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Why you can feel loneliness even when others are with you

Why you can feel loneliness even when others are with you

March 6, 2024

The human being is a social animal , made to live in the company of his fellows. However, one thing is the dynamic of life for which we are prepared, and another is our way of subjectively living our social life.

Because yes, everyone has a social life to a greater or lesser extent; only the hermits who are totally isolated from others are outside it. But that does not prevent millions of people around the world feel alone ... despite not being objectively

To what is this apparent incongruity? Why loneliness can appear being surrounded by people who feel sympathy and affection for us?


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Why loneliness appears being accompanied

Loneliness is a feeling that responds to needs for social contact and affection . Both factors have to do with the possibility of getting cooperation from others when it comes to achieving personal goals, but there is something else. Affection is a source of physical contact and intimacy, elements that have proven indispensable from birth.

Babies who grow up with access to food, water and an environment with adequate humidity and temperature, but who remain isolated, develop abnormally and tend to develop serious mental disorders. In a similar way, people who declare a greater feeling of loneliness they are more prone to depression and to a relatively early death.


In a way, then, contact with others not only has material implications, but the psychological impact of loneliness also matters. However, this subjective aspect also adds a certain degree of uncertainty when it comes to knowing which social situations produce loneliness and which do not. Because there are people who, in spite of interacting with many people, feel lonely . To explain this, several hypotheses are considered.

Social skills

In some cases, people who, due to their day-to-day demands, interact with several people day after day, including friendly people, may feel lonely because of a social skills problem. As much as a dialogue is apparently two people talking, for those who feel that their public image is being compromised by what they do or say is something very different; specifically, a test, something like an intelligence test. Something that produces anxiety, in short .


As social interactions are seen as challenges, the person with low social skills ignores the possibility of connecting with someone and focuses on not being ridiculous or simply go unnoticed . This means that what is objectively a social context ceases to be so, and becomes an annoying and stressful situation for which we must spend suffering the least possible.

Of course, understanding the company of others in this way makes the feeling of loneliness the only thing that remains. Sometimes we yearn to have an honest relationship with someone, but when the opportunity appears, we try to avoid that situation, make it last little and compromise as little as possible.

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Lack of time for active social life

At the other extreme, it is also possible to find people who feel lonely but, in this case, they do not owe their situation to the lack of social skills .

There are people so extraverted that they live oriented to others, making the network of social interactions that surround them flow day by day, to stay alive. Parties are organized, friends who did not know each other are contacted, trips to the mountains are proposed ... anything goes to involve several people in stimulating situations.

In addition, normally extraverted people who comply with this pattern of social behavior not only do not live in isolation, but others resort to them with the least excuse. This is normal, since they act as dynamic nuclei of groups of friends and colleagues. These are popular individuals and very appreciated by people who know them .

So, where does the loneliness come from? The answer is simpler than it seems: lack of time. The free time of these people are busy in relating to others, but not in any way: acting as the core of a social network (beyond the solitude of computers, yes).

There is not too much space for deep relationships with intimacy , since the task of dynamizing groups requires, necessarily, to maintain a profile of behavior oriented towards the public, what is visible all over the world.Even if you try to break this dynamic, others will continue to act as before so it is difficult to "start over" if you do not radically change habits in many ways.


Why We Feel Lonely and Odd (March 2024).


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