Emotional Resilience In An Isolated World

Loneliness, human connection, and the future of humanity.

The Coronavirus pandemic has created very stressful situations for families across the globe. But perhaps even more difficult than dealing with the virus itself is coping with the forced lockdown it has caused. And those that live alone may be experiencing even greater stress.

Dr. Kevin Gilliland, a clinical psychologist, described the situation as such,

There are a lot more people that need counsel and guidance. You’re having feelings of isolation and loneliness like you’ve never had before. Everybody’s psychological health has taken a hit.

Time Magazine stated that this pandemic has merely deepened an already existing problem.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, public-health experts were concerned about an epidemic of loneliness in the U.S. The coronavirus has exacerbated that problem, with most face-to-face socializing for people still under lockdown orders indefinitely limited to members of their own households. For the 35.7 million Americans who live alone, that means no meaningful social contact at all, potentially for months on end.

And even for those who are managing it’s not clear how long this era will last. One teacher from Missouri spoke up about the back and forth of her situation.

Some days I smile and feel okay. And other days I curl up in a ball and wonder if this goes on too much longer, will I be able to take it mentally? Can I last sanely living alone for months — a year?

So is COVID-19 really the threat we should be worrying about?

A Deeper Problem

It appears far fewer people have been able to dodge the mental and emotional impact this quarantine has caused.

Although loneliness is a serious threat that affects many people around the globe, some mental health advocates claim it has not received the attention it should and hope that the COVID-19 situation will finally change that and be the catalyst that brings about a more socially connected future.

We live in a vast world, and still, a person can’t seem to find his place in life. Most people simply aren’t taught how to be connected with others. Our education is not directed at seeing ourselves as parts of a global and integral world.

We’ve built a society based on self profit at the expense of others and of nature in a way that’s completely opposite and unsuitable according to the conditions dictated by our continuing evolution. Furthermore, our good fortune depends specifically on our ability to create a society that is opposite to this natural egoistic inclination.

There are people that already understand that we can’t continue living this way and that we’re advancing towards the general destruction of humanity. But we can redirect our course here and now by calibrating the relationships between us.

But what is it about human connection that makes it so essential?

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

The fact is we are social creatures. We see in nature that animals in the wild can live their lives in a very impermanent way. We are not built this way. We need a family. We need a society that will hold a person and teach them what it means to be human. This is what separates man from beast — our need for an emotional connection.

We want to replace the emotional connection with business, competition, and other forms that do not fulfill that underlying need. A person should receive from society even more than he received from his own mother, and we don’t have that because we’re not building such a society that will know how to provide each and everyone with warmth, confidence, and a sense of security. But the recognition that we have what to improve is already a great thing!

So what can we do to build this good future?

We have to go through a certain self-analysis and see what do we have as a result of how we are living our life. If we look at nature and the universe as a whole we see that it’s completely integral. All of its parts are interconnected. We need to model human society after these laws of interconnection, cooperation, and mutual support.

This is how we can learn to cope with our increasingly difficult situation.

We simply need to think about how we can begin a process of learning how to live together in harmony. By this, we start to understand the general world we live in, how to tap into our innate potential, and how special life can be when we are relationship-focused.