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by tbirdz 3435 days ago
Does anyone have any resources on how to break out of this "isolation cycle" if one is currently already in it?
1 comments

I think the best way is to find one of your hobbies that has a public group and just force yourself to go, and focus on enjoying the part of it you enjoy. If you like MTG, find a local game night. If you like birds, go to a bird watching meetup. If you like activism, go to volunteering events. If you like spirituality, go to a church. And don't feel pressure to "do it right" or impress people in a certain way or make friends. You're probably going to be a weirdo, and that's ok. The goal is to be a weirdo who is enjoying something in the presence of others. Just go, give yourself a pat on the back for sticking around to the end, and then go again the following week.

But at a higher level, I think the way you break out of cycles is to first just attack one part of the cycle, and then slowly add more and eventually you are attacking it all at once. If part of why you don't like going out is you don't feel good about yourself, just do your laundry, clean your apartment, take a shower, put on clean clothes, and go for a walk. Then (if you're me) go back to binge eating pizza and browsing Reddit. Don't beat yourself up for the parts of the cycle you're not fixing, just give yourself credit for cleaning your apartment and move on.

It won't give way all at once. You've got to basically get practice fixing some parts of the cycle, which will have some small benefit, and over time you'll get closer to having a day where the whole cycle collapses and you do a complete virtuous cycle instead.

TL;DR: just attack part of the cycle, focus on your successes, and don't beat yourself up too much.