Arthur C. Brooks explains the opposite signal strategy: when loneliness and depression make you want to isolate, do the opposite. Go out instead of cocooning, start conversations instead of withdrawing, move your body instead of staying still. This re-engages your executive brain and breaks the self-reinforcing cycle.
If you need to get out of loneliness, here's what you do. You need to practice the opposite signal strategy. When you're feeling crummy about your life, probably your limbic system is lying to you and you're impairing the functioning of your prefrontal cortex, the executive centers of your brain. So what do you need to do? Do the opposite of what you want to do. You want to cocoon? Don't cocoon. You want to isolate yourself? Don't isolate yourself. You don't want to talk to anybody? Talk to people. The opposite signal strategy means ignoring your instincts when you're having these negative cognitions and emotions. Think of it like a workout routine. The more sedentary you are, the more sedentary you're going to want to be. And this is a really common problem. You know, when people get out of the cycle of moving and walking and working out and going to the gym, they tend to get stuck in the sedentary behavior of lying on the couch and not working out. And what you need to do is to do the opposite signal strategy. Do the opposite of what you want to do. When you're working out a lot, you're working out every day, you want to work out every day. When you stop, you don't want to stop stopping. You don't want to get back into it. Getting back into it is really hard. That's why you need to say, okay, I'm going to do the opposite of what I feel. And that's the right thing to do. Loneliness works the same way. Follow an opposite signal strategy. That's the first big thing to do.
