“Loneliness is a 365 day a year problem; it just does not happen at random. The evidence is very clear; loneliness is a massive risk factor in people developing both mental and physical health problems and should be treated as a public health emergency. Loneliness is a scourge on our society…” – Dr Roman Racska, President-Elect of the BPS.
Research indicates that about 10% of the population feel lonely at any one time while it is accepted that older people are at high risk of social isolation, loneliness and, thus, poor mental and physical health, there is now more recognition of the impact of loneliness on children and young people too. Young people, from adolescence to early adulthood, attach particularly high value to close friendships and romantic relationships. Loneliness is particularly common at this stage of life.
But what is it about loneliness that hurts, and even kills? What is it that makes it so dangerous to our physical and mental health?
Our species evolved for social living, which needs larger brains to develop after passing through the birth canal – which, in turn, means that we are brought into this world quite helpless and relatively immature. As infants, we are all dependent on care for longer than any other primate. Birth itself is painful and dangerous. It all adds up to the need for help from kin. Therefore, the feeling of loneliness may be a helpful and adaptive response to being socially disconnected and it provides us with a drive to re-join with social groups.
Social Isolation or Loneliness?
Social isolation is not quite the same as loneliness. Social isolation describes an objective situation in which social connections are limited or absent. It is about… there being friends, or just one special person, who is around when needed. Loneliness, by contrast, is a subjective feeling of distress – when an individual feels the potential for connections available to them are inadequate or unfulfilling. Loneliness is about feeling that one lacks companionship, or feeling left out, feeling isolated from others, feeling alone, or feeling we are missing out. While isolation and loneliness often co-occur, importantly, they can be experienced independently off one another (Matthews et al., 2016).
Cognitive Changes:
Cognitive changes are equally important. Lonely individuals are more likely to lack trust, to look at those around them with suspicion, to see people more negatively, to be less hopeful about the outcomes of social interactions, and to prioritise self-protection by being defensive or even hostile upon entering a social encounter. These strategies may be understandable as ways of minimising potential risks from social interactions, but they bring with them two major life-limiting consequences.
Two Major Life-Limiting Consequences:
First, obviously these strategies are likely to ensure that nothing changes, that positive social relationships continue to evade them. There is a self-fulfilling quality in this anxious and pessimistic stance towards social relationships. Loneliness becomes the cause of further isolation, as opportunities to develop positive social relationships are lost. Each of these missed opportunities provide further evidence for what the person experiences as the hopelessness of ever arriving at a positive social exchange. It has the potential of creating the deepest of grooves, the walls of which ultimately defy scaling.
The second aspect is perhaps even more pernicious, but harder to explain. The social nature of our beings has made humans unique amongst species in efficiently passing knowledge from one generation to the next, enabling us to accumulate a store of knowledge called culture. Each generation can learn from the last. Humans need to be able to learn and benefit from their social context if they are to thrive (Wilson et al., 2014). But in a social network as complex as ours, vigilance is advisable (Sperber et al., 2010). We need to be able to work out quickly who to trust so they can help us learn the ropes. How does this happen? To protect the naive learner from acquiring inaccurate information, evolution has equipped us with a gating mechanism, a capacity to open our minds to learning only when learning new knowledge is safe. This is called epistemic trust.
Epistemic trust means a person’s ability to trust appropriately in social sources of new knowledge (Fonagy, Luyten, & Allison, 2015). There is a need for vigilance to ensure that we are only open to learning when the source of knowledge is trustworthy. Humans – in order to learn about the world, about themselves and about what they need to know – need to trust the knowledge which is being communicated to them. It is a person’s openness to the social context that enables change and adaptation to circumstance, namely to learn. Human communities, families, schools, workplaces need to create an environment that ensures the openness that epistemic trust affords. Of course, the experience of adversity is bound to undermine epistemic trust and may even be a helpful adaptation to a hostile environment (Fonagy et al., 2021).
Unfavourable Outcomes Associated with Loneliness:
A number of unfavorable outcomes have been linked to loneliness. In addition to its association with depressive symptoms and other forms of mental illness, loneliness is a risk factor for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and arthritis, among other diseases. Lonely people are also twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s Disease, research suggests. The state of chronic loneliness may trigger adverse physiological responses such as the increased production of stress hormones, hinder sleep, and result in weakened immunity.
While a person cannot die simply from feeling too lonely, findings that lonely people have higher rates of mortality and certain diseases supports the idea that, over time, chronic loneliness can play a role in increasing the risk of dying.
The great irony is that as we become increasingly “connected”- on social media, video calling, and messaging – we simultaneously feel increasingly lonely. And even though we may use technology to feel more connected, it may be exactly what’s leading us to feel lonely.
Does Anyone Care About Me?
A paper by Edward Lemay, Jennifer Cutri, and Nadya Teneva published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2024 suggests an important way that loneliness can become a chronic condition. As you might expect, people feel lonely when they believe that other people are not supporting them and also when they believe that other people do not really like them or think that they are good people. These authors suggest that feelings of loneliness decrease people’s sense that they are being cared for and whether other people have a good opinion of them. That feeling of a lack of care and regard by others then amplifies the feeling of loneliness in a vicious cycle.
To amplify this further, when we feel loneliness for long enough, we start to believe no one wants to be with us. We start to believe we will always be alone. The loneliness grows into hopelessness. It is time to reevaluate the situation. You need to redefine your old concepts and stop assuming that being alone is the same as being lonely.
Loneliness and Love:
If you have not loved anyone in a while, you are going to crave that experience and feel lonely. But there is a difference between the feeling of loneliness and “I am lonely.” One is an experience, a feeling that comes and goes. The other is an identity, tightly tied to your sense of worth. Instead of just being aware of the feeling, you have attached added meaning to it. But it is not your fault. That knot has been tied by society. Whether you know it or not, you have been programmed.
Loneliness is the struggle that needs to be overcome. Once you conquer it, only then will you feel happy. You can understand the roots of this feeling, but understanding it does not take away how real and constant it is. It is an ongoing state that can make you lose hope and wonder, will I ever find love again?
Address Your Fear Head-on!
First, stop ruminating while you are having that lonesome feeling. Stop asking yourself if you will ever find the kind of person you have always dreamed of. Maybe you will not. But if that shakes your world, the last thing you need to be in right now is a relationship. Because that desperation will only poison whatever relationship you do find yourself in.
Hence, let us address your fear right now, head on. Take a deep breath and ask yourself the following question regardless of your age: What if you never find a partner?
Did your heart stop? It might have for a second, but despite what you may feel, you are still very much alive. I am not saying you will never find love. I am saying that this looming question you allow to follow you around like a dark cloud is what is stripping the vibrance out of your life. This giant what-if you keep asking yourself is preventing you from truly living.
Acceptance just means that, if you do not find the one, your world will not end. You will still build a wonderful and meaningful life. Many people have built amazing lives without a partner. People who started to move their life chips from we to me, have started to bet on themselves.
The more you accept this truth, the sooner you will stop feeling that being single is linked to a lower sense of worth, the less you will tell yourself you need to find someone to be happy, and the more you will be present in your life instead of obsessing about the future.
Accepting this truth, you will start to run toward yourself instead of into the arms of the next person to come along. And when you do meet someone – because of course you will – you will bring a more interesting, alluring set of skills and experiences to the table. Instead of meeting someone who will save you from your situation, you will meet someone who can share your current joys.
Look, no one wants to be alone. Not you. Not me. We all want to share our life with someone else. Love and relationships are only one part of your life, not your entire life.
Try some of these strategies to tackle loneliness:
- Practice your self-kindness. Limit negative self-talk. Take care of yourself.
- Capitalise on the present moment. When you feel good about something, share it with others right away, and I do not mean “share” by posting on your social media…talk!
- Connect with people in real life. We do this by looking people in the eyes, listening, being mindful, and choosing not be distracted by our phones or other technologies.
- Rethink how you spend your spare time. When we feel lonely, sometimes we just want to retreat into a corner and hide. Other times, our endless to-do list may leave us too exhausted to go out and be social. But opting to stay alone every night with our phones, watching Netflix, or playing on Facebook can really get us stuck in loneliness. We have created a life for ourselves that deprives us of meaningful social connection, and the only way to get out of it is to start living differently.
- Do more things with people. Engaging in face-to-face social interactions tends to improve our mood and reduce depression.
- Talk to strangers. A growing body of research suggests that even seemingly trivial interactions with strangers—like chatting with a barista or cashier—may be able to keep loneliness at bay by helping us feel more socially connected. So reach out to other human beings to say hello.
- Be active online. Instead of passively surfing the net or your social media, if you want to go online, opt instead to do something that involves the active participation of other people. For example, you could play games with others, chat about something you care about, give advice on a forum, or have a video call with a friend. The more you interact with others while online, the more connected you are likely to feel.
- Stop focusing so much on yourself. Shift your focus on what you can give, instead.
- Spend money on experiences. This is way better for our mental health. So get creative and think about what you want to do with others. For example, I might go on a canoeing trip, go wine tasting, plan a beach party, or host an arts & crafts night. What group activities might make you feel less lonely?
- Pay attention to the things that matter. How do we expect to improve our loneliness when we don’t know what causes it? It’s hard. So it’s helpful to start paying attention to the present moment. What are the experiences that make you feel lonely? And what are the experiences that make you feel connected or like you belong? Identifying these moments can help you reduce loneliness, because you can limit your engagement in activities that make you feel lonely and increase your engagement in activities that make you feel connected.
- Create a vision board. I keep a vision board tacked up by my desk to remind me of my goals. A big chunk of my vision board is about connecting – counselling youngsters, spending time with family and my dogs, and the like. Sometimes I have a hard time sticking to it, but having the vision board reminds me to. Once you discover the things that make you feel less lonely and more connected, it can be helpful to create a board or list or plan for what you will do – something to keep near you so you remember what you need to do to combat loneliness.
- Tend to your network. Sometimes we can end up feeling alone even though we are connected to lots of people. It can be helpful to reach out to these people and schedule times to catch up.
- Join an online group of like-minded people. You can now find people online with just about any interest – for example, politics, cooking, or sports. Joining one of these mission-oriented groups can be a way to feel more connected to others, even when you do not have access to face-to-face interactions.
- Volunteer remotely or in real life. Volunteer for a cause, either remotely or in your town. Just be sure you are working with others. Working on an important problem with others can help you decrease loneliness.
Lastly,
- Be nice to yourself. It is important to practice self-compassion when you fail at things. Remember, everyone fails, and there is no need to be a bully to yourself, feel guilty, or put yourself down. That kind of attitude won’t help you decrease loneliness, now or in the future. Instead, try talking to yourself in a way that is supportive, kind, and caring – and you will be more likely to acknowledge mistakes you may have made in trying to decrease loneliness, and hopefully do better next time.
There are so many other aspects of your life that are meaningful and fulfilling. Your art. Your career, if you are still working. Exercising your voice and the dent you are going to make in this world. Your friendships. Your family. Your passions and hobbies. Your curiosity leads you to explore, learn, grow, and expand. When you actually build your own life, a life that is honest to you and stands on its own, the fear of being alone starts to fade. Remember, “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself!”
