“It is my loneliness that made me savage.”—Victor Frankenstein’s Creature
Last month I found myself completely sucked into the news cycle and becoming overwhelmingly negative.
I’d read everything I could about the chaos of the world and feel my frustration boil over inside. Eventually, I’d end up ranting to my husband about all the injustices for longer than I’d like to admit.
He’d engage with me for a few minutes, then run out of things to say. After all, how many ways can you say life just isn’t fair?
I realized my time spent in analysis of world events meant my brain craved more intellectual stimulation, so I transferred my attention to classic novels. A longtime fan of gothic literature, I decided to start with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
What Frankenstein Taught Me About Isolation
I went into reading the novel with popular depictions of Frankenstein’s “monster” in mind—outlandish and grotesque.
I expected a straightforward sci-fi horror story, but Shelley pleasantly surprised me with a poignant commentary on human nature that issued a warning about the dangers of isolation.
To sum it up briefly, the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, leaves his family and friends to attend a university four hundred miles away. Over the course of six years, he becomes so absorbed in the process of building and animating a human body that he leaves his family’s letters unanswered.
His isolation from the people who love and care about him strips him of his humanity. With no one around to check his reckless ambition, Victor commits all sorts of unconscionable acts—harming animals and raiding graves for body parts.
He ultimately succeeds in his endeavors, but he feels only disgust for his disfigured creation. With no regard for its sentience, Victor cruelly abandons him. Without any guidance from his creator, the creature embarks on a heartbreaking journey.
Chased into hiding, he secretly observes the daily interactions of impoverished cottagers. The loving ways they support each other through difficult times show him the highlights of the human experience.
This stirs an intense longing for love and friendship in the creature, but every attempt he makes to connect ends in rejection. His loneliness eventually leads him down the path of revenge against Victor and claims multiple lives in the process.
He entered the world with an instinct to love, but exited with remorse and despair.
What Shelley’s Message Means for Us Today
Though extreme in many regards, Shelley’s tale reminds us that love and connection play a vital role in our overall well-being.
Fiction meets fact when you look at the data: modern studies indicate that loneliness carries as much risk as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
Socialization, on the other hand, improves a person’s odds of survival by 50%.
Clearly, humans thrive in groups and struggle in isolation.
This week we’ll examine how acts of love keep us connected to our family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and classmates.
Start your own journey of self-discovery with the printable, Love in Practice: 5 Reflection Prompts for Self-Growth, included in this Emotional Regulation Toolkit.
Nurturing Connection Through Gratitude
Gratitude for our loved ones, colleagues, and neighbors strengthens our connections.
However, sometimes we develop a habit of dwelling on minor disagreements and annoyances. This often leads to resentment that festers and feeds negativity in our relationships—the pattern you see when people go from extremely close to easily irritated with each other.
In my post about self-love, I compared the mind to a pantry with thoughts taking up space on the shelves.
If we want to encourage a positive view of others, we need to push our expectations of perfection to the back and bring their best qualities to the front. We do this by regularly expressing appreciation for the ways they enrich our lives.
In last week’s post, I shared how starting my day by reflecting on my children’s most charming qualities helped me overlook minor offenses and maintain inner calm throughout their school day.
Over the course of the week, I repeated this practice daily and noticed a positive change in my parenting. It became easier to discipline with love and regulate my emotions during difficult moments.
Overall, I felt happier and more connected to my children than ever, and the best part—it doesn’t have to end with parenting.
This week I’ll extend this practice to my family and friends. Without their love and support, I doubt I’d feel as confident pursuing my dream of writing. This activity gives me the perfect opportunity to express my gratitude for their constant encouragement.
Each day, I’ll choose one person and complete a guided reflection about the things I appreciate most about them. Ideally, this will result in the same feelings of contentment and deeper connection I experienced with my children.
If you’d like to try this with the people in your life, download the Tending Your Connections printable included in this Emotional Regulation Toolkit. It includes guided journaling prompts designed to help you focus on the positive aspects of your relationships while identifying areas in need of more love and attention in a gentle way.
Why Staying Connected Feels Hard—and Why It Matters
While gratitude goes a long way, meaningful connection also requires communication.
Some of us, though, go weeks or months without contacting people—a strange phenomenon in an age where almost all of us carry an internet-connected device everywhere.
Unlike Victor Frankenstein, we have the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at almost any time of day, so what’s the deal?
For one thing, we live incredibly busy lives. The average American worker spends eight hours or more on the job. Parents have the added responsibility of dropping kids off at school, picking them up, and making sure they do their homework.
Don’t even get me started on the cooking and cleaning—an endless loop of wash, dry, put away, dirty again. Most evenings we end up scrolling on our phones or watching TV. Phone conversations, text messaging, and emails just feel mountainous at that point.
Mental health challenges also make it difficult to find the motivation to reach out. Depression and anxiety tend to be all-consuming, causing us so much pain that we struggle to see anything or anyone beyond it.
Overwhelmed by our own thoughts, we instinctively withdraw from others to suffer in silence.
Isolation seems like the safest option when our emotions get really intense. Ironically, though, picking up the phone or meeting up with a friend might be just what we need to start healing.
Admittedly, ADHD makes it really hard for me to consistently communicate with my friends.
I once watched a short on Instagram where a woman answered the question: Is it really true that people with ADHD don’t miss people?
Her response: We miss people, just in a different way.
We get so distracted by our daily chaos and routines that we tend to forget about anything or anyone outside of that. We realize that we miss people the next time we see them.
We’ll genuinely have a blast catching up with someone and wonder why we don’t do that more often—only to get bogged down in life and forget again. The cycle repeats.
People have many valid reasons for struggling to maintain connection with their family, friends, and acquaintances—social anxiety, incompatible schedules, health issues. Life in this imperfect world creates real barriers to nurturing relationships outside of our household.
However, instead of simply accepting isolation, we need to recognize the value of a healthy social life and put it closer to the top of our list of priorities.
Socialization is self-care, and self-care means having the wellness to take care of the people around us.
Tending to our connections requires mindful practices and habits. First, we need to take inventory of the people who have the biggest impact in our lives.
- Start by making a list of people you interact with regularly—extended family members, friends, colleagues, neighbors, classmates, etc.
- Reflect on the impact each person has on your life. Ask yourself:
How does this person add meaning to my life?
How connected do I feel right now?
Does this relationship feel nourishing or draining at the moment?
- Use your insights to set boundaries or make actionable goals for consistent communication.
Moments of reflection lead to self-awareness, and self-awareness leads to impactful change through intentional actions. This helps us strengthen the bonds we share with others.
If you’re ready to tend to your connections, download the Relationship Rhythm Tracker included in this Emotional Regulation Toolkit. I designed it to help us identify relationship patterns and build new habits. If you find it helpful, I’d love to hear what you learned in the process.
The Quiet Impact We Don’t Give Ourselves Credit For
My deep-seated fear of being “too much” for people often holds me back from making the first move, and I’ve always assumed this made me a bad friend.
When I completed my Love Progress Report earlier this month, I gave myself a D in the area of family, friends, and acquaintances. I noted in the remarks section: Needs to take more initiative in communication.
However, a few interactions this week showed me that I had graded myself a little too harshly.
When Self-Doubt Distorts the Truth
“Sorry for keeping you on the phone so long. You’re just really easy to talk to.”—my sister-in-law after calling for what she called a reality check
“You’re so sweet and encouraging, Bryanna”—my friend after coming to me for comfort after a long week of chronic pain
“One of the things I appreciate most about you is how relaxed you are about things.”—my self-described “chaotic” friend who feels free to be herself around me.
Based on the unprompted feedback from my family and friends, it seems that I underrated my performance. The view I had of myself conflicted with their glowing words of affirmation. I made the mistake of accepting my self-criticism as fact before weighing the opinions of those on the receiving end.
In reality, they have way more authority in this evaluation than my inner critic ever did. Listening to her caused me to fixate on my flaws and overlook the things I do right.
Cue our theme song of the month:
The Impact We Forget We Have
For example, during my hospitalization at a mental health facility, my roommate and I became fast friends. She opened up to me about her heartbreaking battle with addiction, and I offered words of encouragement and validation.
After discharge, she had some ups and downs in her recovery. Every time she relapsed, I reminded her that healing isn’t linear and praised her for continuing to fight.
Last year, she suffered a nearly fatal overdose. She told me how my encouraging words kept her fighting in the ICU, and that moment steadied her feet on the path of recovery.
Since then her life has changed for the better, and I never forget to send a congratulatory text every month she stays sober. Fifteen months and counting!
You’re Not Seeing the Full Picture
Admittedly, I have room to grow when it comes to being proactive, but I take comfort in knowing that I nourish my relationships in other meaningful ways.
I share all this not to brag but to caution against underestimating your value as a friend. Most people do this more than they’d like to admit.
However, this type of thinking can have unintended consequences.
If we start to feel insecure and unworthy, we assume others feel the same way. That negatively impacts our motivation to continue nurturing our connections because we view secure attachment as an empty promise.
This takes us back to the concept of self-love.
By validating our own worth through consistent practice, we build our confidence in the love and acceptance we receive from others. This will motivate us to make the effort to stay connected.
Make it a habit to think about all the positive ways you contribute to your social circle. Doing so will push your insecurities out of sight and out of mind.
The reflection worksheet, What Makes Me a Good Friend (included in the Emotional Regulation Toolkit), provides prompts that will draw your attention to the things that make you worthy of love.
Shift Your Focus Toward the Good
If you’re ready to dig deeper and grow in the ways you show love to yourself and others, download the Love in Practice: 5 Reflection Prompts for Self-Growth printable included in this Emotional Regulation Toolkit. I designed it to help you get a baseline on how you display love in your relationships with yourself and others.
Inside this printable, you’ll find:
- The Love Progress Report—Use this to identify areas of love in your life that need more care and intention. Track your growth throughout the month by completing a new one each week.
- Mapping Your Relationships—Use this to reflect on your relationships and look for patterns that determine which ones build you up, and if any of them drain your emotional energy.
Meaningful Actions to Try:
- Reflect on the positive qualities of family members, friends, and acquaintances to keep minor slights from turning into lingering frustration. The Tending Your Connections worksheet included in the Emotional Regulation Toolkit can help.
- Take inventory of the people in your social circle. Use these insights to set boundaries or make actionable goals for consistent communication. You can use the Relationship Rhythm Tracker included in the Emotional Regulation Toolkit for guided reflection.
- Schedule time to validate your worth as a friend by reflecting on your positive traits. You can find helpful prompts in the printable, What Makes Me a Good Friend, included in the Emotional Regulation Toolkit.
Book Recommendation:
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley—Explore themes of connection and self-perception. (This novel is in the public domain. I’m linking to a free, legal copy through Project Gutenberg so anyone can read along without barriers. You’re welcome to use any edition or format that works best for you.)
Carrying Love Forward
As Mary Shelley brilliantly conveyed in Frankenstein, isolation robs us of the very things that make life worth living—love and connection. Showing appreciation for the people in our lives helps us focus on their positive qualities instead of their flaws. Busy schedules and mental health struggles can make it harder to stay connected, but mindful habits can help us carve out time for the people who matter most to us. We never want to underestimate the quiet impact we have on others because even the smallest acts of love can be life-changing for our family, friends, and acquaintances.
I truly appreciate each and every one of you, and your support has breathed new life into my mental health journey.
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment and share with anyone who could use a little more love in their lives. Subscribe to be notified when my next article goes live—we’ll wrap up this month of love by extending it to our communities and examine ways to show love even with people outside of your closest relationships.
Keep it kind, respectful, and focused on self-love and growth—let’s make this a safe, uplifting space. 🌿