Braving The Pandemic at the Intersection of COVID-19 & Loneliness

Anecdotes and insights connecting the dots on our inner turmoil amid a global pandemic

In what has been in equal parts terrifying and devastating couple of months, the second wave of COVID-19 has put the spotlight on what it really means to be human. We are no longer fighting against just a deadly virus but also the burden of grief, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and in so many instances, survivor's guilt. 

Even when things start to improve and life returns to some semblance of normal, I’m afraid this mental health epidemic is likely here to stay. How did we get here? What do we do now?

In my pursuit to find answers to these questions, I revisited two truly eye-opening episodes from Harappa’s Habits Matter podcast that I host. Read on. 

Understanding the Roots of our Loneliness

I'm sure you'll agree that social isolation is by far the most effective solution in the fight against COVID-19. It’s no secret, however, that humans are inherently social beings—and social or ‘physical’ distancing is excruciating for most of us. We HATE being alone. 

So what do we do if we are forced to be apart, and have no choice but to be alone with our thoughts? How do we define and deal with loneliness? Are we lonely because we’re alone? Can long periods of social isolation change our brain chemistry? How do we then make things, at the least, a little more bearable?

Being alone can make us very vulnerable; this was the premise of my conversation with three individuals—each with a unique perspective—on the power of connection, the psychology of loneliness, and the secrets of solitude.   

For Nandini Bhanot, an economics graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce who was living alone in Delhi during the lockdowns last year, the pandemic aggravated her anxiety manifold. Nandini suffers from an autoimmune disease called Ulcerative Colitis, leaving her much more at risk from environmental stressors compared to those who don’t have an underlying condition. The need for vigilance existed even before the pandemic and only intensified last year as catching the virus could be very, very severe for her. 

Her biggest challenge has been people not understanding her condition at all because autoimmune diseases are essentially invisible. It was a challenge for her to explain to people how serious this is and at the same time carry the burden of anxiety alone. Nandini took to trying out internet trends like whipping up a cup of Dalgona coffee or cooking her favorite food, giving her a sense of belonging in her loneliness as she did things alongside many other people from across the world.

When I spoke to Aditi Kaul, an arts-based therapist, and psychologist, leading the art-based therapy program at Fortis healthcare for the last 8 years, she pointed out that loneliness comes in two forms. One is reactive, which means it's caused by something big that happened to you. And the other is chronic, which means we've been feeling lonely for a long time. And again, a pandemic that forces us to be in isolation can only aggravate this. 

Both Nandini and Aditi stressed the fact that loneliness, in the end, is more something we have within us; or a feeling. It doesn't get impacted as much by the number of people we’re around but how included, connected and in place, we feel in our surroundings. Think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: our need for connection comes right after the fulfillment of our most basic needs of sleep, shelter, and food.   

Palga Rinpoche, a Buddhist teacher from Ladakh, on the other hand, painted quite a contrasting picture of loneliness, or solitude as one might perceive it. Having spent a large part of his life in isolation or in intense solitary retreat (as is the custom), Palga believes that isolation can help us dive deep within our own lives and introspect. Issac Newton and Shakespeare are examples of people who created some of their best work in solitude.

Anyone who can leverage isolation—to deeply and meditatively understand who they are—can learn new things. The benefits are mind-boggling and mind-altering.

Having said that, solitude isn’t advisable if it doesn’t feel right. Being alone can exaggerate whatever you’re already feeling, whether that’s good or bad thoughts. So reach out to someone if something just isn’t right and it’s getting hard to cope on your own. You’ll know when to.  

Taming the beast

The relentless chaos we see in the world also brings me back to my conversation with Michele Wucker, an American author, commentator, and policy analyst, who specializes in the world economy and crisis anticipation. In 2016, Michele authored the concept of Gray Rhino—an evocative metaphor for obvious risks that we ignore, despite and maybe even because of their size and likelihood. 

Unlike the ‘elephant in the room’ that remains static and doesn’t have any consequences for ignoring it—or the ‘Black Swan’ events (as coined by Scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb) that are so improbable and unimaginable that you can’t do anything about them—Gray Rhino events are much more ominous as they get ignored even as they stare us in the face. The Gray Rhino is something that we can see, do something about, and should hold people accountable for when they don't pay attention to it. It doesn't normalize doing or saying nothing. 

So why then do we ignore these events that are lurking right under our noses? From a cognitive perspective, Michele describes this as the train phenomenon, i.e. just as you learn to block out the sound of trains passing by when living within earshot of train tracks, you similarly ignore big, chronic, long-term problems as a defense mechanism so that you get your daily life going by dealing with immediate, more urgent problems. 

While Michele has mostly studied about and authored her book on Gray Rhino events from a finance, policy, and business perspective, she offers incredible insight into how we can identify and deal with Gray Rhinos in our personal lives. Consider mental health issues—what does one do when a Gray Rhino is charging towards you? 

Michele says we've got three choices. You can stand there and you can get trampled. Or you can step out of the way so you don't get trampled. This might mean that other people get trampled. Or third, you can hop on the back of the rhino and use that strength for something good. To recognize dangerous situations early on makes the process of fighting them much easier. But sadly, most of us are unlikely to give these issues the attention that they need unless they're a big giant on top of us. 

Michele urges us to learn early on that it's okay to recognize that we're vulnerable, that itself is our strength.  

The common message across all these conversations is that struggle and strength are not mutually exclusive. None of us will ever be free of all sadness or all exhaustion, and that’s okay. 

What we’re facing today will always remain a huge part of our lives; we can’t erase it or look past it or pretend it didn’t happen. But it's also something that has marked us collectively. We must learn how to grow from it, how to build from it, and how to hold on to every last bit of hope. We all will have different ways of processing it. Being empathetic of this individual healing and responding to each other’s journey with kindness can make all the difference.