Self-isolation, a major symptom of depression.

Good day everyone,

today I want to adress one of the more severe symptoms to deal with. Self-isolation is hard to fight, since it is one of the symptoms that feed depression.

You tend to start feeling insignificant, because your own mind is constantly downing yourself. Your own thoughts belittle you. Everything you do is just not good enough for yourself. You gradually come to dislike yourself, sometimes even to the extent of self hate.

At the same time you experience one of the common symptoms of depression, pushing others away.

You first start to talk less to people and act idle in social gatherings. You talk less and less to friends and family. The longer you follow this behavior, the harder it gets to talk to people later on. You will start to feel uncomfortable talking to others, it begins to feel awkward. It feels like a wall is beginning to build up.

Next, you stop contacting people on your own. You might experience moments once in a while, when you want to reach out, posting something on social media, writing a message to someone or call. If someone approaches you and asks how you are doing, you will probably pull back and say „fine“ or not answer at all. If someone asks you what is up with you, you will most likely say „it’s nothing“, gradually you stop reacting to people reaching out to you.
Some friends or family member might still try to reach out once in a while, but in the end, we tend to start ignoring them or come up with excuses to avoid meeting them, answering calls, or text messages.

This is how the self isolation developed for me, but it was the same development for two of my family members as well.

In my opinion THIS is one of the most important symptoms to fight to stop a downward spiral.

Depression itself is hard enough to deal with when you are not alone. Being alone makes it so much harder to overcome.

There are steps you can take to fight self-isolation, even if you have already completely isolated yourself!

If you are still in the process of self isolating you can use counter meassures.

If you are currently at the stage when you stop talking, take all your energy to choose someone you trust or feel comfortable with to reach out. To make it easier try some of these actions:

• Talk to the person alone

• Chat or text with them (sidenote: talking personally minimalizes misunderstandings, only write if you would isolate otherwise)

• Write on a piece of paper how you feel and ask the person to read it while that person is in your presence. This way, they can then understand you and react to your problems and feelings in a dialogue afterwards.

• Force yourself to go outside. Sometimes just being around other people will make it easier for yourself to be more approachable. Sometimes it is easier to be around strangers than people you know. It will not make you actively socialize, but it might help break that “barrier“ that keeps you from contacting people you trust.

• If you have a dog, go outside and meet other people with dogs.

There might be other things you can do to take action that I did not mention here, if you read this and know of other methods, please let me know in the comments.

If you have already isolated yourself, this will be harder to get out of than stopping the isolation process while it is still in progress. Do not get discouraged, you CAN get out of the fully developed isolation aswell.

You will have to force yourself to get out of your isolation, you will have to remind yourself whom you still had when you distanced yourself from others. Who were the last ones to try to reach you? Who showed you they truly still care and do not just contact you for self entertainment or helping themselves feel relevant? (Yes this is important, some people just want to feel like they saved or helped someone, you do not want to confide in those people, they are not truly concerned with your wellbeing.)

When you have found who still truly cares, force yourself to reach out, but you do not have to go overboard, you can just write a message on social media or write a text message via smartphone.

What I am writing now, is extremely important!
Do not think that you will be a burden if you contact your friends or family and share your problems with them. Most of the time the person who isolated themselves and pushed the people away, will end up making the people he/she cares about feel useless and helpless. I know this, because I have done that and so have the family members I mentioned above and not only those 2. Do not be afraid of being a burden, when you get better, your family and friends will also feel better and be happy for you. Let them help you, you will also show them that you cherish them, by doing so. You show that you acknowlege their help and show them that they are not useless or helpless.

Take it step by step, you do not need to jump back into daily contact, sometimes that is a bit intimidating, especially depending on how long you have already isolated yourself. Try to find the amount of communication you are comfortable with, without letting it go back to 0.

You can also try to start socializing again, anonymously on some internet pages, but please try to avoid internet sites, that specialize on self-isolation chatrooms or similar pages. This can backfire, because some people will push eachother deeper into their personal sorrow, which is also a symptom of depression. Try to find neutral anonymous sites with unrelated topics and maybe just chat there. If you play MMORPGs, talk to strangers in the game, that also helps in getting used to socialising again.

If something is unclear or you have questions, please feel free to write a comment. Sometimes reaching out to a stranger who has been through the same struggle helps. This could also be a first step, you do not have to give out your identiy here. You can just write or ask through your nickname here. I promise, I will not check your introduction posts, I want to help, not entertain myself.

I know how hard all of this is and how hard it is to get out of self-isolation. The scariest form of self-isolation is, when you have reached the point of not even caring anymore, but even then, to get rid of depression, you will have to fight. But remember, noone says you have to fight alone!

Take care of yourselves and NEVER EVER give up hope of getting rid of depression and its symptoms.
IT IS POSSIBLE!

Have a good day everyone!