Loneliness & Depression: A Rock and a Hard Place

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Loneliness is painful, isolating, and consuming. It also puts your health at risk. Hawkley, et al [PDF], found increased risk for poorer sleep quality and worse cardiac performance in the lonely.

There are two major types of loneliness: transient and chronic.

Transient loneliness occurs in response to an event such as the loss of a relationship, a job transition, or relocating.

Chronic loneliness may result after having failed to recover from transient loneliness. It can also arise completely independent of events that trigger transient loneliness, but instead due to other biological factors, such as physiological diseases that interfere with everyday functioning (e.g. cancer, MS, ALS, or muscular dystrophy).

Depression and chronic loneliness influence each other. Cacioppo, et al [PDF],  found “reciprocal influences over time between loneliness and depressive symptomatology” and that “can act in a synergistic effect to diminish well-being in middle-aged and older adults.” To get a feel for whether your loneliness is chronic or transient, ask yourself the following:

  • How long have I felt lonely?
  • Is it connected to a particular event or loss?
  • Is my support system intact?
  • Are my sleep patterns normal?
  • Have I grown anhedonic and stopped feeling joy or passion in anything?
  • How depressed am I?
  • Have any health issues affected my lifestyle?

Getting a sense for whether loneliness is chronic or transient gives you an advance feel for the path to recovery. The transiently lonely have an easier time snapping out of it. Their support systems tend to be more intact. They’re also more connected to social habits accompanying the interactions in their recent past. The chronically lonely, meanwhile, face an uphill battle of having to remember how to interact in ways that now feel foreign, but may also have to lay an entirely new foundation for a support system. Daunting!

The good news is that whether your loneliness is chronic or transient, you approach beating it pretty similarly. Take the following baby steps to beat loneliness and start feeling connected:

  • Reach out to family, friends, acquaintances, and people from your past.
  • Don’t be afraid to meet new people.
  • Get involved in your local community. (Reading the local paper can be a good first step.)
  • Schedule a frequent activity involving at least one other person. (E.g., exercising, taking a class, joining a book club, having a weekly movie or gaming night.)
  • Affirm that you are lovable and valuable, in front of a mirror.
  • Volunteer for a cause close to your heart. It’ll renew your sense of purpose and help you feel like you’re making a difference—because you are!
  • Find an “accountability partner” to serve as your sounding board as you experiment with new things.
  • Get professional help from a therapist.

With a little patience and consistency, you’ll overcome loneliness. Taking things slowly, at a pace you can handle, is the key to making lasting and successful life changes. Planning and scheduling deadlines for your actions will help you get and keep control over your life. Start feeling better now.

Happiness Is Within Your Reach

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Do you know someone who is happy? Do you know why? Whether you believe someone to be happy because of wealth, a great relationship, a fulfilling career, or more so, in spite of difficulties with the above, understanding and learning how one is happy, while another in similar circumstances is not, is worth exploring. 50% of our happiness was determined before we were born by our genetic code.The remaining 50% can be enhanced dramatically  through understanding what is unique to happy people that we know.

Resilience, the belief that you control your life, and believing that something good will happen to you is a common denominator to happy people. Resilience is your ability to confront and handle something bad that happens to you. It leads to a sense of control over your life. Believing that your life is determined by your actions reinforces the belief that you can rebuild that which was destroyed, and control your destiny, which increases your chances of succeeding in life and become happier. Believing that your mistakes were also under your control helps you realize that you have the power to fix them. Self fulfilling prophecies do happen. Believing that something good will happen to you can become a self fulfilling prophecy.

The happiness rules:

  • Happiness is not the same thing as pleasure.
  • Happiness comes from a small pleasure with a great meaning.
  • Meaning is achieved from hard work.
  • Happiness comes from feeling that your work is important and meaningful.
  • Happiness is achieved when we feel that you are contributing something important.
  • Happiness can come from being in a healthy relationship.
  • Happiness is enhanced by spiritual beliefs and practices.
  • Happiness does not come from a lot of money.

Achieving happiness is a complex process for most of us. It requires hard work, determination, and belief that we can obtain it.

Please let me know your thoughts, feelings and experience with happiness.

This blog post was inspired by a TV show on happiness that I recently watched on “The Israeli Channel”.

Overcoming Depression Shame

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Overcoming depression shame can be difficult and time consuming.

Depression is dark and heavy. It produces shame that you may want to hide from people in your life. You fear revealing your depression to someone close to you will result in abandonment.

Nagging senses of failure motivate you to shut everyone out and pretend everything’s just fine. You know the drill: that fake smile you make with your mouth, but not your eyes, that you hope no one will notice. Being caught depressed is a little embarrassing.

Your self esteem drops with each day the depression looms. Your life looks great on paper: nice family, great job, friends. You figure, others might be wondering, “With such a great life, what right does s/he have to be depressed?” Feeling ashamed about your depression, like you don’t have the right to your own feelings, make you feel even worse.

There’s a popular notion that depression should only come with good reason—some set of terrible circumstances that justify how bad you feel. There’s another one that a “good” reason has to be obvious to others.

Total misconceptions.

Even if things seem great from the outside, things like past trauma, unresolved grief, difficulty with relocation, culture shock, hormonal imbalances, hereditary predisposition, and many other things can weigh you down.

Being depressed isn’t your fault, regardless.

The good news is that help is available. Therapy, western medicine, alternative medicine, and things you do on your own to overcome depression will all help you feel better. Taking action now will help lift the curtain of despair, revealing a bright, new future in which you’re empowered.