Today's Saturday • 8 mins read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
Loneliness is similar to hunger in the sense that you can be surrounded by food and still be hungry if you can’t eat any of it.
Loneliness is quite common. One-third of adults (33%) said they felt lonely at least once a week over the past 12 months, as per the 2025 Healthy Minds Monthly Poll from the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
And it’s harmful too.
10 Hidden Signs of Loneliness
Loneliness can be a quiet struggle that hides behind a busy social calendar or a full contact list. Some of our most isolated ones appear to have it all together on the surface.
Here are some signs to find out if you are feeling lonely, even when you are in a relationship:
1. The Paradox of Feeling Alone In Company
- You find yourself surrounded by people, yet still feel like an outsider looking in.
Perhaps, the worst kind of loneliness is feeling you are utterly alone when surrounded by others.
Even when around others, you feel you don’t belong. Your connections feel casual and superficial. You don’t feel any meaningful connection to anyone around you. No depth that you crave in your conversations.
Social situations feel stressful and exhausting rather than energizing. So you often leave early or avoid them altogether.
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.
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
- You have hundreds of online friends but struggle to name three people you could call in a crisis.
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 inadequate. It reinforces what 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.
Constant distractions through work, hobbies, or social events can become a way to avoid uncomfortable feelings.
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.
Loneliness gradually erodes self-esteem and confidence. Research shows that feeling lonely can make people feel less good about themselves.
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.
This study found that adolescents with low self-esteem are more likely to feel lonely.
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.
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.