As I continue to see my clients over Zoom, it seems like everyone I speak to is very lonely. It makes a lot of sense. This year we have more real, practical reasons than ever to experience isolation.
Social distance, wash hands, don’t hug, don’t get too close to anyone at the grocery store, stay home. These are smart, important choices. But these choices are bringing a very real emotional and mental health problem: loneliness. Reaching out to someone for yet another Facetime call, or encountering “zoom fatigue” when in an online church or support group can seem very exhausting and just not worth all the effort after the year we’ve had.
It’s just easier to cancel. Isolate. Numb yourself with food, alcohol, Netflix. Wake up and do it all again.
Also keep this in mind: the most intense kind of loneliness isn’t just for those who live alone.
There is an especially painful kind of lonely in your marriage; in your family; laughing at the same meme online that was shared among your co-workers.
Let’s tell the truth: loneliness sometimes hurts worse when you’re among others than when you’re physically alone.
We’re living in a global medical crisis, and among mental health professionals, we all agree: this is also a one of a kind mental health crisis. Domestic violence, depression symptoms, panic attacks, OCD symptoms with new kinds of intrusive thoughts are all increasing in our caseloads. Our sense of safety has been fundamentally shaken, even if COVID-19 has not crossed our doorstep.
Maybe it’s grief, this feeling of loneliness.
Individual and collective grief. Each one of us has lost something this year, some more than others. Some of us have lost loved ones. Loss is grief. But imagine grieving the loss of a loved one and never sharing how it feels with the people you love. That’s what many of us are doing with this kind of pandemic grief and loneliness. Brushing it off with dismissive statements like “other people have it worse than I do” is a common response. Or perhaps you find yourself simply emotionally holding your breath until this is all over and things “go back to normal”.
These are terrible solutions. Dismissing our grief, letting loneliness simmer and repressing our natural emotional responses bring real depression symptoms, and a host of other mental health problems (see above!).
Here’s my solution: Don’t. Grieve. Alone.
(And maybe go on an antidepressant.)
That’s why I’m writing about the importance of people. Community. Relationships.
Despite the overall devastation to our family and social lives that we have needed to make to accommodate to changes in the world, here is some hope:
I have heard of other opportunities for many beautiful things to come out of our limitations with COVID 19 such as:
• Creativity with our spent time together
• Relational focus on ourselves, spouses, and children
• Slower pace that can help reduce stress
• Vision for managing crises
As we prepare for the end of a year that has really felt like a decade, there are still many unknowns ahead of us.
What will 2021 look like?
How have I been coping this year?
Has my mental health been battered and bruised to the point of needing real mental health interventions?
Could I find new ways to cope?
It is important to care for our souls and to remember the value of community.
While we isolate in ways to stay safe there is still the potential for the healing power of community to occur. We can create loving and safe environments for our relationships to help sustain us through this pandemic and the coming year.
Just because we are spending less time with people in social places, does not mean that we must engage with people less.
Some families are reporting they are engaging with their spouses and children more as they are home together, finding ways to spend this time in close quarters can improve our overall relationships when things one day go back to the usual. Maybe you will have adjusted during this time in 2020 that you don’t quite want to go back to the way they were. Perhaps you’re remembering what’s important to you: quality time with your loved ones.
Or perhaps you’re lonely, and see no way out of your current isolating habits to cope. I have a theory why some of us stay stuck.
Stay with me, we’re getting into some psychological development theory, but it might shed some light on why you’re having more intimacy problems than ever.
Let me explain attachment theory. This can be described as our early life attachments to our caretakers/parents. Basically, how you attach to your friends, partners and your children is based on ONE (maybe two) relationship: your mother. (or primary caretaker). Yep, this is a therapy blog. We need to go there. Attachment theory says that your relationships with others as an adult are only as good as the relationships with your parents that you had as you were growing up. (This is kind of bad news for me personally, but stay with me.)
As an infant (the ages of 0-2 are crucial here), and as you grew up into childhood and adolescence, you will have developed one of the 4 following kinds of attachment styles:
1. Secure Attachment
(this is the one you want, that we all deserve!) Parents that offer their infants and children acceptance, emotional safety, consistency, responsiveness in their parent/child relationship will create confident adults who can maintain and create intimacy without knowing how or why they do it. But the reason is this: secure attachment.
2. Anxious/Insecure Attachment
These parents offered their children inconsistent responses to their bids for acceptance and emotional safety. The rules for engaging with Mommy would often change, causing mistrust and anxiety in the child. Sometimes Mommy would respond calmly, other times Mommy would react with her own anxiety and lose her temper and blame the child. (Remember though parents, this has to be a consistent pattern, not a rare event.) In adults, this looks like fears of abandonment, emotional clinginess to a partner, or difficulty trusting loved ones.
3. Avoidant/Insecure Attachment
These parents have difficulty accepting their child’s emotional needs. They can do this by not accepting them as an emotional child and instead treating them as emotional adults with the ability to self-regulate. So these parents consistently dismiss these needs as unimportant, or they instead demand the child meet the parent’s own emotional needs. The child learns to not bring emotional needs to Mommy, knowing them to be met with rejection and dismissal. In adults, this looks like a fear of commitment, difficulty identifying feelings and sharing them, or denying emotional needs.
4. Disorganized Attachment
This is the most rare kind of attachment style, but it does occur in homes with a lot of chaos and multiple inconsistent caregivers. Loss of a parent(s) or caregiver, or abusive homes cause the child to look to anyone for emotional safety, or conversely, they deny any emotional needs whatsoever. In adults, this looks like difficulty self-regulating any emotions at all, or extreme self-reliance to the point of isolation and chaotic, unpredictable relationship patterns, either with multiple partners or simply experiencing a lost sense of self.
We all have a dominant attachment style. You can think of your dominant attachment style as your “default mode in feeling close to others”. This dominant style is very important to realize, or even to grieve. Your default attachment mode doesn’t change with time. It will likely always be your default style of attachment.
HUMANS CAN UNLEARN THESE BAD ATTACHMENT HABITS.
But here’s where there’s hope. Humans can unlearn these bad attachment habits. Don’t despair: the middle two attachment styles are the most common. No parents are perfect, we all hand our emotional baggage to our children. And we grow up. But the brain is still developing!
It is not too late to create healthy, secure attachments in your current family dynamics with loved ones or close friends. In our families of choice are a great place to start.
In fact, this is one of the ways in which the brain develops new neural pathways to healing: through new and healthy experiences with others.
I know that If you are anything like me, I deeply long for this healing community in my own life and I have been most impacted by periods in my life that I had this type of healing community. But while we often long for it, creating these healthy bonds does not come without challenges.
There may be many reasons for this:
• We each have established, rigid patterns for relating to the world and each other
• You may have never attempted this before
• There are bad experiences of community in our pasts that continue to haunt us
• You may be currently overcoming a trauma
Each one of us have had their own experiences with community and attachment that are unique to our experience.
Here’s what you can do. Decide who is safe in your life.
If you can’t find a safe someone or are not sure how to determine who is emotionally safe in your life, ask a therapist to help you determine how to start these new attachment patterns. (I do wish more of my clients asked me this!)
Then, decide to share more openly with those safe people. Start with naming daily stressors, long term fears or felt, body anxieties without blaming others or yourself. Making these uncomfortable choices can open a door for us to connect in our intimate relationships in a safe way. This allows us to make meaning of our experiences together and offers a new framework on how we handle losses and stressors which can in turn, can become a beautiful thing.
When trauma overtakes us with big emotions, it is our job to communicate in our relationships in ways that do not have to shame us OR blame the ones we are caring for. Think of using statements such as:
• You or I am not crazy for feeling that way (validation)
• I know you or I said those things out of anger or hurt but it isn’t what I or you were trying to communicate (empathy)
• I am here for you to help you get through this moment or I need you to be here for me in this moment (attachment)
• We are all attempting to or are trying our best and we can learn from this situation (reframe)
As we wrap up the year together and hope to envision a new year, how can you take time to care for yourself?
What do you hope to take away from this very challenging year and how can it inspire you to get some of your needs met in 2021? I would encourage you to take some time to write these out in a journal and to talk about it with a friend. Remember: isolation isn’t the only answer. There is a way out.
If you would like more ideas of how to create safe social events for your children check out this link.
https://www.parents.com/fun/games/social-distancing-games-and-safe-activities-for-kids/
If you would like to try to explore more of your attachment style with a therapist, I am taking new clients! Contact me at hello@evergreencounseling.co or 630-480-0060.
Warmly,
Amanda
Contact me: hello@evergreencounseling.co