How To Cope With Loneliness During A Pandemic

How To Cope With Loneliness During A Pandemic

Photo by Jose Pablo Garcia

So many people all over the world are experiencing loneliness during this pandemic. In our collective efforts to stay safe and safe lives, our usual habits of visiting friends and families, going to the games, interacting and socializing has been put to a hold. How can we cope with and ease our loneliness? What are the ways of surviving How do we deal with Loneliness and this feeling of isolation? How do we overcome loneliness? How do we protect our mental health? Read through to find helpful ideas.

Understanding Loneliness

Loneliness can strike anyone, anywhere, anytime. You can be in a room with a lot of people and still feel alone. It’s an emotional state and not necessarily the objective state of being alone. Loneliness is a state of discomfort or distress that results when one perceives a gap between one’s desires of social connection and what your actual experience of it is. Research suggests that loneliness poses a serious threat to our mental and physical health.

 How Does Loneliness Affect Our Mental and Physical Health?

A lot of us feel lonely from time to time but these brief feelings of loneliness shouldn’t harm our mental or physical health. However, the longer this pandemic continues the more these feelings become long-term. Loneliness (long-term) is associated with a range of mental health outcomes such as anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, impaired executive control and diminished willpower to exercise and eat healthily.

 What Can You Do to Overcome Loneliness During the pandemic?

Many of us are alone right now, and of course we will feel a natural sense of loneliness. However, what our minds do with the sense of loneliness can even be more powerful than the loneliness itself. This is because the less time we spend with people the more time we spend with our inner thoughts, which is naturally a critic. Generally, loneliness has to do with how we perceive the situation and not necessarily the situation itself, dealing with our inner critic eases the feeling. The critical inner voice influences our perception a lot , it is like an internal enemy that feeds us a thread of cruel commentary about ourselves, fueling the feeling of loneliness by criticizing us, making us feel unlovable and unwanted. In this period of the pandemic, we are more vulnerable to our undermining inner voices. Thoughts like, “You’re lazy. You’re alone. You’re useless. Nobody misses you. You can’t get along with your family. You’re a mess.” You could list more examples.

1. Overcoming the inner enemy that haunts us when we are alone

How do we overcome this attack?

Firstly, you should recognize when you’re having these attacks, what actions they may be encouraging. If you can start to identify when your thinking gets hijacked by your inner critic, you can at least, be aware and reject its cruel perspective about you or the situation.

Secondly, you should know what triggers it. Do you often separate yourself from other members of the family? Do you ponder a lot before going to bed? Beat yourself up over how the day went or stress over the coming day. Avoid whatever triggers any shameful feeling perpetuated by your inner critic.

Thirdly, you should counter these voices, speak up for yourself rather than succumb. For example, if it says, “Nobody misses you, you’re alone.” You could respond by saying, “I’ve people who care about me. I’m a good person, I’m not alone.”

Lastly, you should recognize behaviors suggested by this inner critic to perpetuate our misery and loneliness. Know when it encourages you not call a friend, open up to someone about how you feel. Etc. Recognize these suggested behaviors and resist them, break away from them.

Doing all these is important for your Health, it reduces the stress.

 

2. Adapting New Ways To Stay in Touch With People.

Everywhere, the government is asking people to stay at home and only go out for health reasons, food or essential work, practice social distancing or social isolation , observe personal hygiene and so on.

This means we need to adapt and find new ways to connect with people and stay in touch. Now, more than ever is the time to keep up with all the social media platform available. Social interaction amidst the physical distancing during the Coronavirus lockdown is possible on the numerous social media platforms. Almost everyone is on Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, telegram, Skype, Zoom etc. You should chat up your friends, video chat, text or audio. Try to keep up your routines with friends through social media.

Follow this guide to nurturing relationships during Coronavirus

3. If you’re experiencing difficulties coping despite engaging in all of the above, you can opt to see a psychologist. With the lock down, telepsychology is available. Don’t listen to that inner critic who may be saying, “You don’t have to talk to anyone about it.”    

Conclusion

Human beings are social creatures and as such, social connection is essential for our health. its potential for adverse health effects shouldn't be neglected as research has linked social isolation and loneliness to higher risks for a variety of physical and mental conditions: heart disease, obesity, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, cognitive decline, Alzheimer's disease, and even death.

Your health is important! Loneliness can be dealt with.

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