- by Lori Elliott, MSW, RSW, Grey Bruce Psychotherapist

I’ve worked in acute mental health care since 2005 and I’ve aimed to share some of my accrued mental health knowledge base, with members of my local community, at various points during this pandemic. I’m currently one of the very few full-time, publicly funded psychotherapists in the Grey Bruce area and I feel that it’s important to periodically reach out to others to share some mental health information pertaining to our current circumstances.

We are in our eleventh month of social restrictions and the percentage of people who are experiencing loneliness is likely occurring at a higher rate. Loneliness does not equate depression and loneliness does not equate isolation from others. A person can experience loneliness, be surrounded by friends and family and not suffer any form of chemical imbalance in their brain.

Vivek H. Murthy, M.D., who was the nineteenth surgeon general of the United States, noted in his 2020 book Together that loneliness occurs when a person wants to connect and be accepted but isn’t able to do so; they experience a deficit of needed social connections. A person feels lonely when they feel that they are missing closeness, trust and affection with others; loneliness is not a condition, it’s an emotional response. Dr. Murthy has also pointed out that loneliness is actually the root cause of many health concerns. The former surgeon general outlined all of this before our pandemic began and this concern has only grown, since the onset of social restrictions.

Together outlined three “dimensions” of loneliness, which can help to clarify the particular type of relationships that are missing. 1) Intimate, or emotional, loneliness is the longing for a close confidante or intimate partner- someone with whom to share a mutual bond of affection and trust. 2) Relational, or social, loneliness is the desire for quality friendships, social companionship and support from others. 3) Collective loneliness is the hunger for a community of people who share one’s sense of purpose and interests. Dr. Murthy notes that the presence of these three dimensions can help a person to thrive and that a deficit in any one of these dimensions can cause loneliness.

Dr. Murthy outlines four key strategies to help a person to cope with loneliness. 1) Spend time each day with those you experience a sense of connection with, through a phone or screen connection, if an in-person connection is not possible. 2) Eliminate distractions when you’re interacting with others. 3) Help and be helped. Service is a form of human connection that reminds us of our value and purpose in life and giving and receiving strengthens social bonds. 4) Embrace solitude and build a stronger connection with oneself.

If building connection is the answer to loneliness, then how can one go about forming a sense of connection when face-to-face connections are limited? I will discuss how the use of mindfulness can significantly reduce one’s experience of loneliness, which will extend on Dr. Murthy’s final strategy. Mindfulness is something that each one of us can carry out, while continuing to respect social restrictions.

I have seen positive, dramatic changes in the lives of my clients that have made use of regular mindfulness practice. During sessions, I regularly reference the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology at M.I.T. and is a Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn is considered to be the leading North American expert on mindfulness and, in 1979, created an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which is now offered at over a hundred locations worldwide. In one of his books, Full Catastrophe Living, Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally” and notes that it involves “becoming aware of what is on the mind from moment to moment and of how our experience is transformed when we do.”

Mindfulness isn’t a way of doing, it’s a way of being and so the good news is that it doesn’t add anything further to what an individual already has on their plate. It’s a matter of carrying out tasks, which the person already carries out, in a mindful manner. We can actually hold our thoughts in awareness and look at things through introspection at any point time. This ability reflects a specific form of intelligence- intrapersonal intelligence, which also includes EI or Emotional Intelligence.

We have all heard the saying, “knowledge is power.” Consider how powerful an increase in one’s self-knowledge could be. Mindfulness has been found, through countless studies, to increase one’s overall level of happiness, to improve the strength of one’s bonds with others and to improve one’s health and well-being. People typically spend about ninety percent of their time considering aspects that have occurred in the past (which they cannot change), carrying out thought-narratives about their perception of social aspects of their lives (which can create a sense of loneliness) or thinking about things that haven’t occurred yet (which they have no control over). These thought processes can amount to an experience of stress and loneliness. Stress is not actually the result of situations in our lives, it’s the result of our perception of these situations. Why is this so important to understand? Because this means that, if we shift our perception of a situation, we can change the amount of energy that we invest and the types of decisions that we make. Regular use of mindfulness can help a person to look at a situation and understand that their “successes” and “failures” may have less to do with issues involving their internal selves and more to do with their perception of how they may or may not be meeting the standards of their external society.