Wednesday, August 9, 2017

5.30.17 It's complicated, isolation

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     Isolation is a weird invasive thing.
     You can be not lonely.You can do your best to engineer some human interchanges.
Maybe even a get together with someone who means something to you, every few days.
     But if there is chronic illness that precludes working or more sustained social contact, the impact of isolation slowly sweeps in.
     And it's confusing, intangible. You can be pretty happy,be quietly relishing life. You can be accepting that which you cannot change right now, and appreciative of all the gifts you have, from who you are, to amazing things not everyone has,Ike safety, clean water, enough food and warmth and a comfortable place to sleep.
     But if you go one, two, three or four days without more sustained contact with other people, something in your infrastructure begins to erode.
     If you were to look analytically, you could mistakenly take to task any number of line items, when in fact they will be wobbling out of balance simply because the underlying infrastructure of getting basic human needs met is not being met.
     And it's complicated. Because if you just go get yourself into contact with, say, a bunch of crabby people once a week having some sort of conversation, you could posit that a numerical value would be negligible, in terms of capacity to rebalance human social needs. 
     Whereas, in an ideal world, a 20 minute conversation with someone you know well, have shared history with, that involved much mutual caring, will last for days.
     Different types of social interactions or even beneficial pleasurable solitary experiences will exert different impacts on adequate or inadequate social interaction.
     Inadequate social interaction makes most, if not all, of your vulnerable affects more wobbly.
     If the deficit is sustained, soon enough one or more of your secondary challenges will shake apart enough to look like a significant problem in and of itself. When, in fact, it's simply inadequate social connection.
     Which is tough,because as we grow older, if we love long enough, we begin losing any joy meet of people we were connected to, who reflect Bank to us our selves, and our lives today.
     Which is why it's good to learn how on earth we can problem solve better living situations, 
     If possible. That's #1. 
     Where we have autonomy and reasonable enough privacy ( combined maybe with earphones, earplugs or noise machines. Where we have the option of sharing meals now and then, it simple innocuous, easily successful things like movie night or shopping together or card game day.
     We can figure out what we are capable, energy wise and transportation wise, and try to come up with something we can do once a week to connect with others and offer our supports. Like mentoring or tutoring a kid in school, or helping someone learn ESL.
     Course, people with chronic illness often have to see if the living situation is a possibility, due to the unpredictable nature if knowing what we can do and when.
     But it is a valuable thing to problem solve. To research books to take out of the library or good reliable places to search online.
     The toughest issues for isolation for people who experience chronic illness are 1.      Feeling a burden to others 2. Being doubted with regards to health issues and 3.           Uncertain how to come up with workable solutions.
     But sometimes we can learn what combination of connections can do it for us.
     For example, sometimes when I've been by myself for a couple of days, I find that if I end up having a conversation with my neighbor about the new hawk in the neighborhood, have a laugh with the post person at the post office, get help at the library finding a certain book, and think of a valid question to call and ask someone, then together, those end up being just about enough.
     If I supplement that with keeping up in searches for good non-fiction and fiction books to request from the library system, and a simple meal to delight, I find I'm pretty ok.
     Everybody has their ways of offering connection to others, and getting their needs met.
     It's just important for us to learn the signs of being too isolated, to not fall into the trap if assuming our worth is lousy if we find ourselves in this situation, realize that if we get needy or get angry at people for not showing up, we will just drive them away, and then settle down and take responsibility for figuring out how to keep our needs met.

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