Today's Monday • 9 mins read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
Loneliness is the emotional pain of having no one to connect with. It’s like being hungry when there’s food around, but you can’t eat any of it.
And it’s not uncommon. One-third of adults (33%) admit they feel lonely at least once a week, as the 2025 Healthy Minds Poll from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) found.
And it’s harmful too. Research involving 100,000 participants found loneliness increases the risk of early death by 45%. In comparison, air pollution does so by 5%, obesity by 20%, and excessive alcohol use by 30%.
Some of our loneliest ones appear to have it all together on the surface. They do not realize they are lonely deep inside.
So, what are the hidden signs of loneliness?
10 Hidden Signs of Loneliness You May Not Realize
Here are some signs to find out if you are lonely, even when you are in a relationship:
1. When You Feel Alone In Company
- You feel like an outsider looking in, unbelonging, when in a crowd of people you know.
This could be the first sign that you’re lonely: the unsaid unease of “there’s no one to talk to” when being among knowns.
Perhaps this is the worst kind of loneliness. You might brush it off as something everyone goes through, but it can eat you up from the inside over time.
It can silently haunt you in a stable relationship, with long-time friends, or at work with people you see every day. Social situations make you tired and stressed, so you often leave early or don’t go at all.
The main pain is that you don’t feel like you belong in this relationship, with this person, or with this group.
You have a long contact list of friends but can’t name three people you could call in a crisis.
Your connections feel superficial and meaningless. You don’t feel safe sharing your vulnerabilities with any of them. You always feel like these people you talk to do not have the depth you crave.
2. When Shopping Replaces Socializing
- You catch yourself adding items to your cart when what you really need is someone to talk to.
One of the most telling signs is when retail therapy or emotional shopping becomes your go-to way to lift your spirits. According to one study, 69% of Americans admit to emotional shopping.
You’d rather buy things than see people. Your shopping habits increase as you try to fix your feelings of loneliness.
It fills your emotional void and gives temporary relief. But ultimately, owning things does not solve the actual cause of your feeling isolated.
Of course, financial stress can add another layer to your emotional burden.
3. When News About Your Friends Comes From Social Media
- You know more about your friends’ vacation photos than their real-life struggles or joys.
When you only learn about your friends’ lives through their social media posts. Not because they told you in a real conversation. This signals a disconnect in your relationships.
You become more observer than participant, watching life happen from the sidelines. This creates an illusion of connection while deepening feelings of separation from the people you care about.
4. Oversharing or Extreme Withdrawal
- You either overshare your life details or avoid conversations altogether; there’s no middle ground.
Loneliness can push you toward opposite behavioral extremes: oversharing or cocooning.
Oversharers may share personal stories with complete strangers in the hopes that those strangers will understand and relate. Quite often, unloading personal experiences on anyone who will listen leads to regret and shame.
Others may self-isolate into a cocoon, to avoid meaningless or draining social interactions. They may go out and do things alone, but not engage in social life. Many get addicted to solo life.
You distance yourself from others, blaming them for being superficial and valueless. While they distance themselves from you, assuming you don’t want any company. It forms a self-fulfilling prophecy loop.
Both oversharing and cocooning are signs that you want someone to connect with, who will understand you without judging you.
5. Obsessive Relationships
- You find yourself clinging too tightly to new connections, then watching them slip away just as quickly.
Do you tend to make friends or fall in love quickly, only for them to end just as quickly?
This pattern of falling-in-and-out-of-love fast indicates that you’re looking to other people to help you fill the emotional void in your life.
Trying to find every emotional support from a relationship often shows up as a people-pleasing tendency, a need for constant reassurance, and dependency on closeness. All of which becomes overwhelming for both parties.
Moreover, your neediness and demands for validation make you clingy. Unless you stop being clingy and, instead, build emotional permanence, you will watch these relationships burn out, leaving you unfulfilled.
6. The Helper’s Dilemma
- You’re always the first to volunteer, yet you can’t remember the last time someone asked how you’re doing.
Being perpetually helpful can mask feelings of loneliness.
You tend to be the first to volunteer, even if it means sacrificing your physical or mental resources.
Generosity is admirable. But prioritizing others’ needs over your own can leave you feeling even more disconnected from your own emotional reality.
7. Digital Connection, Real Isolation
- Your best friends live on the other side of a digital screen. Your real-world friends are too distant, physically or otherwise.
When people feel lonely, they use social media a lot.
The 2025 Healthy Minds Monthly Poll found that more than half of adults watch TV, movies, or online videos (63%) when they feel lonely. Especially, adults aged 18-34 (58%) are more likely to turn to social media when feeling lonely.
However, online connections can ironically deepen feelings of isolation. This study found people who spent 2+ hours a day on social media were twice as likely to feel lonely as compared to those who spent 30 minutes or less on those platforms.
Your Facebook Friends Can Actually Reduce Your Happiness!
Scrolling through others’ well-curated lives makes you feel less and inadequate.
It seems to reinforce the belief you started with: that everyone else has meaningful relationships, while you have no one to call when in trouble.
8. The Busyness Trap
- You pack your schedule so full that you never have to sit alone with your thoughts.
Loneliness can be a quiet struggle that hides behind a busy social calendar. You constantly distract yourself through work, hobbies, or social events.
Your busyness becomes a way to avoid uncomfortable feelings. You cannot sit with an uncomfortable feeling for even a few minutes.
Staying perpetually busy prevents you from confronting loneliness directly, but this approach often leads to burnout without addressing the root issue.
The secret of happy-busy people is Optimal Busyness, not perpetual busyness.
9. The Physical and Emotional Toll
- You wake up feeling unrested and in a mental fog, even when you spend enough time sleeping.
Loneliness affects more than just your social life. It takes a measurable toll on your body and mind.
Lonely people feel constantly unsafe, painfully aware they only have themselves to watch out for themselves. Their nervous system stays on high alert, scanning for lurking dangers.
That is the state of hypervigilance.
Hypervigilant people can’t relax, rest, or sleep well. They always have a base level of anxiety. They wake up many times during the night (micro-awakenings), which causes daytime fatigue, brain fog, and chronic mental exhaustion.
Your anxiety keeps you on edge, even in quiet moments when you have nothing to stress about. You want to talk to someone, but are too tired and too wired to engage socially.
Often, loneliness turns into a fear of loneliness, called autophobia.
Lonely people also experience higher stress levels and elevated blood pressure, even when facing the same daily challenges as others.
- European researchers found loneliness can raise the risk of heart disease and stroke by ~30%, and double the risk of untimely death.
- This 2023 study found loneliness poses a bigger risk for heart disease in diabetes patients, more than diet, exercise, smoking, and depression.
- Loneliness can kill us earlier than otherwise, increasing our risk of early death by at least 26%.
- Julianne Holt-Lunstad (2017), a psychology professor at Brigham Young University, observed that social loneliness was as much of a risk factor for early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
10. The Confidence Spiral
- You second-guess every text you send and replay conversations, wondering if you said something wrong.
Every so often, when your actual work is all done, you give in to overthinking. You dig up the past and dissect your mistakes.
When you feel disconnected from others, you begin questioning your worth and value. This pulls you into a painful cycle of low confidence, making social interactions feel riskier, leading to more isolation, which further lowers self-esteem.
Loneliness and depression are distinct, but they often appear together and can amplify each other (Weeks & Michela, 1980). Both may have similar roots, such as early life stress.
Research shows that feeling lonely can make people feel worse about themselves. It gradually erodes your self-esteem and confidence.
This study found that adolescents with low self-esteem are more likely to feel lonely.
Why do we feel loneliness?
Loneliness has an evolutionary purpose. It motivates humans to connect or reconnect with others, helping to reduce feelings of social isolation.
Our early ancestors experienced loneliness after moving to new areas or losing a loved one. Now, in the prehistoric world, the risks of surviving alone were much higher. Had they not felt lonely, they might not have felt inclined to connect with others. And might have died out earlier.
Still, social companionship does not automatically protect against feeling lonely. Being lonely inside a relationship is a common occurrence.
Final Words
Loneliness is not a permanent state, nor is it something you have to endure alone. You deserve to feel seen, heard, and valued.
Start small. Ask, what single step can you take today to nurture a deeper connection with yourself or someone else?
Find similar-minded people to share your experiences. If you cannot find them, go out alone. Reach out to the world, without meaning to strike up lasting connections.
√ Also Read: 7 Books To Understand Loneliness Better
√ Please share it with someone if you found this helpful.