Tag: social isolation

Getting Back on Track

Photo by Hayden Walker

It’s easy to lose track of time and forget even what day of the week it is without a structure in place. A pleasant way of marking the uniqueness of each day while making it feel somewhat familiar is to create traditions.

When takeaway Fridays are no longer an option, traditions around home cooked meals and exercise can go a long way. Most of us are living life on a loop determined by external factors. Gaining independence through exploring our home environment can offer liberties we weren’t aware we can claim, such as finding time for loving words and old interests.

Getting back on track means readjusting to the current reality. Is us with the world, trying to stay well and help others keep well.

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Life at a Glance: the Positive Future

Photo by Jill Heyer

In times of austerity we cannot postpone change and choosing what’s right. What’s easy is no longer an option and giving into anger and despair is guaranteed failure.

So what can we do when we can’t change the decisions that led us here?

  1. Take a look at your environment. Tidy up the space for a clear mind.
  2. What is your ‘must’ through this challenging period? Financially, socially (the need to connect with people) and personally (self-growth).
  3. Where do you want to go?

Envisioning a bright future when the world seems to be on verge of collapsing might not be the most sensitive thing to do, but it certainly is the healthiest. We attract what we say and what we think and despite all the chaos, there is still room for our individual narrative.

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How to Manage Social Isolation

Photo by Kristina Tripkovic

Working from home, being housebound due to health conditions or self-isolation to meet deadlines can cause strain on our emotional wellbeing. Our lives get enriched through human interaction and the lack of it might go unnoticed only for that long.

One of the main issues with not changing the environment we are in is that we don’t realize how fast time passes. Losing track of time doing things that don’t benefit us is worse if we have no one around to look for advice or get support from.

Here are some tips to help you make the most out of the time that you need to spend on your on:

  • set the top two priorities for the day
  • create a plan of how to meet them
  • reward yourself with human interaction – plan a call or text/email someone
  • plan a short exercise routine
  • create a ‘feeling low kit’ with all the essentials and set a timer on how long you’re allowing yourself to feel low for

Even when we choose loneliness, it can be daunting. Reach out to people, check in on them and open up as much as you feel comfortable. The conversation around mental health has only just started and social isolation goes beyond the statistics.

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Seeing Good in People

Photo by Daria Tumanova

Our mindset dictates the perspective of our reality. Being brought up with a distrusting attitude towards people hinges our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Part of the relationship with the self is seeing our reflection in other people’s eyes. Distrust attracts distrust and people cannot connect at a higher level without putting themselves at risk emotionally. Being socially isolated leaves us with the idea of self that our mind makes believe. If our perception of the self cannot be informed by kindness, love and caring from others we become shadows of who we could potentially be.

Seeing good in people allows us to see good in ourselves and for that building trust is a necessary condition. Rather than teaching our younger members of the community about distrust, we can teach them coping strategies when misplacing trust. We can also teach them empathy and forgiveness that liberate our spirit from emotions that are making us guarded and are holding us back. We can teach ourselves to feel big and trust plenty and to experience ourselves and others in as many shades as we possibly can.

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Society: Responsibility and Privileges

There are plenty of benefits when it comes to belonging to a community, may it be related to feelings of belonging, financial security, police on the streets and feeling safe or access to health support – they all compound what a normal life looks like.

These elements are not a given. They are made possible by people who took responsibility and built the privilege of our now normal. But there is always room for improvement and for adapting the system to our needs. Even taking small action, such as recycling or drawing attention to local issues, turns the monster into a personalizable machine that does what it’s told.

Throughout my teenage years I came to view society as a blood-sucking leech. It took a lot of self-improvement to understand that the system we are a part of are our partial reflection. Live the privilege, take the responsibility. Rebuild society until it resembles to something positive you recognise within yourself.

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Smartphone Dependency & Our Wellbeing Don’t Go Well Together

Even before having a Twitter account I engaged in debates over the effects that social media has on our behavior. Topics such as social isolation, bullying and harassment on one side and engagement, interaction, self-growth, networking on the other side were thrown around the table.

Did I ever wonder at that point about the role that technology plays and not just about the role of social media? Not at all.

A recent study led by researcher Matthew Lapierre from the University of Arizona looked at smartphone dependency and its connection to depression. The study revealed that it becomes problematic when people are using smartphones to replace or escape living their non-virtual existence.

Extreme reliance on our device, anxiety if we get separated from it for even a moment or two, are signs of later depression and loneliness. What can we do?

Exercise:

Live without your smartphone for 12 hours (sleeping doesn’t count).

  1. Let your loved ones know that you will be out of reach for 12 hours.
  2. Turn off the device or put it away, on silent.
  3. Live. Walk. Breath. Carry on with your day.
  4. Keep a journal of the experience.
  5. At the end of the 12 hours after feasting in the use of technology, read what you’ve wrote.
  6. How does that make you feel?

“If depression and loneliness lead to smartphone dependency, we could reduce dependency by adjusting people’s mental health, but if smartphone dependency (precedes depression and loneliness), which is what we found, we can reduce smartphone dependency to maintain or improve wellbeing.”

Communication Master’s Student Pengfei Zhao, Study Co-Authored

Resources:

Which comes first: Smartphone dependency or depression? by Matthew Lapierre. Pengfei Zhao and Benjamin Custer

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