It’s likely that if you’re reading this, you have experienced loneliness. That implies you are aware that even when you are surrounded by friends and family, loneliness can sometimes feel as though it will never stop.
The brunch you’re attending should be excellent in theory—nice people, delicious food, and entertaining discussion. However, you still feel emotionally separated from everyone else by a thousand miles.
The challenging aspect of sentiments is that they vary from person to person. For instance, some people are content with having few acquaintances or relishing their alone time. Other others could feel intense loneliness and isolation as a result of those identical events.
Understanding why you feel lonely even when you’re not by yourself might make you feel more connected to those around you as well as to yourself.
How Normal is it to Feel Lonely?
According to studies, one in five young people say they feel lonely “most of the time” or “always.”
Anyone can experience loneliness at any time. Even when you don’t feel lonely for a clear cause, it’s possible that other conditions like depression or anxiety are contributing factors.
However, it is true that many people experience loneliness during significant life events. Perhaps you’re relocating. Or your parents are getting separated. You can be transitioning from elementary to high school. Perhaps you just feel that you have outgrown your pals or that they are beginning to engage in activities that don’t truly interest you.
You may feel alone and lost as a result of all of these things, and you may struggle to establish relationships with those close to you.
Therefore, just because you’re feeling lonely doesn’t indicate that you are unique or “strange”; in reality, it only shows that you share more things in common than you think with others around you.
Reasons You Might Feel Lonely Even Though You’re Not Alone
America is now experiencing a loneliness pandemic. Even though New York City is one of the nation’s busiest and most crowded cities, it appears that this plague is almost widespread there.
Even while it may seem unusual to be lonely when surrounded by 8 million people, it happens much too frequently.
So what is happening?
How is it possible to feel lonely when surrounded by friends and family? And how can someone who only has a small number of intimate ties be content and joyful yet seeming lonely to others?
The ability to connect deeply emotionally with others in a personal and exposed manner essentially determines the answer.
What then may make it impossible for someone to achieve that?
1. History of Trauma
An individual is affected by childhood trauma throughout their most delicate periods of development and growth. Such encounters alter a person’s impression of relationships, the reliability of others, their feeling of self and value, and the risk/reward balance of being vulnerable to another in addition to their sense of safety.
And it gets even harder to believe that people are safe or even worth getting close to when a person is repeatedly traumatized and/or hurt.
To struggle with loneliness in the present, one does not necessarily need to have gone through overt tragedy in their lives.
