Social Isolation and Loneliness

Image of a woman with her arms wrapped around her knees with her forehead resting on them. This image illustrates the power of experiencing loneliness in Los Angeles, CA. Working with a DBT therapist in Los Angeles, CA for social isolation and loneliness can help you feel less lonely. | 90274 | 90275

When life gets hard, being without friends, family, or a support system can make life feel unlivable.

Maybe you have these supports in place, but you still struggle with intense feelings of loneliness. Perhaps you have a hard time communicating or connecting with the people in your life, and it makes you feel disconnected, rejected, and unlovable.

When you have been working hard to find connectedness, but it just doesn’t seem to work, you may turn to unhealthy behaviors. This makes sense, given that social isolation can be overpowering. And it can cause you to act in ways that may feel out of control. Maybe you find yourself thinking “why did I do that?!” Then, you spiral into feelings of shame and unworthiness. It feels like you just can’t help your brain and body from reacting when faced with conflict, rejection, or criticism.

Social Isolation and Loneliness

Every human being wants and deserves fulfilling relationships in their life. The desire to be loved and have love for others is an innate human need. As humans, we often find any way possible to get our needs met. So, when you encounter obstacles in connectedness, it makes sense that you would say or do things that are not helpful. This is your brain’s way of getting unmet needs fulfilled when you don’t have the tools or resources to help yourself.

Social isolation and loneliness are incredibly difficult things to deal with. They can feel paralyzingly sad and also infuriating to experience. However, the DBT therapists at our center in the Los Angeles area have worked with clients struggling with loneliness before. They want you to know that you’re not the only one who’s ever felt this way and that you deserve to feel connected to people. You are not unlovable or unworthy of connection.

Support for Social Isolation and Loneliness

Undergoing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) can help lighten the load you carry in your mind. When you’re experiencing social isolation or loneliness, you can feel intense pressure and stress building internally. As we touched on, connectedness is a human need. So, it’s reasonable that you’d feel unequipped to deal with these issues without an outlet. And when you don’t have the tools to express this energy, you may turn to destructive habits.

Clients we have worked with in the past dealing with social isolation and loneliness have used some of the following behaviors to cope.

Drug use
Alcohol use
Self-injury or self-harm
Thoughts and/or plans of suicide
Lashing out and uncontrollable anger
Disordered eating or diagnosed eating disorders

Image of a man sitting against a wall with a bottle of alcohol. This photo represents the unhealthy coping mechanisms that many people use when suffering from social isolation in Los Angeles, CA. You can get support for loneliness with our DBT program in Torrance, CA 90275 | 90277

DBT Can Help

Working through DBT can help you observe your thought and behavior patterns. The next step is to understand them. When we are able to understand ourselves and why we do the things we do, we can find positive solutions instead of continuing the harmful ones.

Dialectics

One of the main ideas of Dialectical Behavior Therapy is dialectics. Your therapist will incorporate dialectics into your treatment to help make sense of conflicting ideas. Examples of conflicting ideas concerned with loneliness could be:

“I’m so stupid, nobody would want to be my friend,” while also thinking “I’m trying so hard to get people to like me, and I don’t understand why they don’t.”

“I’m empty inside, I have nothing to offer but sadness,” while also thinking “I don’t want to be a burden and I also don’t want to be alone.”

“I feel like an outsider, nobody gets me,” while also thinking “I have so many people around me, so I should feel connected.”

The purpose of dialectics is to take thoughts on extreme ends of the spectrum and bring them together. Bringing these thoughts together helps your brain process the discomfort that opposite ideas bring up. This merging concept is called “synthesis.”

Synthesis

Working with a DBT therapist will help you explore the pain you are experiencing while helping you make changes toward your goals of reducing your feelings of loneliness. And this will help improve the quality of your relationships. This synthesis brings harmony to your brain and body. While “harmony” in this context does not mean that you’ll be “cured” or that everything will be okay, it does mean that you will be able to more clearly identify and work through thoughts and feelings.

Analyzing

Before you have synthesized your opposing thoughts, harmful behaviors are likely to result. When you feel the push and pull in your mind of contrasting ideas, it can be exhausting and stress-inducing. So, the first step of DBT is to analyze your behaviors. Once you have identified the challenging thoughts and feelings that result in troubling behaviors, you can move forward in creating positive habits.

Image of woman in field of yellow flowers. This image illustrates the support people can get for loneliness in Los Angeles, CA when using a comprehensive DBT program in Torrance, CA. 90254 | 90266

Our Approach to Social Isolation and Loneliness

The comprehensive DBT program at our center can help you channel your energy into living life fully instead of self-destructing. Our compassionate therapists understand that social isolation can feel all-consuming and defeating. Therefore, they want to help you learn helpful ways to cope, overcome, and find connectedness. Engaging in individual therapy sessions and group skills meetings, combined with the additional support of coaching calls give you layered support. You will learn about yourself and how to understand the two-sided ideas in your mind that result in harmful behaviors. Then, you’ll be able to implement helpful ways to manage feelings of loneliness and other complicated emotions.

Find Freedom from Social Isolation and Loneliness with DBT in Torrance, CA and Las Vegas, NV

The DBT Center honors the challenges that have brought you to seek support. The DBT Center is proud of you for making the decision to look into treatment options because sometimes, asking for help is the hardest part of beginning to make changes in your life. Follow the steps below to get started with DBT in the South Bay of Los Angeles, CA, or in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas, NV.

Reach out to us using the contact form.
Begin meeting with a skilled DBT therapist.
Find connectedness and live life fully.

Other Services at the DBT Center of South Bay

The DBT Center located just south of Los Angeles, CA and in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas, NV specializes in providing comprehensive DBT programs for adults. Further, we provide DBT for managing anger, and for self-harm or suicidal thoughts. You can access our services from anywhere in either state using online therapy in California and Nevada. If you’re interested in any of the services the DBT Center therapist provides, please reach out.