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"One surprising finding from my research is that
being married does not in any way protect you from feeling lonely." |
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David Burns,
Intimate Connections, Part 3
Interpreting your score: The higher your score, the more lonely
you feel. The following chart indicates the degree of loneliness.
|
Total Score |
Degree of Loneliness |
Percent of People Scoring in this Range
|
|
0-4 |
Minimal or no loneliness |
20% |
|
5-9 |
Mildly lonely |
30% |
|
10-14 |
Moderately lonely |
30% |
|
15 or more |
Very lonely |
20% |
| |
|
Total 100% |
My research using the Loneliness Scale has confirmed that loneliness
is surprisingly common. I recently gave the scale to 272 married and
single men and women of all ages from Dayton, Ohio. Their average score
on the test was 10, indicating that most people are in fact mildly to
moderately lonely. The study showed that loneliness affects both men and
women of all ages and income brackets. Younger people and men tend to
feel somewhat lonelier whereas highly educated people tend to feel
somewhat less lonely. One surprising finding from my research is that
being married does not in any way protect you from feeling lonely. This
was unexpected since we often think of loneliness as an affliction of
people who are single, separated, or divorced. But in point of fact,
married people experience just as much loneliness and sometimes more.
What does this really mean? If being along does not cause loneliness,
and if having someone to love is not the cure, then what is the
difference between people who feel lonely and people who don’t? The
crucial difference is self-esteem. If there’s one message this book
contains, this is it: Finding someone to love is not the solution to
loneliness. The solution is learning to love yourself. Once you love and
appreciate yourself, you’ll discover that other people will love you
too, and your loneliness will only be a memory.
This is not a new message, but what is new is the development of a
systematic program that can help you turn this insight into an emotional
reality. This book describes an effective, patient-tested program that
has helped hundreds of men and women of all ages get over feelings of
loneliness, shyness, inferiority, and sexual insecurity. It is based on
cognitive and behavioral techniques pioneered at the University of
Pennsylvania and now in use at medical centers, clinics, and
universities throughout the world. These methods have been tested and
found to be helpful for people with a wide variety of mood and personal
relationship problems. If you’re willing to work at them, you can make
them work for you.
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