Gayook Wong MS, LMHC
Faces That Matter
Loneliness
How to Face Times of Loneliness During the Holidays
How to find ways to deal with loneliness and feelings of hopelessness during a difficult time.
Posted May 01, 2021
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THE BASICS
Understanding Loneliness
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Source: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Loneliness is an urgent issue for our society as we face the pandemic and the increasing number of cases nationwide of lonely and unsocialed people who feel insecure and unloved.
A recent essay by Clay Lower called “Social Castles” describes the effect of loneliness on our health as a whole (September, 2018). In August, Professor Lower wrote that “The single factor that consistently increases the health of a community is social cohesion.”
Loneliness is characterized by social isolation, lack of visibility, and being socially isolated. Prof. Lower focuses on the experience of loneliness in the context of the single-parent family and the family home as a geographic region. He observes that the health of a community is intertwined with the well-being of its children and residents.
Since its founding in 1972, the UN has conducted a universal count of 43 categories of people living in any country. The count includes individuals who are members of armed services; those who are in education, universities, and other types of institutions; and anyone who is not in any of these categories. The count is repeated 24/7 over 10-year periods by the General Assembly and the Office on the Promotion of the Common Interest. These enumerations are used to examine structural conditions that may create barriers to, or barriers to, collecting basic demographic information.
The documented experiences of loneliness and isolation, together with the increasing numbers of single people, people not marrying, and families not having people of color, are putting these experiences on the collective conscience. These conditions are often based on misinterpretation of the scientific data. For example, one out of three of the races surveyed by the APA do not believe that race is an important factor in medical decisions and while one percent of psychologists consider race to be a factor for 37 percent of health studies. This is a significant number that simply does not seem to translate to meaningful collective knowledge.
Loneliness is a frequent complaint of the COVID-19 pandemic. It appears to be on the increase in the number of people who have a social phobia, fear of people touching the wrong things, or RN (for Non-Response Netrmt) phobias. Make of what you think.
Just think. What is your world really like? Its not so great. In fact, it is so bad. That is, unless you get vaccinated and live happily for the holidays.
I’m going to buy some drinks to celebrate after a long day of staring at computers in hotel ballrooms advertised as “Drink to Lighten Your Atmosphere."
Then I’m going to take a mini-escaping the world in which I live with a small business of greeting and photo editing in a way that feels genuinely helpful while arriving at a height of COVID-19 media coverage.
Back to you!
Alice!
Dr. E. Louise Kennedy-Moore, Ph.D., is an Apple Certified Applied Psychologist and Licensed Clinical Psychologist. She is a half-time administrator for the board of directors of the New Hampshire Office of Psychological Assessment, and a finalist for the Certified Psychologist of the Year, the APA Presidential Leadership Contest, and the Brown Dean’s Psychologists for Schools program. She is also part of the balloted selection for the NCTC Graduate Diploma of the Year. Her shortlisted favorites include classics such as The Crown, EastEndings, Person of Interest, and The Crown. To honor these favorites, she has been selected as one of four women to receive the Henry Braidy Award from the Henry Braidy Fund. Her film credits include guest appearances, including both in person and featured in promotional materials for Apple, Google, and Netflix. She is a finalist for the Emerson Collective's Leading Young Psychotherapist Competition. Her credits also include final guest appearances in the Netflix docuseries, Strangers with Hemispheres.
Dr. Lloyd Sederer is a licensed psychologist and was just honored for his Achievement in Forensic Psychology Investigator of the Year award from the Henry Braidy Fund.