, your levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, go up,” she says. “Cortisol can impair cognitive performance, compromise the immune system, and increase your risk for vascular problems, inflammation and heart disease.” Loneliness is also a risk factor for serious mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.

A Spiritual Problem

I believe loneliness is also a spiritual problem. The stories and lessons of the Hebrew Bible are more about “God’s people,” in the plural, than about individuals. Likewise, the lessons of the Christian Bible are not teachings and practices that should result in an attitude of “Jesus-and-me.” Christian prayers and practices are for the most part communal, about “us.”

Ancient Christians joined together to celebrate the Eucharist, the earliest form of the Catholic mass, with a great sense of togetherness, according to the Acts of the Apostles. They put great stock in “being in this together.”

That’s why I believe people searching for God in the Jewish and Christian traditions need to regularly bond with other believers, and doing so at church or at the synagogue makes the most sense.