by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: August 28, 2009   Last Updated: June 05, 2011

Humans tend to group with their immediate households and families. At higher levels, humans become community or tribal animals, then social animals and ultimately nationalistic animals. At the grandest level, humans can view themselves as isolated in the universe with no other similar animals in sight!

The majority of us begin life with a promise that our pack, tribe or family will always be there. We learn that we must be there for our pack or family first. The strongest component of our early moral education is to consider our family first in our social alliances, no matter how we define "family".

When divorce, death, imprisonment or other dysfunction causes families to break away from the standard organization, the first experiences with isolation occur. Being the odd person out is often the result when children do not have a traditional family structure. Such dysfunction can cause a person to develop emotional and social barriers to establishing relationships with others.

Isolation and loneliness occur at work when a workplace environment is not conducive to establishing friendships. Finding co-workers who share interests, hobbies, religion, or who just go to lunch in a group helps to reduce the workplace "lonely crowd" syndrome. Temporary workers have the hardest time of fitting in, even when working a long term assignment.

Returning soldiers and their families can have a hard time of fitting in to society after years of living within military job and social structures.

Post high school education offers some of the easiest socializing opportunities possible, yet preexisting issues cause a lot of students to feel isolated. When a large campus is populated by strangers from all over the world, the task of finding friends can seem overwhelming and impossible. When very young or new students do not live on campus or in campus housing, the isolation from people outside of school can be worse. Also, having to work during the hours when other students are socializing or engaging in after class activities can be very isolating.

The military, law enforcement, medicine and other chaos heavy fields require that a person get over any differences or isolation and become close enough with their fellows to work and to trust each other, especially when in crisis mode. Being forced to work for long hours together or to live in close quarters may seem to decrease isolation, but other factors can still cause some to feel as if they do not "fit in" with others.

Having young

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