You Are Not Alone: Tools for Connection and Overcoming Loneliness During COVID

FindCenter is a free website created to aid people in their journey of personal growth, healing, and finding purpose. We have hand picked some resources to help you get through pandemic isolation and loneliness. 

It’s natural to crave human connection, so when we find ourselves without it, we can feel vulnerable and isolated—a pain that has become even more acute during a pandemic that has separated many of us from the people and places that make us feel most at home. Nevertheless, being on our own can be deeply gratifying, at once empowering and enlightening—as long as we can learn to see it as such. 

Here are some great resources with wisdom to help you feel less alone and find your way toward more meaningful connection—with yourself and others:

Articles to read:

5 Mantras to Comfort You When You’re Feeling Lonely

mindbodygreen: Loneliness used to terrify me. I think I feared that if I felt lonely, I’d lose my mind and develop an attachment to an inanimate object or something, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

6 Steps to Embrace Loneliness

Yoga Journal: Time spent alone doesn’t have to be lonely. Embrace it as a chance to connect with what’s truly essential.

This Lonely Winter

Ten Percent Happier: I know I am not alone in feeling alone. This winter, so many of us are walking around lonely, thirsty for community and connection. This much isolation and distance and anxiety around every interaction is not normal.

Bringing Mindfulness to Loneliness

Toni Bernhard: Toni Bernhard has a mindfulness exercise for bringing compassion to feelings of loneliness.

Ezra Klein Interviews Anna Sale

New York Times: A hard conversation is about trying to sort of understand more focus on descriptions and sharing experience but not wrapping it all up neatly at the end because when you try to do that, you’re sort of pushing through what actually is the hard thing

It’s Time to Rethink What Loneliness Is

The Guardian: Research suggests that chronic loneliness may be as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But do we know what loneliness actually is?

Create a Sense of Belonging

PsychologyToday: Finding ways to belong can help ease the pain of loneliness.

Videos to watch:

A Guided Meditation for Loneliness

Try this guided meditation from Yael Shy, founder and director of MindfulNYU, to help you embrace loneliness.

Unplug with Sadhguru: How to Deal with Loneliness

Sadhguru, Isha Foundation, answers questions from the youth. At a Youth and Truth event held in SRCC, Delhi, he was asked by a young participant at the event. how can one deal with their craving for being accepted.

An Expert’s Best Strategies for Coping with Loneliness and Isolation

Cityline is the longest running and most successful daytime show for women in North American history.

Russel Brand on Loneliness

Russel Brand explains the best way to deal with loneliness.

Loneliness

Everybody feels lonely sometimes. But only few of us are aware how important this feeling was for our ancestors – and that our modern world can turn it into something that really hurts us. Why do we feel this way and what can we do about it?

Be sure to check out our site for thousands of other resources for topics ranging from life challenges like anxiety, job loss, or burnout to self-mastery skills to healing approaches like breathwork, acupuncture, and energy healing.