By Adam Grant — 2020
Rekindling dormant ties can bring unexpected benefits to our lives.
Read on www.nytimes.com
CLEAR ALL
The neglected middle child of mental health can dull your motivation and focus — and it may be the dominant emotion of 2021.
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A 3-year-old survived a 9-story fall and some wonder if a miracle took place.
Anxiety, conflict, self-doubt, disconnection, lack of purpose or fulfillment—if we’re honest with ourselves, for many of us, these are common experiences.
Research shows there’s a mental limit on how many people we can feel deeply connected to; federal data indicates most Canadians have a squad of around five close friends and the famous “Dunbar’s Number” theory suggests 150 friends is the cap for our social networks.
Emotional detachment is an inability or unwillingness to connect with other people on an emotional level. For some people, being emotionally detached helps protect them from unwanted drama, anxiety, or stress.
We're living in what you might call an epidemic of loneliness. Recent research has shown that many of the people we feel close to probably don't reciprocate the feeling.
It is not unusual to feel emotionally numb after or during a very stressful event. A person may also notice a temporary feeling of dissociation or disconnection from the body and the outside world.
My whole existence could be described in two words: inadequate and lonely. I remember one day walking down the hall in school. I was so tense that I couldn’t seem to walk straight. I felt like I was a prisoner in my own body and mind. There was me, and then the rest of the world.
I know what it's like to feel disconnected — not only from yourself, but from others and the world. It's a painful place to be. I've lived with that nagging sense of things being not quite right. I've felt the restlessness of wanting more from life, without knowing exactly what I was looking for.
Humans can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food and — according to survival lore — three months without companionship. Whether true or not, what’s clear is that people need people.