We All Get Lonely Sometimes—What to Do on the Days You Feel Totally Alone

We’ve all had days where we feel super lonely—they really suck. You know the feeling of lying on the couch, phone in hand, and wondering why our friends or partners haven’t replied to our texts yet (because it’s been 30 minutes already!). The cat, unsurprisingly, doesn’t even want to be around us and we can’t seem to figure out what to do with the free time we have. And if you err on the dramatic side, you might think everyone hates you (even when you lowkey know that’s not even close to being true).

In fact, research has shown that persistent loneliness can impact your overall health just as much as obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes per day can.1

Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH, a physician and the founder of Project UnLonely has studied the impact of loneliness for years, and tells the Verywell Mind Podcast host Minaa B., “Loneliness invades our lives in lots of ways.” So, there are many factors and life events that can make us feel lonely. The good news is that we can alleviate our feelings of loneliness so that our isolation doesn’t begin to wreak havoc on our well-being.

Loneliness Is Something We Feel, Not Something We Can See

When we think of the word “lonely,” we might picture someone sitting alone in their bedroom or someone who keeps close to the perimeter of the room at a social event. But loneliness doesn’t have one look. We can be lonely even when we’re actively engaging in conversation with others. The reason for this is that, as Dr. Nobel says, “loneliness is a subjective state, meaning it’s how we feel. You can’t objectively measure it.”

So, you can’t tell that someone is lonely just by looking at them. To know for sure they’d actually have to tell you that they feel lonely.

Expanding on his definition of loneliness, Dr. Nobel says, “[Loneliness] is defined as the gap between the social connection we want to have with others…and [the connection] we feel we actually do have. As that gap gets larger, we describe that as greater and greater loneliness.”

So, How Does Loneliness Differ From Being Alone?

“Being alone is the objective state of being isolated,” says Dr. Nobel. Remember the earlier example of someone being by themself in their bedroom? That’s what isolation looks like because no one else is physically there in that space with them.

But just because someone is physically alone doesn’t mean that they’re lonely. The person might even enjoy that time away from others—this is what we call solitude. We might intentionally self-isolate after we’ve had a super stressful day at work or had an argument with a partner or friend so that we can gather our thoughts and just chill for a bit. Post-solitude we’ll usually come out of our hiding places to reunite with the rest of the world feeling restored.

Loneliness; however, is “always a negative feeling [because] there’s something missing that we need,” says Dr. Nobel.

Why Do We Get Lonely?

We get lonely for many different reasons. The factors that contribute to feelings of loneliness determine the type of loneliness we’re feeling at a given moment.

Social Loneliness

When we feel social loneliness, we may not be feeling so close to other people. Dr. Nobel describes that this is the type of loneliness we feel when no one seems to have our back or care about us. Maybe you don’t feel connected to your peers or you feel a disconnect between yourself and other people you work with.

Research shows that long-haul truck drivers, professional golfers, and caregivers are likely to experience social loneliness.2

Studying abroad can also cause social loneliness. When students go to another country to get a degree they might, understandably, feel disconnected from their culture. This is called cultural loneliness, and it’s a form of social loneliness.

Emotional Loneliness

This type of loneliness is often the result of feeling a void or as if we lost something or were left behind in some way.

Common reasons that lead to emotional loneliness may include the death of a close family member, being placed in a care home, a breakup, and older children finally leaving the nest.2

People living with disabilities or mental health conditions may also feel a sense of exclusion from others.2

Dr. Nobel notes that people belonging to marginalized groups feel “othered” and excluded from certain spaces—which can lead to a sense of emotional loneliness.

Existential Loneliness

Have you ever had the experience of lying in bed at 3 A.M., where you’re unable to fall asleep because you just got a random second wind and now you’re under your covers just questioning the meaning of your existence in the context of the whole universe? Those thoughts can make you feel profoundly alone.

In those moments, we may think about our life’s purpose and how we fit into the world. And when you think about the number of people on the planet (about 8 billion…right now at least), it’s pretty easy to feel like you’re just a tiny droplet of water that’s been swallowed by a bottomless ocean. In other words, existential loneliness is next-level loneliness.

Feeling like no one in the world really gets you can also lead to this kind of loneliness.2

The Ugly Effects of Loneliness and How to Feel Less Alone

Ongoing loneliness can really do some damage to our mental and physical health. Some of the harmful effects of loneliness include:23

• Increased mortality
• Cardiovascular disease
• Reduced physical activity
• Depression
• An increased risk of suicide
• Anxiety
• An increased risk of dementia

Dr. Nobel says that people might turn to substances like alcohol or opioids to combat feelings of loneliness.

He says, “[Loneliness] literally changes how our brains work, so we start to withdraw. Contact with others is viewed as increasingly risky, so we avoid it, even when it’s exactly what we need.”