Loneliness is a signal, not a verdict

If there is one thing I would want every lonely person to hear, it is this: you are not the only one, and it is not a flaw in you. Loneliness is one of the most common human experiences there is. It visits the student far from home, the new parent, the person who has just moved town, the colleague who eats lunch at their desk, and the older person whose friends have started to go. It even visits people surrounded by others, because loneliness is not about how many people are near you. It is about whether you feel truly known by any of them.

The researcher John Cacioppo spent much of his career showing that loneliness works rather like hunger or thirst. It is an uncomfortable signal, and it exists for a good reason. Hunger tells you to eat. Loneliness tells you that you need people, and that it is time to reach out. The trouble is that the signal often makes us do the opposite. When we feel lonely, we tend to become more watchful for rejection, more cautious, more likely to read a neutral face as an unfriendly one. And so we pull back, which feeds the very feeling we want to escape.

A lonely person cannot be argued out of loneliness, but they can be invited in.

That is why I find the word signal so hopeful. A signal can be answered. Much loneliness arrives with a change, such as a first year at university, a new job, a loss or a move, and it tends to ease as we build new connections. Not all at once, and not by trying to become someone we are not. Usually it eases through small, repeated contact: the same faces at the same time each week, a conversation that goes one step deeper than the weather, a small favour asked and returned.

This is also why I care so much about the people who build communities. A lonely person cannot be argued out of loneliness, but they can be invited in. The host who notices the newcomer at the edge of the room, the club with a rhythm people can count on, the group where it is normal to ask how someone really is: these are answers to the signal, offered before the person even has to ask.

If you are feeling it now, start small. Say yes to one invitation. Return to one room. And if you are the kind of person others gather around, look for the one who has not yet found a seat.

Dr Alten du PlessisFounder, BelongWell4Life

Further reading: John Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (Norton, 2008).

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