Stress
Five Reasons Why Being Home All the Time Is So Hard
How can it be so unpleasant to be stuck in a place we love?
Posted June 3, 2020 Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
For most of us, our home is a predictable and secure place where we feel in control and properly oriented in space and time.
Why then, can it be so unpleasant to have to be there all of the time?
When the so-called “lockdown” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was first put in place, few of us grasped how long it might last and how difficult it would be; we dramatically underestimated the emotional toll that it would take on us.
There are a number of reasons why working from home, or not having work to do at home, has been so hard on us.
1. It Signals That We Have Lost Control Over Our Lives
If we had freely chosen to work from home, the effects would be much less severe. The problem with a lockdown or a quarantine is that we experience it as something that has happened to us rather than as something we have chosen to do. This makes us feel helpless and at the mercy of forces beyond our control. Thus, we are at a disadvantage from the get-go, leading to pessimism and a sense of defeat.
Studies growing out of the pioneering work on “learned helplessness” by psychologist Martin Seligman have demonstrated how the loss of control over one's life can undermine one's mood, energy level, and sense of hope.
2. The Sheer Amount of Change Is Stressful and Exhausting
Researchers have long understood that the main thing that determines how stressful an event is is the amount of change that it requires in one's life, and forced isolation changes everything. We are no longer doing the same things at the same time in the same places with the same people—and this is exhausting.
Habits and routines allow us to go about our day with many tasks on automatic pilot, leaving a lot of cognitive capacity for new or complicated things that demand it. When everything changes at once, very little is on automatic pilot, and so we wear ourselves out.
3. Social Isolation Runs Counter to Human Nature
Humans are hardwired to interact with others, especially during times of stress. When we go through a trying ordeal such as a pandemic alone, a lack of emotional support and comradeship can increase our anxiety and hinder our ability to cope.
Many studies confirm that loneliness isn’t good for anyone’s health. It increases levels of stress hormones in the body while leading to poor sleep, a compromised immune system and, in the elderly, cognitive decline. The damage that solitary confinement inflicts on the mental health of prison inmates has also been well-documented.
Alone in an unchanging environment, the sensory information available to us and the ways in which we process it can change in unpredictable ways. For example, we normally spend most of our time attending to and processing external stimuli from the physical world around us. However, monotonous stimulation from our surroundings may cause us to turn our attention inward — within ourselves — which most of us have much less experience handling.
A meaningful connection to other people is as essential to health as the air we breathe, and prolonged periods of social isolation can crack even the hardiest of individuals. In extreme cases, this can result in an altered state of consciousness that may even result in hallucinations and visits from ghosts. Perhaps, in the absence of actual human contact, our brains manufacture social experiences in a last-ditch attempt to preserve our sanity.
4. Being in Isolation With Others Can Be Challenging
Divorce rates in China skyrocketed shortly after their quarantine was lifted, and mental health experts are quite worried about the explosion of domestic violence against partners and children that may accompany a prolonged lockdown.
So, unpleasant things can also happen when small groups of people experience isolation together. Much of what we know about this phenomenon has been gathered from the experiences of volunteers at research stations in Antarctica, especially during the “wintering-over” period.
The extreme temperatures, long periods of darkness, alien landscapes and severely reduced sensory input created a perfect natural laboratory for studying the effects of isolation and confinement. The volunteers experienced changes in appetite and sleep patterns. Some stopped being able to accurately track the passage of time and lost the ability to concentrate. The boredom from being around the same people, with limited sources of entertainment, ended up causing a lot of stress. Everyone else’s mannerisms became a grating, annoying and inescapable source of torment.
Historical accounts of early polar explorers indicate that they were well aware of this problem and developed creative strategies for dealing with it.
5. Isolation Creates a Ripe Environment for Depression
Clinical psychologists predict that the COVID-19 crisis is a perfect storm of factors that predict an echo pandemic of depression. You not only have the stressful life events and isolation factors described above, but the financial stress resulting from the loss of a job and medical bills may be enough to push even normally healthy people into a spiral of despair. Too much alone time can also result in excessive rumination about past failures and personal shortcomings for some people, which rarely leads to anything good.
And it is not a simple matter to predict exactly who is at greatest risk.
I have heard many individuals suggest that that introverts might not be struggling as much with the isolation measures as extroverts are. That may be true; or it may not.
Both introverts and extroverts must deal with changed routines and a loss of control over life, so both will experience stress. Yes, extroverts crave social interaction more than introverts, but they may also be more resourceful and motivated to make it happen during isolation. I think this is very much an open question.
What Coping Strategies Can You Use to Deal With Isolation at Home?
There are things you can do to make life in lockdown more tolerable. Establish a routine. As much as possible, create a new normal so your life can follow a predictable rhythm.
Maximize social contact. Software such as Skype and Facetime that allow you to actually see faces and hear voices are better than email and texting which remove the face-to-face interaction element of social contact that we are programmed for.
In addition to staying socially connected and in a routine, remind yourself that this all will pass and that it will be a highly memorable part of your life. Anything that you can do to make the lives of others better during this time will also boost your own sense of purpose and well-being.
