Isolation Can Lead to Needing Long Term Care

As a defense mechanism, isolation occurs when a person voluntarily engages in activities that  threaten his emotional stability.  For example, suppose a person has committed some serious immoral act.  If he then thinks about this behavior too much, he would likely feel a lot of guilt, embarrassment or self-condemnation—very uncomfortable feelings to have to live with every day.  Thus such a person might be able to somewhat remove these unpleasant thoughts and feelings from his life if he can isolate them.

There are several ways of doing this.  He might admit the behavior but refuse to admit that it was immoral, because, after all, one shouldn’t go around making moral judgments.  Or he may develop the habit of never evaluating his own actions.  He may admit he did the immoral deeds, but simply does not internalize them as he does his other actions, in effect repressing them from his conscious mind.  Prime examples of this latter technique are religious people and politicians who behave in reprehensible ways a good bit of the time, but present themselves as paragons of virtue at critical times.  Such people have isolated a part of their minds into “ iron-headed” compartments.  They are in essence repressing certain thoughts and feelings to avoid feeling guilty.

However, the most popular means of isolation in my experience is to avoid being around people who might confront one about the undesirable aspects of one’s life.  We’ve all know the “anti-social” person who avoids contact with others by refusing social invitations, isolates himself in his office, eats meals alone, gravitates to jobs that require little social contact, engineers his life to have as little social contact as possible, etc.

I have the acquaintance of a man who lives alone in a very messy house, guaranteeing that no one will visit him.  He is now 73 years old, is retired, never married, and likes to engage in solitary activities.  His main activity these days is to play golf, either alone or with strangers, which guarantees that no one will get very close to him.  He’s a rather acerbic outspoken person, which further ensures that few people will get close to him.  To say that he is an isolationist would be an understatement!

A few years ago I tried to interest him in long term care insurance, especially in view of the fact that he was essentially alone, and should he become ill or have an accident, there was no one he could turn to for the kinds of services long term care insurance could provide.  He was not interested, saying he was healthy as a horse and didn’t need such insurance.  Then, wouldn’t you know it, he had to have hip-replacement and cataract surgery within a year’s time.  He struggled mightily, and spent considerable personal funds in recovery from these operations.  He had nursing, home health care, transportation, physical therapy and other needs that long term insurance would have covered, for which he had to spend considerable personal funds.  He recently admitted to me (when we were alone!) that he should have purchased long term care insurance, but that it was now too late, and he was very worried about what the future held for him.

I don’t have an inkling as to this man’s psychological background as to why he has always isolated himself, but it’s easy to see how it has caused him considerable problems his entire life.   And his story is not completed yet.