Loneliness

There have been a few issues to make me think about how loneliness and isolation can impact on people's mental health lately.  Some are directly related to myself, others are with regards to other people, but either way it perhaps isn't surprising that managing being 'alone' can be very challenging, and either exacerbate an individual's existing mental health issues or cause problems for people who before perhaps had never experienced them.

Insert stereotypical loneliness image here

Loneliness can also be caused by mental health problems and can also be the cause of mental health problems, or indeed both - which I have experience of.

I've had an anxiety condition for 18 years, which means when I first started experiencing anxiety I was ten years old.  So back then, as explored previously on this website, I had no idea what the influencing factors were on this.  What I do know, however, is that these experiences which at the age of ten and for many years subsequently, I called 'abnormal' because I didn't know what they were, were impacting on my social quality.

I had friends - I'm fortunate to have always had a close knit small group of friends - but it was difficult to build relationships with people.  I socialised less than the average teenager, despite a longing to do so.  Then, when it got to the latter years of school, when people started experiencing alcohol and pubs, I never joined in because most of the time I was in fear.  Fear of being a fool, fear of not fitting in and often just in fear of having a panic attack at the pub or wherever.  For most of the latter years of school and University I had to put most of my efforts into managing my anxiety condition with no tools to help me, so socialising took a back seat.  I wasn't too concerned about this, but even back then I knew that a lack of socialising may impact on me in later life.  And so it proved at University - the first two years involved me running off for the earliest possible train and avoiding anything remotely outside my comfort zone.  Something I don't apologise for, because my anxiety was so severe at the time that anything would have set it off.  It's all very well for folk to say 'oh well, if you'd have felt the fear and done it anyway you may have got onto the road to recovery a lot quicker' but I dare someone to say that when they are having five panic attacks each week.

As I said, I've been lucky to have had a core group of friends for most of my life, and that includes now.  Some of them are still around and I still see them often.  But these years of debilitating anxiety has wrecked my confidence in many ways, so as most other people I know in their late 20s like myself move on and get married and have children, this remains just a pipe dream for me.  Meeting 'that special person,' which for most people just seems like something that happens naturally, for me just seems like a thing that happens to someone else.

Now, I'm quite comfortable being single, don't get me wrong.  My fear is that when all of my friends finally move away, which I have to assume that at some point they will, and are no longer in close contact, I'll be left behind still alone and rather than just being alone, I'll be lonely.  

I've actually learnt to cope with being alone.  I've actually started to enjoy it, especially in the last year, which isn't something I could have said until recently.  I've always been used to keeping myself busy; I've got no brothers or sisters, a very small family most of whom don't live particularly local and an anxiety problem which for much of my life has made socialising very hard.  So this 'keeping myself busy' isn't a problem.  What worries me is the future.  I don't believe that there is that special person waiting for everyone and that, as people keep telling me, I'll find someone eventually.  Anxiety and general personality factors have utterly destroyed my confidence when it comes to developing those sort of relationships.  Moreover, I did an analysis not too long ago (see, keeping busy) and of the 32 couples that I knew of, only two of them did not meet through work or at university or school.  Uni and school have long gone, and the chances of me meeting someone at work is very very slim, given who I work for and what I do.  

I would say that, at the moment, I'm in a comfortable situation with being alone, albeit wary of it carrying on for much longer.  I'm finally in a position in my life where I could give a long-term relationship a crack.  Only in the last couple of years or so have I been in this position; before that I was too messed up to have realistically considered it, albeit I didn't necessarily appreciate this at the time.  I suppose my message is, if you're in a relationship and you're happy, don't take it for granted for goodness sake.  They don't come easily to everyone.

I also know of elderly people who may have been in relationships but perhaps their partner died some years ago.  There are a lot of people that fall into this category who live near to my parents, in a rural suburb where people go to retire.  As they lose their partner and they become less physically able to do things for themselves, they become isolated and lonely.  This can, in the worst cases, cause serious depression for older people as they find it hard to adjust to a life predominately on their own.  Perhaps they didn't have the practice in youth that I have had / am having; they may have been with their partner for most of their life and to suddenly lose them must be a huge shock to the system.  I'm sure many of you have seen this happen to family members.  I believe this will only become a bigger problem in a future with an ageing population.

These people often rely on their community.  I know several people who's daily routine is to catch the local bus into town, not because they need anything in particular but because they enjoy seeing people on the bus and in town that they know.  It's their lifeline and their connection outside of their isolated bubble.

Eagle eyed Twitter folk amongst you will have noticed that there is a cut to a bus service in my area happening imminently, the majority of whom it will affect are people like those that I describe above.  Because the elderly have bus passes, they don't have to pay a fare and therefore both the transport operator and subsidising authority have deemed it not 'commercially viable' to run, even though it is a well-used service. I used it all the time when I used to live at my parents' and have met some great people in the process.

But for many of these elderly people, their lifeline is being cut.  I have spoken to many of them who are affected by it lately and they are physically distressed by the idea.  Suddenly their only route out of their house will be cut.  Not only will they have to pay an absurd taxi fare if they want to travel to the town centre, but they will also lose their communication with fellow bus passengers.  Without going off on another rant about how scandalous it is that this service is being lost and about the cretinous, un-compassionate morons who are making this decision, the impact on these people's mental health is my real concern.  It's been difficult enough trying to campaign against it in the last three weeks, let alone the concept of it being all in vein when it is cut this coming Saturday 5 September.

No-one seems to care about the mental health of our elderly.  It's all about physical health, which of course is important, but there are more and more isolated and lonely old people in our society due to reasons like this.  There needs to be more schemes in place to instil community spirit, which, whilst existing naturally in some places, do not exist everywhere.  Just popping over to someones house a couple of days a week for a coffee is better than nothing, and would be something for the person to look forward to.  Instead there is an increasing feeling that we're casting these people aside for the convenience of our creaking health service.

Being alone and experiencing loneliness are two totally different things.  I'm in the former category at the moment - most of the time - and can generally these days enjoy being in my own company. But how long this will last as society whizzes by me at 100mph is anyone's guess.  

For now, I keep busy(!!) by trying to help these poor people get their bus service back.  It isn't too much to ask.  I even (almost accidentally, I hasten to add) got snapped in the local paper this week, and before you ask, yes I am the tall, younger looking one in the background, and not the man with the walker.

Best wishes
Al