All right. Back to isolation. I know, it's all we've been in for a while, right? So we're going to talk more about isolation and what I'm hoping to do in this video is to bring some psychology into play. Although as you'll see, it would be challenging. It'll be a bit of a stretch because the way we are isolating is not one that has been studied very much. So what we will do is think about some of the other forms of isolation, what we have learned about and from them, and then take from them lessons that we could think about in our current situation. So yeah, this form of isolation is really strange and what I mean by that is we are physically separated from others, but not socially separated from others. I've already talked a little bit about that dynamic and that's going to be at play pretty big in this video. So the forms of isolation we have studied are characteristically different. So there are studies of extreme isolation and by this I mean things like solitary confinement in jails where people are both physically and socially separated and left on their own sometimes for very long periods of time, and there's also studies of just social isolation and this need not involve physical isolation. So yeah, it could be somebody who's just moved away from their friends and family and so they're feeling isolated, at least initially while they get situated. But also there are situations where people just socially cannot fit in and so they become socially isolated. Nobody wants them as part of their group or something and we know a little bit about some of the psychological issues those people face. So we're going to visit each of these and then think about our form of isolation and see what we can learn from it. So let's start at the extreme, solitary confinement. Imagine as bad as our isolation may feel, as they're crazy as you might feel, imagine for a moment that you're living in this small box by yourself with no way of contacting anybody else sometimes for days, weeks, or months at a time. It's grueling, and in fact, there are some people arguing that it's inhumane and that we should not be ever using this as a form of punishment. Why they argue that is they know there are very strong psychological effects on the person. They become anxious, socially anxious after being kept apart. It's like they forget how to interact well with other human beings, and in fact, if it goes on too long, prisoners sometimes completely lose their sense of identity, and this is something I want to talk about in our situation a little bit. So why do they lose their sense of identity? Well, let's think of it this way. When we go through our normal lives. So this is just a silly little poster here, laying out some of the steps these people might go through in their day, we might think of this as a ritual that we go through that defines our life, at least our weekday life, for example, and gives us structure. It gives us a sense of where we're supposed to be, when what we're supposed to be doing. So we have a purpose to our day and a timing and a rhythm to it, and not only that, but we're also continually interacting with other people. There's a concept called the reflected self. This is a cool image. But let's say this cat hang around and chatted with other cats. All of these other cats thought this cat was the strongest, most powerful, coolest cat. They all thought he was a leader. This cat might feel that in interacting with others, that's how they feel about me, that's how they see me and that actually starts to form how this cat thinks of itself. So the idea is we learn a lot about ourselves and how we think about ourselves by paying attention to how others seem to see us. So it's like our self is reflected through the eyes of others, but we're paying attention to that, and if people see us as a, say, honest, trustworthy person, we start to embrace that. If they see us as someone they can't trust, we feel that too and start to worry about other people seeing us that way. So the bigger point though here is by interacting with all the humans that you normally interact with during a day, you're constantly getting signals sent back to you about who you are, how other people see you. So in a work context, for example, maybe they see you as highly competent or really skilled at certain tasks and that's cool, that makes you feel good. Now we're in isolation, and that structure is gone. Both the ritual that guides us through our day and all the human interactions that tell us who we are. This is in the extreme isolation condition. This is the kind of thing that can make people lose their sense of self. We're not going to totally lose our sense of self. Hopefully, we are still interacting with other people. Again, it's physical distancing, not social. So hopefully we continue the social interactions, that the loss of structure can be a problem. We can literally, if we don't impose a new structure, which I'll talk about a lot in the next video, we can be left feeling adrift, like we don't really know what we're supposed to do when. There's maybe nothing we have to do when, and while that sounds fantastic at some level, it also leaves us feeling like a boat without an anchor. Literally just like we're drifting, we don't know what to do. We can lose our sense of identity to some extent and our sense of purpose and that can lead to feeling of learned helplessness and depression. So that's why it's potentially really scary and I'm going to argue that we must do something about this. We cannot just allow ourselves to drift in this I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just all by myself over here. We can't languish in that too long, and as you'll see, I'm going to argue that social outreach will be a critical part of that, but so too will be imposing some new structure on that. Let's just jump for a second now to social isolation. So social isolation, again, can come about in a number of ways. Think of those older people and families that get maybe placed in a home or for whatever reason people don't come to visit them very much and they largely are living all by themselves. It could be somebody again who moves to another location and for a while doesn't know anybody there. It could also be somebody again who has trouble socially connecting to any group and is maybe pushed out of all groups they try to connect with. So they end up socially isolated on their own or as a result of an inability to deal well with others. If this goes on too long, it can lead to social anxiety. So if we're separated from social interaction too long, we can start to get really nervous about it. It can start to seem like a very daunting thing to interact. So it's like snowballs, the longer you allow yourself to be socially isolated, the harder it is to reconnect again, and therefore you don't want that to go too long, and again, we're using this word depression again. If you feel alone too long, you start to feel a little like a victim. You start to feel like life is doing things to you. You lose your internal locus of control and that can lead you to feel helpless, worthless, nobody cares about you, and that's just a really bad, bad place to be. I throw this last point just to give you a sense again of extreme that virtually every mass shooter that we hear about, everybody that commits horrific acts against humans was socially isolated, was typically not allowed to join some group or was kept out of the normal social groups that formed in schools or in wherever, and I raise this point because I really want to stress what that social interaction does. When we interact with other human beings, we connect with them emotionally and that's the core of something we call empathy, the ability to share emotional states with other human beings. Every time we have social interactions, we're learning that skill, we're strengthening that skill. But if we're kept out of the social interactions for too long, if we're distanced from them, then yeah, we start to lose a sense of empathy and we may get feel like those other humans don't like me, they don't want me, and I don't like them either, and it can lead to some pretty strong thinking and even violence and things like that. So when we ask how could someone do this to other human beings, it's because they've lost their empathy for the other human beings. They just do not feel the pain they are inflicting. So keep in mind these social connections are what keep that empathy strong and empathy is what holds us together as humans. So that's what we really have to learn from social isolation, it's not a good thing, and we want to try to make sure we don't fall into that social isolation place, and we want to try to help others who maybe are falling in or already there. So that is really the big point of this video. We must find ways during this time of isolation, we must find ways to be socially together while physically apart and if we can help others to achieve that too. When I keep saying your sympathetic nervous system is telling you to do something, well, here's something very concrete you can do. Reconnect with your family, reconnect with friends and old friends, have deep, meaningful conversations with them. Man, if you could possibly connect with somebody who you think might be socially isolated relatively, then doing so is doing a fantastic service to that person and you will feel it. You will feel the appreciation in your interaction. You will feel the thankfulness and the warmth they are getting out of actually connecting with another human being and that will also make you feel like you are doing something and it will help you manage your own anxiety while helping them manage theirs. So that's one big thing, is just don't take this term isolation too seriously. We are physically separated, but we must be socially together, in fact, more so than in our normal day-to-day lives.
