Overcoming Loneliness & Isolation

One of the biggest mental health threats that faces many of us as we get older is growing isolation, and the loneliness that can come with it. Family and friends thin out over the years, and getting out and about isn’t always as easy as it used to be for everyone.

Nor is youth a guaranteed protection against this—in today’s world of urban sprawl and nothing-is-walkable cities, in which access to social spaces such as cafés and the like means paying the rising costs with money that young people often don’t have… And that’s without getting started on how much the pandemic impacted an entire generation’s social environments (or lack thereof).

Why is this a problem?

Humans are, by evolution, social creatures. As individuals we may have something of a spectrum from introvert to extrovert, but as a species, we thrive in community. And we suffer, when we don’t have that.

What can we do about it?

We can start by recognizing our needs, such as they are, and identifying to what extent they are being met (or not).

• Some of us may be very comfortable with a lot of alone time—but need someone to talk to sometimes.
• Some of us may need near-constant company to feel at our best—and that’s fine too! We just need to plan accordingly.

In the former case, it’s important to remember that needing someone to talk to is not being a burden to them. Not only will our company probably enrich them too, but also, we are evolved to care for one another, and that itself can bring fulfilment to them as much as to you. But what if you don’t a friend to talk to?

• You might be surprised at who would be glad of you reaching out. Have a think through whom you know, and give it a go. This can be scary, because what if they reject us, or worse, they don’t reject us but silently resent us instead? Again, they probably won’t. Human connection requires taking risks and being vulnerable sometimes.
• If that’s not an option, there are services that can fill your need. For some, therapy might serve a dual purpose in this regard. For others, you might want to check out the list of (mostly free) resources at the bottom of this article

In the second case (that we need near-constant company to feel at our best) we probably need to look more at our overall lifestyle, and find ways to be part of a community. That can include:

• Living in a close-knit community (places with a lot of retirees in one place often have this; or younger folk might look at communal living/working spaces, for example)
• Getting involved in local groups (you can check out NextDoor.com or MeetUp.com for this)
• Volunteering for a charity (not only are acts of service generally fulfilling in and of themselves, but also, you will probably be working with other people of a charitable nature, and such people tend to make for good company!)

Need a little help?

There are many, many organizations that will love to help you (or anyone else) overcome loneliness and isolation.

Rather than list them all here and make this email very long by describing how each of them works, here’s a great compilation of resources:

Healthline: How To Deal With Loneliness (Resources)

ADHD’s Knock-On Effects On Mental Health

We’ve written before about ADHD in adult life, often late-diagnosed because it’s not quite what people think it is:

ADHD… As An Adult?

In women in particular, it can get missed and/or misdiagnosed:

Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women

…but what we’re really here to talk about today is:

It’s the comorbidities that get you

When it comes to physical health conditions:

• if you have one serious condition, it will (usually) be taken seriously
• if you have two, they will still be taken seriously, but people (friends and family members, as well as yes, medical professionals) will start to back off, as it starts to get too complicated for comfort
• if you have three, people will think you are making at least one of them up for attention now
• if you have more than three, you are considered a hypochondriac and pathological liar

Yet, the reality is: having one serious condition increases your chances of having others, and this chance-increasing feature compounds with each extra condition.

Illustrative example: you have fibromyalgia (ouch) which makes it difficult for you to exercise much, shop around when grocery shopping, and do much cooking at home. You do your best, but your diet slips and it’s hard to care when you just want the pain to stop; you put on some weight, and get diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, which in time becomes diabetes with high cardiovascular risk factors. Your diabetes is immunocompromising; you get COVID and find it’s now Long COVID, which brings about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, when you barely had the spoons to function in the first place. At this point you’ve lost count of conditions and are just trying to get through the day.

If this is you, by the way, we hope at least something in the following might ease things for you a bit:

• Stop Pain Spreading
• Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
• Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue (While Having The Limitations Of Chronic Fatigue)
• When Painkillers Aren’t Helping, These Things Might
• The 7 Approaches To Pain Management

It’s the same for mental health

In the case of ADHD as a common starting point (because it’s quite common, may or may not be diagnosed until later in life, and doesn’t require any external cause to appear), it is very common that it will lead to anxiety and/or depression, to the point that it’s perhaps more common to also have one or more of them than not, if you have ADHD.

(Of course, anxiety and/or depression can both pop up for completely unrelated reasons too, and those reasons may be physiological, environmental, or a combination of the above).

Why?

Because all the good advice that goes for good mental health (and/or life in general), gets harder to actuate when one had ADHD.

• “Strong habits are the core of a good life”, but good luck with that if your brain doesn’t register dopamine in the same way as most people’s do, making intentional habit-forming harder on a physiological level.
• “Plan things carefully and stick to the plan”, but good luck with that if you are neurologically impeded from forming plans.
• “Just do it”, but oops you have the tendency-to-overcommitment disorder and now you are seriously overwhelmed with all the things you tried to do, when each of them alone were already going to be a challenge.

Overwhelm and breakdown are almost inevitable.

And when they happen, chances are you will alienate people, and/or simply alienate yourself. You will hide away, you will avoid inflicting yourself on others, you will brood alone in frustration—or distract yourself with something mind-numbing.

Before you know it, you’re too anxious to try to do things with other people or generally show your face to the world (because how will they react, and won’t you just mess things up anyway?), and/or too depressed to leave your depression-lair (because maybe if you keep playing Kingdom Vegetables 2, you can find a crumb of dopamine somewhere).

What to do about it

How to tackle the many-headed beast? By the heads! With your eyes open. Recognize and acknowledge each of the heads; you can’t beat those heads by sticking your own in the sand.

Also, get help. Those words are often used to mean therapy, but in this case we mean, any help. Enlist your partner or close friend as your support in your mental health journey. Enlist a cleaner as your support in taking that one thing off your plate, if that’s an option and a relevant thing for you. Set low but meaningful goals for deciding what constitutes “good enough” for each life area. Decide in advance what you can safely half-ass, and what things in life truly require your whole ass.

Here’s a good starting point for that kind of thing:

When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)

And this is an excellent way to “get the ball rolling” if you’re already in a bit of a prison of your own making:

Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

If things are already bad, then you might also consider:

• How To Set Anxiety Aside and
• The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← this is about getting out of depression

And if things are truly at the worst they can possibly be, then:

How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

Take care!