Ben Rine

And so when we are isolated, it basically triggers a stress response.

Our brains and bodies react as if there is an imminent threat.

Our cortisol levels go up, the stress hormone.

It triggers the activation of the brain's stress response system and the bodies, which is the HPA axis, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis.

Without the mumbo-jumbo science language, what this means is that basically our brains set off an alarm system when we're isolated and start to make us feel stressed.

And when we remain isolated for an extended period of time, that stress response can have negative effects on our health and well-being.

And that's not just restricted to our brains.

Of course, there is evidence, for instance, that being isolated is associated with an increased risk of dementia, of anxiety and depression, you know, things that we think of the brain, but also other body systems, you know, heart disease, diabetes, all these things all increase with isolation.

And there's a lot of science to unpack here, as you can probably tell.

But the reason I share these two things is because if you look at, let's say,

the amount of time people spend interacting on a monthly basis between 2013 and 2021, that amount of time dropped by 36 hours per month.

You know, there are many reasons for that, I think.

One of them is, unfortunately, that we actually tend to make a lot of very bad estimations and predictions about social interactions, often to the negative side.

So, for instance, we think that

If we're going to go hang out with somebody, it's not going to be as good for us as it really is.

We think that we shouldn't stay in the conversation too long because it's going to get worse.

We think that compliments and things expressing gratitude are not as positive as they are.

for whatever reason, we have all these bad estimations about interacting.

And I think that's probably one of the factors that gets in our way is that we think basically this isn't going to go very well.

I'm better off just staying at home.