Is loneliness a habit?

There’s this idea of ‘rewards’, that we tend to do things that are reinforced by the various ‘pleasure’ chemicals that our body puts out in response to various external (and internal?*) events.

What would the ‘reward’ be for isolation? Absence of pain caused by other people? What’s coming to mind is that statement I read somewhere that “People will do more to avoid pain than to seek pleasure.”

Don’t know if it’s true, that statement, but seems like a *possible* explanation.

If you spend your whole life avoiding pain, then – well, where does the pleasure come from? Because we *need* pleasure as much as we *need* food, air, water, etc. It’s a basic human need, I bet it’s even on Maslow’s hierarchy somewhere.

I think the ‘pain’ part for me, that I really have to honor and not ignore or ride roughshod over, is that as a ‘sensitive’? person? I was often odd (wo)man out in my family, felt like no one ever ‘got’ me. Which is a particularly isolating feeling.

Now as an adult, having greater ability (though not complete) to *choose* the company I keep, I more often *try* to choose people who ‘get’ me.


*My question on ‘internal’ is that, at some level, *all* events are external, at least initially. It is how they get *stored* as body memory or actual memory that affects whether they’re something that recurs in the absence of an actual stimulus – such as PTSD, for example.