Writing Task: The Complexity of Loneliness
You have read an article concerning the recent phenomenon of downshifting and you think it would be of interest to other readers. Write an essay in which you:
• introduce the topic and summarise the issues mentioned in the text,
• discuss the implications of these issues for making career choices,
• summarise your key points an suggest who would benefit from reading the article.
You should summarise, paraphrase or quote from the text to support your arguments. Write your answer in 300–350 words. You have 80 minutes to complete the task.
There are more and more elderly people living alone, and some of them are at risk of feeling lonely or socially isolated (1-2), although – as we shall see – loneliness and isolation are two different issues: a person can be alone and not feel alone and vice versa. Weiss (3) affirms that loneliness is a natural phenomenon, a (personal) feeling that may arise at certain moments in life and affect anyone, regardless of gender, age or other socio-demographic characteristics. He also explains that loneliness is often seen as rooted in weakness or self-pity, as something that – supposedly – the individual should be able to eliminate, since it is not a physical ailment. Furthermore, he makes the distinction between emotional loneliness and social loneliness. Other authors have defined loneliness from different perspectives: as a negative psychological response to a discrepancy between the social relationships one desires (expectations) and the relationships one actually has (objective, real ones); as an individual feeling characterized by an unpleasant or inadmissible lack of quality in certain social relationships that can occur either because one has fewer social contacts than one wishes to have, or because the level of intimacy hoped for in relationships is not there; as the subjective component of the objective measure of social isolation, in other words, loneliness would be the inverse of a situation of social support; as a social pain, something comparable to physical pain, because if physical pain arises to protect us from physical dangers, loneliness would manifest itself as a way to protect us from the danger of remaining isolated (related to the importance of social connections); etc.
In general, it is assumed that emotional loneliness refers to the absence of an attachment figure (together with feelings of isolation) and social loneliness as the lack of a social network, the absence of a circle of people that allows an individual to develop a sense of belonging, of company, of being part of a community. Both in daily life and in the research area, various researchers have referred to “loneliness” and “social isolation” indistinctly. Others, however, find both terms very different from each other. Making accurate evaluations depends on a clear definition of the concept of loneliness, with special awareness of its multidimensionality and its differences with respect to related concepts (social isolations or a lack of social support). Loneliness and isolation place people at risk of vulnerability or social frailty; this dynamic concept of scarcity is closely linked to sustainability, development, social exclusion, poverty, and the lack of social support resources. Furthermore, social vulnerability is closely tied to physical frailty and mortality. […]
However you look at it, loneliness, that sense of lacking or privation, exerts a powerful influence over our health. There are multiple facets to loneliness: there are feelings of emptiness or abandonment associated with a lack of relationships or intimacy; there is the temporal perspective, (loneliness sets in over time) through which the individual perceives his or her own loneliness; there is the set of emotional aspects that accompany loneliness, including sadness, melancholy, frustration, shame or desperation; and, there is the individual’s own subjective evaluation regarding the quality and quantity of his or her social relationships, built and rebuilt by the people in their lives, an evaluation which depends on the continuous interaction between factors which are rather diverse (identity, personality, expectations, life events, interpersonal engagement, socio-economic variables, household, etc.). Yet, despite all of this, while effective interventions are necessary, they are still scarce.
Adapted from: Yanguas, J., Pinazo-Henandis, S., & Tarazona-Santabalbina, F. J. (2018). The complexity of loneliness. Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis, 89(2), 302–314. https://doi.org/10.23750/abm.v89i2.7404