Feeling all alone in the world is more common among younger people than it is among older ones. This age of social media is also not helping matters as more people interact online than one in one interaction. Being unable to connect to other people may be an unwillingness on your end and sometimes it could be an inability – in cases where the individual just does not know how. Let us read To Find Out Why “I Feel Like I Don’t Connect With Anyone Anymore”
Another thing to know is that building interpersonal relationships online may seem easy until you have to interact with a real person and you realize that you have no idea how to begin the conversation to start with. Think about how many dates you arranged on Tinder only to meet the person in person and find that you really do not flow like you were online. For this reason and many others, it becomes easy to just withdraw into yourself and before you know it, you begin to feel like you cannot connect with others.
Apart from cases of depression ravaging the world and making people commit suicide these days, other things could cause you to feel like you are all alone in the world. You may find it difficult to trust others due to traumas in your past, anxiety, low self-esteem, etc. Obviously, these are just feelings that may not necessarily portray the true picture of your immediate environment.
Before you go thinking that you have an issue with your mental health or anything else of that nature, you should read through this article, and maybe, just maybe, you can find a solution to your problem that does not involve visiting a psychiatrist or therapist.
Why Do We Need To Connect With Others?
Before finding out the reasons for your inability to connect mentally or emotionally with others, you should understand why it is important. Yes, you may have heard it said on many occasions that being alone often leads to depression. But you may be wondering what the psychology behind that ‘assumption’ is. Here are a few of the reasons.
- To build mental capacity.
- Helps to lower anxieties and risks attached to it like high blood pressure.
- Can help to improve self-esteem.
- Helps us to be able to empathize with the feelings of others so that we are more accepting of their strong points and weaknesses.
- Interacting with others also builds our immune system.
- Helps to improve self-worthiness
- Also reduces stress levels.
Causes Of Inability To Connect To Other People
The causes of the inability to connect have been divided into three broad categories based on nature. But they have the same basic outcome of the inability to trust, low self-esteem, and other things that cause people not to connect with others. The causes are:
- Disorders – there are several disorders that cause people not to be able to interact with other people. The people in this category just do not have the hormonal promptings to interact with people like normal. Sometimes when they have not been diagnosed or they are in a society that is just cruel, they are called retarded or lacking social grace.
Some of the disorders are autism, personality disorder, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), etc. Even people with ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hypersensitive Disorder) can sometimes have an issue connecting because they are not wired the way others are.
Disorders are involuntary causes of the inability to establish interpersonal relationships that cannot be helped unless you have a professional intervention from a trained behavioral therapist. If caught early in childhood, some of these disorders can be managed enough for people to have adequate interactions with as many people as they can.
- Past trauma – traumas experienced during childhood or earlier in life can cause people to withdraw into themselves to a point where they become hermits. Examples of such traumas can be rape, emotional abuse, domestic violence, being a victim of kidnapping or accident, neglect, etc.
Any major negative past experience could cause you not to interact with other people. These traumas can cause anxiety, lack of trust, low self-esteem, etc. This is because when people experience traumas, they tend to turn off some emotional receptors, unconsciously sometimes, such that they do not feel anything if subjected to the same trauma at any point in the future. Some cases become so extreme that some people do not feel anything at all no matter the circumstances, even joyful moments. They are just detached and watch events in their lives like an outsider or onlooker with no contribution whatsoever.
- By choice – this could come as a result of experiences too but in this case, you turn off your emotions consciously. Turning off emotions by choice usually comes when you are trying to avoid feeling in a particular way. For example, children from an abusive home may choose to turn off emotions to avoid feeling sorry for their situations. In such situations, it becomes easy to seek out friends on social media and thus creates a void that seemed filled but is in fact empty.
How To Overcome The Runt Of Not Connecting With People?
Building lasting relationships come when you can actively connect with others. If you are battling the inability to connect, there are a few things that you should do. The first is to get off that couch and go out to meet people. Online meets are good but not sufficient to build interpersonal relationships.
Some of the activities you can involve yourself in which will make you interact with others include –
- Join a club – no matter your area of interest, from reading to sports, there are clubs all around that you can join. Some do not even need a registration or membership fee to start.
- Visit a park – there are parks around the neighborhood where you can go to meet other people. Just seating there on one of the benches may suffice for a few times till you find someone to come sit by you and then you go from there. Just because you find it difficult to start up a conversation does not mean others are the same. You just need to put in the effort to keep the conversation going.
- Work in communal spaces if you are a freelancer – instead of sitting at home all day, you can go do your work out of that dinner or coffee shop on the corner of your street or join a coworking space. That is a good way to get other people to interact. You may even find people of common interest and build lasting relationships from there.
- Eat out – eating your food out of your office, maybe in the lunch room is good for you. Stop trying to avoid talking to other people by eating your food in your office all the time, even if you brought the food from home.
- Learn a craft – from bead making to painting classes or even yoga, you can choose to learn something. Some of those classes enable you to interact with other people. And do not join the bandwagon of people that disappears immediately after the class. Wait for some minutes to interact with your classmates and get to know them. One person a day is a good way to start.
- Join a religious activity – if religion is your thing, involving yourself in religious activities has been known to build a sense of community too. Just think about it, people coming to the religious center are from all works of life and you get to interact with them based on common beliefs.
- Involve in a voluntary activity – from volunteering in a homeless shelter to an animal shelter or any other voluntary activities, you get to meet other volunteers. Through those activities, you also make a difference in the life of others.
- Interact with your neighbors – in the city, it is tempting to keep to yourself because most of the time you are just too tired after work to interact with your neighbors. However, on occasions when you find some time on your hand, getting to know your neighbors is a good thing. Apart from building a connection with others, you get to be familiar with them in case of emergencies when you may need their assistance.
Conclusion
Now we have learnt about why “I Feel Like I Don’t Connect With Anyone Anymore”, Interacting with other people is a thing you have to do consciously. You have to make efforts to do better than you have been doing. The world has gone online and it seems like we have bridged the gap across continents but this is the time when people feel lonelier than ever. Therefore, you need to be conscious of the fact that meeting people one on one is important for your total well-being.
FAQ
- Are there repercussions to not being able to connect to people?
Yes. Apart from lowering your immune system, being disconnected from others may lower your life span. This is because you are more likely to develop health issues relating to anxiety, like hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, etc.
- Is the internet bad for building a connection with others?
The internet has its place where building interpersonal connections with others is concerned. Interacting with people who are not near you or reconnection with long-term friends is one of those. However, when it comes to building human connections, the internet is not a good avenue because it in itself helps people to disconnect more.
- Do the use of emojis not help with emotional expressions on the internet?
Yes, they do. But oftentimes, people send emojis with emotions that they are not really feeling just to avoid being questioned about their real feelings. When you interact with people on a one-on-one basis, it is less easy to hide emotions and you can be more real with yourself and with others.
