Dealing With Isolation

Published on September 5, 2021

I’ve been thinking today of coping with isolation. It appears uniform of the day given the current pandemic.

With the worsening Covid crisis, there has been renewed  quarantines and lockdowns. How do we face this?

Understanding how isolation affects our health can be a relevant first step for self care.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University, pulls no punches as he writes in the Psychology Today article “The Age of Indifference:”

 

“I know of no more potent killer than isolation. There is no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and us from them. It has been shown to be a central agent in the etiology of depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, rape, suicide, mass murder … “


And then Dr. Zimbardo continues:

 

“The devil’s strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence in a number of ways:  by isolating us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands, or anxieties created by economic anxiety … “


Today, add medical or health anxiety due to the Coronavirus pandemic to Dr. Zimbardo’s list of reasons for unwanted isolation. It’s been almost 2 years now.

Dealing with isolation is one of our toughest challenges. We need to come down hard on it … the need is emergency!

These days, there are things we can tell ourselves as we face the challenges of isolation and home quarantine.

Let’s see several of them:

 

dealing with isolation

Photo: CNN

# “I control what I can control.”


# “I give to God what I cannot control.”

# “I shift and keep my focus.”

 

# “I make my world larger.”

 

# “I can create meanings each day.”

 

# “I stop overthinking and start overcoming.”

 

# “I take care of my self in every way.”

 

# “I remind myself that this too shall pass.”

 

# “I relate more deeply to my self and loved ones.”

 

# “I see to it that I seek personal and professional help when I need to.”

 

# “I trust God no matter what’s happening.”

My friend, how about you? How are you holding up with the isolation?

MyOnlinePsychotherapyPh.Com


Category(s):Aging & Geriatric Issues, Coping with Medical Problems, Emptiness

Written by:

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist

Dr. Angelo Subida is a clinical psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is author of books "Inner Healing," "Secrets Of Your Self," "Chess and Life," among others, blogs, and articles. He has appeared frequently as an expert on psychotherapy/life recovery issues on national television, radio broadcasts, print media, and webcasts, including GMA 7, TV 5, ABS CBN 2, Q-11, 700 Club, Radyo Veritas, Inquirer Radio, Smart Parenting Magazine, Business Mirror, among others, and has served as resident therapist/counselor for parents and kid-artists in the highly popular ABS-CBN 2 Voice Kids TV singing reality show. Dr. Subida is an eclectic, multidisciplinary therapist and originator of his own revolutionary high-tech, high-touch counseling plus model. His areas of specialization include parent-child therapy, clinical infidelity treatment, relationship/marital counseling, separation/divorce therapy, anger management, depression, addictions, psychotherapy-spirituality integration, and innovative chess therapy. For more of Dr. Subida, you can find him at www.drsubida.com.

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist belongs to Dr. Angelo O. Subida Psychotherapy Clinic in Philippines