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What to Do When You Feel Lonely in a Crowd
Something that’s too often misunderstood about loneliness: It’s not the same as being alone
It’s an unsettling sensation: You’re at a party, surrounded by people you know, chatting away — and somehow, in the middle of all those people, you realize that you still feel strangely alone.
Loneliness, you may have heard, is now a full-on epidemic. In one recent, widely covered survey, nearly half of Americans reported that they were sometimes or always lonely; a separate, smaller study found that three-quarters of participants had moderate to high levels of loneliness. Researchers have pointed to everything from social media to lack of work-life balance as the cause, but regardless of what’s fueling this decline in social connections, there’s one thing about loneliness that’s too often misunderstood: Being lonely is not the same as being alone.
“People who have a romantic partner, lots of friends… and socialize all the time, can still feel lonely if they feel like their connections with other people aren’t really meaningful or satisfying,” says psychologist Bella DePaulo, author of How We Live Now and Singled Out. Loneliness isn’t defined by the number of people in your life; instead, it’s the distance between what you want out of your relationships and what you’re getting.
So it’s absolutely possible to be lonely in a room full of people — even people you know, and even people you know well — if you’re not getting the kind of interaction you crave. If that sounds familiar, here are some small adjustments that can make a big difference.
Make small talk
Some people are naturally more susceptible to loneliness than others. “Your neurological wiring for connection with people can be weak genetically,” explains psychiatrist Dr. Amy Banks, senior research scientist at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute and the Wellesley Centers for Women.
But even if your body is steering you further into loneliness, it also contains a way to ease it. Banks points to the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body, which helps regulate social interaction by stimulating your fight-or-flight response and, on the other end of the spectrum…
