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How Listening to Podcasts Can Help You Cope With Loneliness
Podcasts have helped me through one of the loneliest periods of my life, this is why (and how) they could help you too.
For me, podcasts trump all other art forms* when it comes to their ability to provide me with a feeling of connection to the person who creates them (*if the behemoth of podcasting Joe Rogan calls podcast-ing an art, I’m inclined to agree). I enjoy reading the works of online bloggers and novelists, and I enjoy watching the creations of visual artists, film-makers and even YouTube ‘Vloggers’, but I never feel as connected to the individual who created these other art forms as I do with the creator of a podcast — there is something raw, intimate and authentic about the podcaster’s voice that these other creators can’t seem to quite match.
This sense of connection that podcasts provide me with has helped me immensely with feelings of loneliness. Due to the nature of my job currently, as the full-time Caregiver of my sister, I have found it hard to stay in contact with close friends and I haven’t had the time or energy to attend social events I used to enjoy. With the addition of the COVID-19 related social restrictions that have been in place recently, I’ve found myself suffering from feelings of loneliness and social isolation more so than at any other time in my life. During this period podcasts have been my saving grace, from dusk till dawn I have been accompanied by a variety of podcasts, whether on my morning run or my late-night writing sessions, podcasts never fail to provide me with the sense of company that I’m yearning for.
Having seen my mental-health benefit so much from the simple act of listening to podcasts I thought it would be worthwhile to write about why and how exactly this relatively new-age art form is helping me, with the hope that podcast-listening might be able to help others who are struggling with feelings of loneliness too.
Why podcasts can help you with loneliness
The sense of company provided by a human voice
When I listen to a podcast I can hear the creator’s voice as if s/he were in the room with me (an effect made…
