Isolation & Loneliness

Cindy Lopez:
Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen.

Nearly half of Americans report feeling left out or alone and over two thirds of our teens report that they’re lonely. Research shows that loneliness and isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity. So take a few minutes to listen to today’s episode as we talk with Dr. George Alex Lazo, Licensed Clinical Psychologist at CHC. He shares his insights, including how parents can support their children who are feeling lonely and isolated. One thing you’ll learn is that the antidote to loneliness is relationship.

Cindy Lopez:
Welcome Alex.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Hi, Cindy, it’s nice to be here. I know we’re gonna be talking about loneliness and isolation, which is pretty vague. There’s lots of theories and models and approaches to loneliness and isolation. My approach probably more existential, how we relate to the world, how we relate to ourselves. So I’m excited to have this conversation with you.

Cindy Lopez:
Thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today, Alex. It’s an important topic and timely too. Coming out of COVID, you know, kind of making our way through COVID like there’s just been a lot more people feeling alone, isolated, lonely, especially our kids. They haven’t been able to have kind of the typical school experience for the past couple years. So, let’s talk about loneliness. How would you describe loneliness?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Well, I define it myself and for others that I work with as a separation from the self and from the world. I don’t know if I would go as far as a disconnect because I think that you can still feel lonely even if you’re connected to people physically, relationally, but there is a sense of separation, you know, like I don’t feel existent with myself or existent to others.

Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, it’s interesting that you make that distinction between being alone and feeling lonely, like those are kind of two different things. And I was talking to a friend recently, whose spouse died unexpectedly, a while ago, and she said, “You know, I’m not lonely, but I feel alone.” So it’s interesting kind of thinking about the nuances between those two things.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
I’m curious to know was she saying that in a negative way or a positive way? Because we’ll probably get into it a little later, you know, feeling alone for some people is perceived as a positive thing.

Cindy Lopez:
The feeling alone part was a little bit more negative in the sense that she didn’t have someone to share the everydayness of life like she had previously. And I wonder even thinking about that, is there a difference between social isolation and loneliness?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
I think social isolation is even more specific. So isolation doesn’t necessarily have to be just social isolation. Loneliness in its generic sense I feel like is just a consequence of being alone, right,

Cindy Lopez:
Right.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Like loneliness I could say is, do I exist in other people’s thoughts? You know the question of not existing in other people’s worlds or experiences. Where isolation can be in a sense of like, am I physically isolated from people like with COVID, you know, which brought on lots of negative consequences, loneliness being one of those, feeling alone.

Cindy Lopez:
And it seems like with social isolation and maybe you can correct me, but the idea of social isolation being something you choose or being something you perceive?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Isolation from in my work could actually be a defense, right? So it could be a reaction to conflict. It could be a reaction to fear. So rooted in that is anxiety, right, or anxiousness. So, I could isolate from people to protect myself from uncomfortable or overwhelming experiences.

Cindy Lopez:
And what about the perception? I was talking with some high schoolers recently and just their experience with high school and feeling like they don’t have friends, right? I don’t know if you would call that social isolation. Social isolation that’s not generated by them but they’re experiencing the lack of social connection because they don’t feel like they have friends.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Right. And how do you navigate that as the person perceiving the isolation and then the outside world, the friends who might perceive it differently. Like, you know, it’s classic to hear parents or caregivers who are saying, like, “I love my kid, I try to give my kid everything, and yet they still feel like I don’t understand them or that their friends’ don’t understand them or that they’re alone.” You know these realities can exist together. And really what does matter is that person’s perception, right? And that’s where the work has to be done in terms of reshaping or developing a better sense of self, but yeah, someone can in their own experience, see that they’re alone and isolated. And yet have people around them who care about them and want to help them and support them. I mean, I deal with this all the time as a therapist, seeing someone once a week, in a very safe non-judgmental space and yet they still continue to feel alone and lonely.

Cindy Lopez:
You brought up an important point that their perception is what matters. So as parents or caregivers or teachers, educators, we might say, “well, that’s not the case, they’re, you know, connecting on social media all the time” or whatever.

But I think it is important to note that their perception is the reality for them and that’s the place where you have to start.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Yes.

Cindy Lopez:
So you talked a little bit about this Alex, but does loneliness lead to isolation or the other way around? I mean, is there a chicken and egg thing here?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
I mean, certainly, you know, if you feel isolated, I can imagine that the consequence could be feeling lonely, but again these are vague terms. So, for a lot of people, these are the same.

Cindy Lopez:
Okay.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
But like I said, being physically isolated can lead to feeling alone and/or feeling loneliness. I think that at the root of all of this is anxiousness. I think the fear and the worry of one person’s separateness from themselves or the world is really where loneliness and isolation come from. Isolation as we know in the pandemic was really supposed to be a health response to COVID, but it didn’t come without fear, right and anxiousness and uncertainty and worry that was what was leading us to make the decision to isolate, right? You know, and so like I said, there’s a protective measure sometimes in isolation, but it’s not always functional, and it can be functional, acknowledging that we are separate beings that we do exist, you know, individually in this world, but we’re also collective in the sense of we do relate to others. But I think we have to define isolation and loneliness, better for ourselves, which we can do, in our work with other people.

Cindy Lopez:
Right. I’m hearing you also say yeah, loneliness and isolation kind of vague terms. What you’re really dealing with is like the function of that, the anxiety that might be a root cause of that. So those are the things as a therapist that you’re really looking at with your clients and the students that you see.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Both emotionally and physically, right? So, being able to perceive that relationships and connections do exist, but that people are also physically connected to people, you know, in person. Now we know a lot of people are taking advantage of being physically close to people, going out to dinners, having get-togethers.

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Cindy Lopez:
So how can parents effectively support their child, their teen, who is feeling lonely? Are there any conversation starters or talk tracks you might be able to share with parents?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Oh, gosh, yeah. This is a big question because I get a lot of parents that are on different places on the spectrum of what is understood of like alone, loneliness, isolated. You know, I get parents who say like, “my kid really likes being in their room to read and paint. I’m really worried about them. It seems like they’re isolating and they’re lonely.” And I have to say, this is really not a clinical issue, like I’m not seeing any depression or anxiousness. Um, but I get it. I get that maybe you want your kid to engage with others more frequently, you know, so, I do a bit of assessment, whether this is something that is a concern. And the question you’re asking is at what point do we consider this a concern? My most simple sort of flag is functioning. How are they functioning? Do they have at least one friend? I only care about making one friend. If they can have one friend that’s the one friend they chose, um, maybe they don’t want friends and maybe they want to just rely on their family for support at this time, right, like we get culturally that there’s families that are super close, like blood is thicker than water. And so some kids really gravitate to their relationships with their caregivers and their siblings or cousins.

I actually personally didn’t have a ton of friends. I did have friends in school, but I didn’t really rely on them for much. Like I saw them at school and then I went home and I had 11 cousins that I went to school with, that I grew up with around the same age. And, you know, I did not feel lonely or isolated even though I didn’t have meaningful like deeper relationship with friends, but going back to functioning if there is changes that you’re seeing in terms of interactions, interpersonal relationships, if you are seeing symptoms of either anxiousness or depression, big one with kids is like irritability and anger, you know, just not feeling comfortable or not being able to tolerate much is a reflection of inability to tolerate loneliness or isolation. I think that’s the key word is tolerance because like I said, as a human we exist individually and separate as well as together, and we should be able to tolerate both, the benefits outweigh the consequences. And so tolerance and resilience are two big things to pay attention to.

Cindy Lopez:
So as you said, kids might be in their rooms, right? They might be reading, they might be involved in some artistic endeavor music or whatever and the parents don’t really relate to that like that wasn’t part of their experience growing up and so that makes ’em a little nervous.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Sure.

Cindy Lopez:
And so I think that, as you said, Alex, and I appreciate that, like, you know, one friend, like one friend is good.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Right. Or they might have a ton of friends, you know, it’s really about following your understanding and expertise of your child, right? The one thing I tell parents that I think will wrap up their job every day are just check-ins and saying, “hey, is everything alright?” Like everything good at school? You’re always safe to tell me what’s going on.” These check-ins is the best you can do with your kids. And, you know, in terms of like a parent approach or strategy to kind of supporting your kid, right, and when they express to you what they are feeling or experiencing or thinking, the best you can do also is to trust them, and just to observe if it’s congruent with how they’re behaving.

Cindy Lopez:
So often, when parents ask a question of their child and a child of any age almost, you know, like, “hey, how did it go at school today? Or how are you, what happened?” Some of those broader questions don’t really elicit response from their kids. Do you have any thoughts about other questions they could ask?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
It depends on what’s being observed, but I think that maybe questions aren’t the best cause as we know and as we see like they’re usually one word answers or yes or no questions that the kiddo ends up answering, but just setting foundations and setting expectations like, “hey, if you know if something’s going on at school you can always come to me.” Again, this is vague and this is general because the parent and the caregiver has to do the work to be open, right, but there has to be a relationship of trust.

Cindy Lopez:
Parents could be observing some behavior in their child, right? And would it be appropriate for a parent to say, “you know what I’ve seen that you come home from school and you go right into your room and we don’t see you again until dinner”.

And I’m wondering like, why is that happening? Is it okay to like talk to the child about what they’re observing and then kind of reflect it back to them? Does that work?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
If you have a highly conflictual parent child relationship that could just continue to feed into the conflict, but for a close family, you know, the kiddo is expecting the parent or a caregiver or a sibling to check in with them. If you’re just talking generally about parents or families being concerned about changes in a child’s behavior some people would say it would be detrimental or harmful to the relationship or the kid to be like, “hey, we’ve gotta get you help,” but there are times, most of the time, it’s better safe than sorry, right? Because we see in media so many times families dismiss things or let things go and it ends tragically, right? So that’s where I think as a parent, as a caregiver, as family, I don’t see a huge harm in bringing in help if that’s something that could be, you know, possibly necessary.

Cindy Lopez:
We talk a lot about early intervention, but also intervening early when you see something. To our listeners out there if you are noticing something, you know, kind of trust your gut, you know your child pretty well. So if you are seeing something and feel like you need to seek out some help, it seems like that is important to do.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Yeah. I mean, this is probably a whole ‘nother conversation too because my idea of prevention is different from early intervention. To me, prevention is really setting up as much of the support as possible and developing that tolerance and resilience in our kids so that when loneliness and isolation is felt it doesn’t outweigh that ability to tolerate the isolation. Early intervention is, okay my child is showing a little bit of discomfort that I’m concerned might grow and become a problem, and then at that point is when it would be really beneficial to say, you know, let’s just add some additional support. So this doesn’t get worse.

Cindy Lopez:
What would that look like? So if you’re looking for additional help, what type of specialist would they see? Who would they reach out to?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
It probably doesn’t even have to be specialists like maybe more play dates with other kids, maybe more family time, maybe releasing some stress that’s happening in life events or changes through moments of fun in sports groups, arts groups, performance groups, maybe just taking things lighter day to day.

But if we’re talking about specialists, I think social skills groups are great and there’s so many options in terms of what those look like. They may not look as clinical, you know, they might be play groups or activity groups, especially for teenagers clinical group therapy could be very healing when it comes to loneliness and isolation because they are relating with their peers and they’re learning the skills to prevent any significant problems.

Cindy Lopez:
Yeah.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
I think therapy is one specialized field that can address either early feelings of loneliness and isolation, but I’m not too prideful to think that my work is the only thing to help. I think going back to my definition of being separate from the self and separate from the world and countering that in any way could work.

Cindy Lopez:
So for our listeners you can reach out to us at chconline.org. We do have a lot specialists like Alex, others, who see kids and their families and talk through all kinds of issues or situations like this and others. So, you can again reach out, chconline.org. Alex, I’m just wondering if there’s any final thoughts you wanna leave with our listeners before we wrap it up today?

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Well, it’s been nice chatting with you about this topic. It’s been something we all have been aware of, being isolated from people due to the pandemic. And COVID, I think my approach is really to have a balance of taking things not too seriously, but also, you know, taking things seriously. I think that as a therapist, as a psychologist, I do acknowledge that loneliness and isolation are problems that we all experience and that we all can understand, but I think that resolving loneliness and isolation and tolerating it because it is a reality we all face as humans. I think we cannot complicate it and not it too seriously. Some of the things that researchers and experts recommend for loneliness and isolation is restoring relationships or obtaining new relationships, which is simply rekindling relationships that you’ve already developing relationships with people that you haven’t really established closeness or connection with. So it really isn’t necessary to complicate things, you know, despite it being a pretty problematic issue.

Cindy Lopez:
I appreciate that and I’m sure our listeners do too because it’s like, phew, like there’s not 10 steps I have to remember to do. Just important to note that lots of people, nearly half of Americans report feeling left out or alone. So it’s not unusual and as you already mentioned Alex, like it could be part of a reaction to whatever’s going on in life right now, for your child, for you even. And then also, I think what you’re saying too, is the preventive, the kind of antidote to loneliness is relationship so that’s I think important to keep in mind.

Dr. Alex Lazo:
Yeah. And like I said, if you have just one meaningful deep relationship, either with a family member or a friend, that might be enough to tolerate experiences of loneliness or feeling alone or isolated. Again, on the flip side, having tons of acquaintances might work for you. So again, it’s not that complicated, you know, what makes you feel good and what helps you tolerate times that you might feel alone or isolated then it’s working.

Cindy Lopez:
Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us today and to our listeners we also appreciate you joining us today. Just wanted to leave you some contact information for CHC. If you need to get in touch with us, please do, please reach out – online you can find us at chconline.org. You can reach us by phone at (650) 688-3625, or you can reach out to our care team who can point you in the right direction in terms of connecting with someone, one of our specialists and that email is careteam@chconline.org. So thank you all again for joining us and we look forward to our next conversation.

Cindy Lopez:
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