CEO loneliness. “Findings from our inaugural CEO Snapshot Survey reveal that half of CEOs report experiencing feelings of loneliness in their role, and of this group, 61 percent believe it hinders their performance,” it reports. The survey also showed that almost 70 percent of first-time CEOs who experience loneliness said their feelings negatively affect their performance. The report says that “loneliness and its repercussions can affect any individual with newfound authority.” Alone and Hurting B ut loneliness gets more personal than work; it also negatively impacts our bodies. Vivek Murthy says when he was a doctor, the condition he addressed the most was loneliness. “The elderly man who came to our hospital every few weeks seeking relief from chronic pain was also looking for human connec- tion: He was lonely. The middle-aged woman battling advanced HIV who had no one to call to inform that she was sick: She was lonely too,” he says in Harvard Business Review. “I found that loneliness was often in the background of clinical illness, contributing to disease and making it harder for patients to cope and heal.” Findings from a study of 200 breast cancer sur- vivors and reported in Psychoneuroendocrinology echo Murthy’s statement. The authors say loneliness predicts pain, depression, and fatigue—lonelier study participants experienced more of these issues than their socially connected counterparts. Lisa WWW.AGRM.ORG MAY/JUNE 2018 11 Homelessness is synonymous with loneliness, isolation, lack of social support. Once a person or family finds themselves without permanent housing, it can be diffi- cult or even impossible to get reconnected with a social network. And those social linkages are key to remaining tethered to the fabric of society. Access to jobs, safety, and physical and mental health all rely on the ability to connect meaningfully with others. I work with an [undercover] ethnographer who has studied homelessness by himself being homeless for over three-and-a-half years. He writes, “homelessness is the most lonely experience of my life. It is a constant gnawing hunger for acknowledgment, attention, love, and acceptance. This hunger is a deeper, darker shadow to the physical hunger that I experience daily. But as harsh as loneliness is, it is only the blunt periphery of the suffering. At its sharpest piercing center, I feel abandoned, betrayed, and forsaken.” This loneliness—the sense of being forgotten by friends and family, strangers and society—is what he believes to be “the core driving experience behind so much of the addiction cycle, revenge psychology, and issues with authority” that occur among some in the homeless community. This is a powerful idea—that the prob- lem at the center of the seemingly intractable problem of homeless policy isn’t money, housing, jobs, or food. And the root isn’t necessarily mental illness or addiction. It is loneliness. —Eva Witesman in Deseret News. December 21, 2017 A Vicious Cycle The powerful connection between loneliness and homelessness Continued on page 14 Ī