Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
Go long enough without company and almost anyone will do. That is worth knowing about yourself, and worth watching for in someone who lives alone.
Loneliness does not make you a poor judge of character on purpose. It just lowers the bar until whoever turns up seems fine. The steadier answer is small and regular: a call every Sunday, one standing thing in the week, so that you are never so hungry that you stop choosing.
Qur’an and Sunnah
If other relatives, orphans, or needy people are present at the distribution, give them something too, and speak kindly to them (Quran 4:8). Attention is pushed towards the people nobody has counted, which is usually where loneliness sits.
وَإِذَا حَضَرَ ٱلۡقِسۡمَةَ أُوْلُواْ ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰ وَٱلۡيَتَٰمَىٰ وَٱلۡمَسَٰكِينُ فَٱرۡزُقُوهُم مِّنۡهُ وَقُولُواْ لَهُمۡ قَوۡلࣰ ا مَّعۡرُوفࣰ ا
If other relatives, orphans, or needy people are present at the distribution, give them something too, and speak kindly to them
Qur’an 4:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Pooling twenty three studies, loving-kindness and compassion meditation produced a small but significant improvement in life satisfaction, with effect sizes around 0.31 in before and after designs. So there are deliberate ways to feel less starved of warmth, and what they deliver is modest. The tested route is a practice you go and do, which sits better than waiting to see who turns up.
Gu X, Luo W, Zhao X, Chen Y, Zheng Y, Zhou J, Zeng X, Yan L, Chen Y, Zhang X, Lv J, Lang Y, Wang Z, Gao C, Jiang Y, Li R. (2022). The effects of loving-kindness and compassion meditation on life satisfaction: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Applied psychology. Health and well-being doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
When contact is scarce you take what is offered, which is not the same as choosing it.
When not to
If someone you love lives alone and has a new friend who has started asking about money, treat that as urgent rather than heartwarming.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The real feeling usually crosses someone's face for less than a second before the polite version arrives. If your attention is elsewhere, the polite version is all you will ever meet.
The advice to touch, to eat together, to move your body, to say the true thing out loud stands up perfectly well without the hormone story attached.
Reading about anger will not make you gentler. Warmth is a skill with reps, like anything else, and it fades when nobody practises it.