self-esteem

Creative Ways to Make Personal Connections

by Sarah Sheppard January 23, 2025

“AMA policy adopted last year identifies loneliness as a public health issue that affects people of all ages.” ~ American Medical Association

February is the month of love and connection. But what if you don’t feel connected? In a January 2020 (pre-lockdown) survey of 10,000 adults, 61% said they were lonely. And loneliness is more than just a mental health issue. It’s been linked to increased heart problems, stroke, and other medical issues.

According to psychiatrist Dr. Tiffani Bell Washington, MD, MPH, “Loneliness is essentially the feeling of being uncomfortable or in distress when someone feels that there is a gap between the connection they would like and the connection they actually have... You can be in a crowd full of people, you can know all of them, and you can still feel lonely.”

She added that superficial social connections, no matter how many, don’t really decrease loneliness. “What you really want is something deeper—someone to know you on the inside,” she said. “It's really based on perception of the difference between the relationship you'd like and the relationship that you have with others.”

Types of Loneliness

Loneliness and social isolation are two sides to the same coin. As stated above, a person can be lonely in a crowd. But many people are also at risk for social isolation. These include marginalized populations, older people, and those in remote areas. Either way, the lack of connection to others is detrimental because humans are hard-wired for connection.

How to Combat Loneliness

When it comes to “fixing” the problem of loneliness, there are two major things to consider: connection with others and connection with ourselves (being content while alone).

Connecting with others doesn’t have to mean going to crowded places or attending parties every week. Since we long for others who really “get” us, it’s helpful to find those who share our interests, values, and backgrounds. Writers, for example, tend to work in isolation. As a profession, they are often considered introverts. But attending writer’s conferences and joining writer’s groups—either locally or online, offers connection for people who share similar interests and who often view life in comparable ways.

Ways to Connect with Others

Consider your interests and hobbies, and find groups who share those. If you live in a remote area, find an online group that meets online.
Join a community or volunteer organization. Look for someone else who looks lonely and befriend them.
Take your lunch to a park or other place and people watch. Even if you don’t talk to anyone, just being around other humans can help you feel less lonely.
Find creative ways to connect. If you live far from family and friends, set up online appointments to meet for coffee, dinner, online games, or even watch a movie or sporting event. You can use these to join birthday parties and holiday gatherings too.
Make a large group smaller. If you’re already in a large group that makes you feel lonely, invite a few people you have something in common with and start a group within a group. This can be a study group, a book club, a dinner club, or anything else that brings a deeper connection.

Ways to Connect with Yourself (Hint: Self-Care!)

Learn to relish your alone time. Schedule appointments with yourself to do things you really want to do, that you need to do alone, anyway. Get a massage or a facial. Take a bubble bath. Turn on some of your favorite music, light a candle, read a novel.
Reorganize or redecorate a room in your home.
Start a new hobby. YouTube is an excellent resource for learning to paint, play guitar, garden, or just about anything else you might be interested in.
Go outside. Talk a walk or a jog in a park or around your neighborhood, or simply enjoy a cup of tea while you listen to birdsong.
Talk to yourself. Tell yourself the things you’d say to your best friend, if they were feeling disconnected. Remind yourself that you’re amazing, interesting, intelligent, and fun. Do this every day—out loud or in your head.

Several studies link loneliness with depression, immune suppression, and other health problems. If you’re feeling lonely, it’s important to combat the issue in any way you can. Sometimes you can do all the right things and the loneliness persists. Don’t hesitate to reach out to a therapist who can help you explore ways to bridge the gap between the connections you want and the connections you have. You are worth the effort.

Improving Self-Esteem

by Lyle Labardee April 04, 2020

Improving Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is having respect or confidence in yourself and how you interpret your abilities, appearance, and/or attributes. It reflects an overall sense of value or worth, and it affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Often words such as self-worth, self-image, and self-respect are used interchangeably with self-esteem. In short, a healthy self-esteem accepts and values you for exactly who you are, even your flaws.

Self-esteem impacts every area of our lives, including our mental and emotional health and how we operate at work and in relationships. Your level of self-esteem also varies throughout different stages of life. If high school was a particularly difficult period of your life, your self-image may have been lower than it is now. Perhaps getting older is causing lower self-esteem than how you once viewed yourself. Our self-perception is often linked with how others have treated us in the past. We might make past or current judgments about ourselves based on those experiences.

Along the spectrum of self-esteem, some people have a high sense of self-worth. Others find they have very low self-esteem, possibly facing symptoms of depression or anxiety. Feeling inadequate, unlovable, and/or unworthy may accompany a lower self-image. If you find yourself on the low end of the self-image spectrum, it is important to remember you are not alone. This could be a symptom of depression, and your doctor or mental health professional can help.

Determining Self-Esteem Levels

There are some useful ways to determine where your self-esteem levels are. Consider these possibilities:

Strengths and weaknesses- Take inventory by writing down your positive and negative qualities. If you negative qualities largely outnumber the positives ones, then this might be an indicator of low self-esteem.
Success and failure- Do you downplay or explain away your successes? Many times we set perfection as the goal, only to be regularly disappointed. Are you able to receive compliments, or do you merely brush them aside? Being able to celebrate our accomplishments is a sign of a healthy self-esteem.
Standards- Are you comparing yourself to others? This will not help improve our self-esteem. Research shows people who spend too much time on social media are more likely to struggle with low self-esteem because they are constantly comparing themselves to others.
Potential- Have you considered you may not know everything about yourself? Take some time to discover what hidden strengths and passions you might have. Exploring a new hobby, activity, or talent may significantly increase your self-esteem.

Improving Self-Esteem

If you are looking to better your self-image, here are several practical steps to follow as you take inventory of your thoughts:

Triggers- Identify what or who triggers negative thinking. A difficult coworker? Looking at your bank account? Interactions with certain family members? You can’t avoid every trigger, but you can plan how you will respond to it.
Self-talk- Next, listen to your thinking, or “self-talk.” What do you tell yourself? Is it based on fact or emotion? Is it irrational or irrational? Assuming the worst in every situation will take a toll on your self-esteem.
Accuracy- Are your thoughts true? If not, challenge them. Often times our thoughts are influenced more by perception than reality.

Black-and-White Thinking- “If I don’t get this promotion, I might as well quit; jobs never work out for me.”
Jumping to Conclusions- “He hasn’t contacted me because he doesn’t like me.”
Downplaying the Positive- “She only asked me to go out because all her other friends were busy.”
Overgeneralizing- “I never get things right. I’m always so stupid.”

Positivity- Replace negative thoughts with positive ones. Encourage yourself by focusing on the positive. Avoid thinking of “should have” and “could have” scenarios. When mistakes are made, you can learn to forgive yourself. Give yourself credit for good things and even small wins.

Taking Care of Yourself

Learning to change how you interpret life takes energy. Taking time every day to care for yourself will help you feel healthy, and when you feel good you are more likely to be positive about yourself and your abilities. Listen to your body, get plenty of sleep, eat healthy, and exercise regularly. Take time for activities and people you enjoy most. A simple way to enjoy life and stay positive is to help someone else.

Rearranging your thoughts and learning to take care of your body takes time and practice. The more you challenge your negative thoughts and habits, the more confident you will feel in yourself and your actions. When you are positive about yourself, you will have a positive impact on the world around you.