Isolation and Loneliness Counselling Melbourne

The experience of feeling lonely and isolated in Melbourne is distressing and debilitating for those individuals trying to navigate their way or start afresh. 

The experience of isolation and loneliness has been described as like feeling hungry all the time. Hungry for company, hungry for connection, hungry for contact, hungry for the soothing touch of someone else.  

It can bring up feelings of shame as it may look like everyone else is feeling full of the joys of life, which makes the experience of isolation and loneliness even more difficult. At the Melbourne Counselling Centre, we work with clients who have been through periods of isolation and loneliness. We support through a non-judgemental and safe space to express their pain, their fears as well as their hopes and dreams. 

It is within the safety of the counselling space that individuals suffering from isolation and loneliness can start to emerge from their hunger state and begin to put in place the required steps that will take them from aloneness to connection.  This can take time, and maybe fraught with challenges but the magic always happens when we work through our struggles. It is by staying stuck in the happiness will over time deplete you.  

Lonely people become less practised at navigating the social world around them, thereby making it more difficult to achieve the very things they want – connection. Counselling for people who are feeling isolated and lonely will enable you to regain the skills to re-enter the world. 

When experiencing loneliness and isolation it can seem as if these feelings are growing around them, somehow protecting them.  But the truth of loneliness and isolation is actually the opposite.  The initial feelings can perpetuate themselves.  The initial sensation of loneliness triggers a state of hypervigilance (alertness) towards social threat.  In this state people start to become fearful and scared of the world, as they start to see it in predominantly negative terms. So, those suffering from isolation and loneliness in Melbourne start to expect negative encounters, they expect others to be rude, brash, impatient and to reject them.  This creates a vicious cycle in which the lonely person grows more isolated and withdrawn. 

Counselling for isolation and loneliness in Melbourne will assist you to shed your loneliness as your protective barrier, educate you on the effects it has on your nervous system, uncover the reasons for the isolation, help you resolve negative emotions and gently walk side-by-side with you as you set in place the steps to re- enter the world.