About three months ago, Rosellyn Naik, 25, woke up with a start at 2 am as her cell phone buzzed. The 66-year-old woman at the other end, a new client at her counseling service, was having a meltdown. In tears, she requested Naik to listen to her thoughts that she couldn’t trust sharing with anybody else, the kind she would have shared with her friend and husband, whom she lost to Covid in 2020. Missing him, she had bottled up her emotions through the day and just needed to be heard. Realizing she was hypertensive and lived aloneNaik first made sure that the resident in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj area was physically okay and then proceeded to listen to her. “My children keep telling me I will get over their father’s loss with time, every partner goes through this and I should make the effort. What if I cannot make it?” she asked.
Naik, a psychologist and a loneliness counselor, then simply listened to her talk about what she missed from her past life. “Forty-five minutes later, she had calmed down after her volcanic rush of emotions. Then my work began,” adds Naik, who has since been tasked with getting her out of the trough. “Dependent on her husband, she had lost her sounding board. Her children, who were used to seeing her in a certain way, overlooked that she had changed and needed a different lens to be understood. She didn’t want her private emotions left to their judgment and analysis. With an outsider, she found a safe space. It was first sympathy, then empathy and friendship. She never left her bed for over three years, refusing to even step out into the verandah. Today, we go for a walk in the park, read books and even shop for groceries,” says Naik, who works for Emoha, an elder service care provider. She is among India’s growing troop of loneliness counselors who are alleviating what is quickly becoming an “emotional pandemic.”
Broadly defined, loneliness embodies a feeling of disconnection, becoming untethered from our surrounds and recoiling into ourselves. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that approximately 10 percent of adolescents and 25 percent of older people are lonely. A 2023 Gallup and Meta survey ranked India 36th among 142 countries on the loneliness index. However, it is difficult to put numbers on what is mostly perception-based and underestimates the severity of the problem across all age groups.
Now, several studies have found that long-term loneliness can not only lead to mental health problems like anxiety and depression but also to physical conditions like diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease that flow from the effects of immobility and an inmate-like cellular existence. . Little wonder then that countries like the UK and Japan have set up ministries of loneliness that have public policies to ensure every citizen isn’t left out of relevance and feels worthy of contributing to society. However, there is hope here too as hospitals, institutions and psychologists themselves are taking up the challenge of reaching out to the community, hoping to address the first red flag of our disease burden: loneliness.
Gen Z On An Island
Dr Mehezabin Dordi, clinical psychologist at Mumbai’s Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, specially takes up cases of adolescent loneliness. “The other day I was with a 13-year-old girl who said that she was most comfortable talking to her many friends on her device but was unable to talk to her father sitting on the couch opposite. The over-indulgence in superficial relationships online had given her a confidence and certainty among peers, one that had obliterated the need for face-to-face interactions in the physical world. We put her through physical interactive sessions with her peers first before she could reconnect with any other member of her family. The moment you create a felt experience, the one-dimensionality of a digital world seems less attractive,” says Dordi.
Digital “alcoholism” is at the root of Gen Z isolation, according to Sachin Chitambaram, founder and lead trainer of The Connect Hut, who has been counseling college students in Mumbai. Also working with The Samaritans, Mumbai, as a gatekeeping consultant against self-harm, he feels we haven’t even scratched the surface of loneliness among the youth. “Students in Mumbai colleges have to wait two months for an appointment with counsellors, who themselves are burning out after having multiple sessions. What we must realize is that the level-playing field, rules of engagement and tools have changed in a digital world. So we cannot read youngsters from a traditional prism. Relationships online are conditional, transactional and about networking. Kids are anxious because growing up today is a demanding process. They fear missing out on what their online status requires and take drugs not for pleasure but to stay awake and score well in exams. Childhood is about learning skill sets like coding and performance pressures; they have a busier schedule than adults, all coming at the price of socialisation,” he says.
Digital “alcoholism” is at the root of Gen Z isolation, according to Sachin Chitambaram, founder and lead trainer of The Connect Hut (Illustration by Komal)
In fact, NIMHANS, Bengaluru has flagged digital addiction as the most isolating mental health issue that will be felt over the next five years. That’s because socio-emotional learning, or knowing how to transact with other people, has been replaced by learning with digital prompts. The emotional vacuum is so normalized that children believe distancing is the right thing to do. Chitambaram starts from scratch to wean youngsters from tech-friendliness to people-friendliness and forge basic connections. “We ask them simple things they did in the week — how many home-cooked meals they had, how many bottles of water they had drunk, how many hours they slept, how much time they spent in the sun, how much physical exercise they did. they get, how many meaningful conversations they had with anybody and how honest they had been to themselves in self-talk,” he says. Anybody scoring low indicates lack of self-worth, from which point he trains them to listen to sounds in the real world, be self-aware, sympathise, then empathize and build a bond.
Digital detoxification is a major part of this exercise. “The non-stop digital world gives the pace of a dopamine rush. Even the so-called child-friendly YouTube videos in bright colors, tunes and fantastic themes, without which they cannot eat, are giving them a dopamine rush. Apps build addictive behavior that its makers, perhaps, wouldn’t sign up for. Instant gratification means the brain is stimulated at all times and seeks that high. Hence, it is important to delay gratification in screen time. So in our programs, we recommend no screen time for children under two years, limit exposure for teenagers to three hours for brain and emotional regulation,” says Chitambaram. He’s mapped adult use of devices and conservatively found most to be device-bound 10 to 12 hours a day. If it’s not working on a laptop, it’s surfing entertainment apps. Currently, he’s training psychology students in digital detox so that they can go into student communities and hand-hold them.
That’s how Mehwish Sultan, 22, a psychology student, battled her own loneliness with a self-devised coping strategy. “I was locked away in a tower with only an ‘Instagram window’ to watch others’ lives, which were rosier and more successful than mine. Even when I talked with them, beneath the surface, I felt a bitter jealousy, resentment even, as they had never felt what it was to be left behind. I did. Loneliness sat on my chest as I struggled to breathe,” she says. To Mehwish, loneliness isn’t something that can be quickly dispelled with new connections and friends; it’s a “rotten seed” that plants deep doubts about her self-worth. That’s why she has taken up creative pursuits involving natural elements like pottery. That has got her to enjoy outdoor life and make use of her idle time.
Loneliness in the IT hub
Satish Kumar CR, clinical psychologist at Manipal Hospital, Bengaluru, sees loneliness as a social avoidance disorder that is the tipping point of depression, particularly among IT professionals. “As remote jobs make them lonely, often in atomised bubbles far away from family, they seek diversion. They may go on multiple dates because they can swipe easily on a dating app but because there are options, there is no commitment of a lasting relationship,” he says. In a world where a 14-hour work day is rewarded and credible, basic human needs drop off at the bottom of the value chain.
He counseled one such work-from-home 28-year-old software consultant who somehow got tongue-tied about vocalising emotions. “Since he expressed himself best on text, we encouraged him to use that as his first communication tool and then gradually moved him away to real-time conversations and inter-personal exchanges,” Kumar says.
The other thing that he helps with is managing expectations, be it of women between 45 and 65, who suddenly realize that they were delusional to think they would be the pivot of everybody’s lives, or of elders, who think their children should be near them. since they had invested so much of their lives in them. In fact, Manipal Hospitals is contemplating support services with its post-graduate psychology student volunteers, who are being mentored to be good listeners.
Born Again: Elderly Care
The hospital recently did a survey in neighboring condominiums and found that most seniors were happy with somebody just talking to them. So it’s now organizing get-togethers for them with Spelling Bee contests, a short hike at Cubbon Park, poetry readings and even retro nights. “Spelling Bees are an enjoyable way of improving memory. Mental stimulation and social and physical interactions are a way of keeping dementia at bay for an aging population,” says Kumar.
At Emoha, Naik manages 33 elders, all of whom live alone. The platform itself runs a 24-hour channel on YouTube with interactive programming that teaches users to own their lives, be it managing health emergencies and online banking. “In fact, some of the seniors are experienced themselves and become instructors on the channel,” says Naik, who even plans offline sessions with like-minded seniors for book clubs, golfing and weekend getaways.
Seventy-three-year old psychologist Rashmi Gautam signed up for an app-based care service after she fell ill in the middle of the night and was in a momentary trough while tiding over difficulties of a gray divorce. But now she does pro-bono counseling for those living alone. “A lot of loneliness happens because of financial dependence and insecurity. Many do not know how to manage their existing bank deposits and plan their investments based on returns. You then don’t depend on children’s handouts. I also counsel them on laws that protect them against mistreatment by children and cyber fraud,” she says. Gautam is currently working with corporates on work-life balance.
Meanwhile, hope floats with the likes of 22-year-old Hari Krishnan, who once felt “like a living ghost, denying close connections for fear they would inevitably end.” He actually healed himself by connecting with others on the same boat, channelising his experience into supporting those who might be struggling. He now has formed a football club of such youngsters who have taken their love of the game to build a team spirit, a bond they carry into watching movies and dining out together. “Overcoming loneliness is like a caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly. It symbolizes personal growth and the emergence of a stronger, more resilient self,” he says.
(With inputs by Gayatri Thomas)