Lonely: Learning to Live with Solitude

by White, Emily

• ISBN13: 9780061765100
• ISBN10: 0061765104
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-18
• Publisher: Harpercollins

Summary

Despite having a demanding job, good friends, and a supportive family, Emily White spent many of her evenings and weekends alone at home, trying to understand why she felt so completely disconnected from everyone. In this insightful and soul-baring memoir, White recounts her struggle to comprehend and overcome her chronic loneliness, a debilitating condition that she contends deserves the same attention as depression and other mental difficulties. Interweaving her personal story with cutting-edge scientific research-as well as incredibly moving accounts offered by numerous lonely men and women-White provides a deep and thorough portrait of this increasingly common but too often ignored affliction.

Author Biography

Emily White is a former lawyer who now works as a writer and policy analyst. Her work on loneliness has appeared in the Guardian, the Huffington Post, ELLE (UK), the New York Post, and the Daily Mail. She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Table of Contents

UCLA Loneliness Scale	p. xiii
Preamble: The Visit	p. 1
Arrival
Premonition: Waiting for the state to strike	p. 9
Truth: Struggling with popular notions of what loneliness should be	p. 37
Impact
The Long Haul: Recognizing chronic loneliness as a problem in itself	p. 71
Heart and Soul: How loneliness weaves its way into us	p. 101
Paradox: Loneliness and the mystery of the changing self	p. 133
Context
Handles: Thinking about a state that feels so unwidely	p. 165
The Cohort Effect: How our culture is leaving us lonelier	p. 203
Taboo: Loneliness as the state you're not supposed to name	p. 237
Resolution
Promises, Promises: Public and private ideas about responding to loneliness	p. 271
The Good-Bye Look: Listing, luck, and a difficult change	p. 299
Epilogue: Lonely	p. 327
Acknowledgments	p. 333
Selected sources and further reading	p. 335
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