Living alone, no matter your age, can be a daunting experience. Stepping away from living at home with family and taking on the full responsible for all your own income, home and medical requirements can be very hard. Or maybe you’re older and your circumstances have changed. Either way it’s the first time you find yourself living alone and it can feel daunting.
Living Alone Is An Identity Adjustment.
It’s an identity adjustment we need to make, or are forced to make, in life. Living alone can be all at once exciting, overwhelming, and scary. It can be an emotional rollercoaster and we can feel very isolated and starved of human contact as well. It’s totally normal to feel every single emotion, including grief, at this time.
How will I cope, is the number one question people ask? We can be very good at sorting out the practical things such as household items, bill payments, etc. We may stumble a bit at the start but in general things work out just fine in that initial move.
Impact On Our Mental Health.
But what about longer term when we feel more settled? How does living alone impact our mental health? Even if we have done everything we can to keep in contact with family or friends, or even made new friends, taken up hobbies, etc, we can still find ourselves coming home to an empty home. We can feel starved of human contact, face to face interactions and human touch. Something we may have come to recognize more with the recent pandemic.
We are all social creatures. We need that contact for our physical and mental health. We need that human touch, the handshakes, the pats on the back, the hugs in particular, etc. Human contact and touch is simply something we cannot do without. It is a basic human need for our very survival.
But what happens if you find that for one reason or another you feel starved of human contact? How can you offset those feelings of loneliness and isolation? There are a number of things we can do to support ourselves in this.
1 Creating Your Support Network
Building a support system is more than the people who support you. It can also include information and resources you might need and how to access them. It can also at times include professional support from your GP, hospital, school/college, church, and therapist. A strong support system will include all of these people along with positive family and friends.
Having a strong positive support network like this does help stave off loneliness and helps us meet our essential need for human contact. Being surrounded by positive supportive people will help reduce your inner critic that can push us to stay isolated. It will also help build our self-compassion, esteem, confidence and help stave off loneliness. For more on building a support system you can read my blog or watch the video here.
2 Increasing Our Sense Of Human Touch
Our skin covers our bodies and is the largest organ we have. It is through our skin we feel and experience some of the nicest emotions we can. Here are some ideas you can use to increase your sense of human touch.
Use Your Sense Of Touch And Smell To Self-Sooth.
If you are feeling stressed, or find the negative thoughts starting to build, rub hand lotion in to your hands. Allow yourself to focus on the sensations in your hands or the smell of the hand lotion.
Use this as a healthy means of distraction to re-balance/re-centre and calm yourself. This is something you can practice on the go also and no one will know. So while waiting for an appointment, meeting to start, or sitting in your car for example.
You can also rub in some body lotion after a long soak in the bath. After all if you are living alone you don’t have to worry about someone needing the bathroom. So enjoy the soak and relax your muscles.
Self-Massage.
Massage out a tense area (knotted area of muscle) using a tennis ball or hand held massager. Be careful though and seek advice from your doctor first. Or follow any advice you have already received from your physio or doctor.
Massaging the area will help ease the tension that has been created by stress or anxiety. This will also help you make a better connection between your mind and body. Do this yourself as someone else might place too much pressure on the area and cause injury. Make sure to not apply too much pressure as you massage the area, build up the intensity slowly.
Wrap Yourself Up In A Blanket Or Duvet.
Get out a blanket or duvet and wrap yourself up in it. Yes it’s okay to have a duvet day, afternoon or evening if you need it. Really snuggle down into the blanket or duvet and pull it tight around you. You can wrap your arms around yourself also to give yourself a hug for about 30 to 60 seconds. Now just breathe and relax.
Stimulate The Vagus Nerve.
I talked more about the vagus nerve last week. This nerve is the longest in the body and touches every major organ. It is connected to the parasympathetic nervous system which helps us step into the rest and digest stage.
It can be stimulated by massaging out the sides of the neck. If you start behind the earlobe and move your fingers down the neck towards your collar bone it can help relax you when combined with deep breaths.
Other Quick Ideas You Might Like To Try.
- Put clean sheets on your bed.
- Pet your cat or dog.
- Have a massage.
- Give yourself a manicure or pedicure. Massaging your feet also helps stimulate the vagus nerve.
- Soak your feet.
- Put a cold compress on your forehead.
- Sink into a really comfortable chair.
- Wear something soft or silky.
- Notice the sensations of touching something. Something you are wearing, a worry stone or natural stone, etc.
- Do some art or craft. These messier the better.
- Paint a piece of furniture.
- Cleaning a room.
- Make jigsaw puzzles or completing other games.
- Brush your hair (about 100 strokes) or do some body brushing to stimulate the skin. This can aid sleep also.
Feeling Alone Inside Relationships.
One thing we don’t talk about is the feeling of aloneness within a relationship. There can be multiply reasons why we feel alone inside a relationship. Some reasons may be accounted for by a broken relationship while others are because we might need help instead.
Whether the relationship has issues or not you do need support from a therapist. Tackling loneliness and feelings of isolation can be quickly resolved in therapy. So please reach out.
Work With Me.
Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.
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