A shared universe › Blog › Unwanted loneliness · Español
Unwanted loneliness is the painful feeling of missing more company, or closer company, than you have; it does not depend on how many people are around. What helps most, according to the studies, is starting with small contacts and, above all, learning not to fully believe the distrust that loneliness itself stirs up. You can be among lots of people and feel very lonely, and you can live with nobody else at home and not feel it.
The World Health Organization defines it as the painful feeling that arises from the gap between the relationships we want and the ones we have. Social isolation is something else: the objective lack of relationships. You can have one without the other.
In 2025, the WHO commission on social connection estimated that one in six people worldwide is affected by loneliness, and that it is linked to more than eight hundred and seventy thousand deaths a year. Among young people aged 13 to 29, between 17 and 21 % say they feel lonely, with the highest figures among teenagers. It is not only something that happens to older people.
The neuroscientist John Cacioppo, of the University of Chicago, who devoted his life to studying it, compared it to hunger: just as hunger looks after the body, loneliness warns us that we are missing the company of others. It says nothing bad about the person who feels it. It says we are a species made to live with others.
In 2010 the psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues brought together 148 studies with more than three hundred thousand people and found that those with stronger social relationships were more likely to still be alive years later. The effect was comparable to that of well-known health risk factors.
The figure is worth reading carefully: what mattered most was being part of a network of relationships, far more than the simple fact of living with someone or alone. Loneliness is a sorrow worth taking seriously, but it is not a life sentence.
Cacioppo observed something important: when loneliness goes on for a long time, it makes us distrustful. With Louise Hawkley he described, in a 2010 review, how loneliness puts people on the alert for possible rejection, almost automatically, and how it colours what we notice, what we expect and what we remember about others.
We start to expect rejection, to misread other people’s gestures and to withdraw before we are left out. And that pushes us further away. Knowing that this distrust is an effect of loneliness, and not the truth about other people, helps us pay it less attention.
A team with Cacioppo among the authors reviewed, in a 2011 meta-analysis, attempts to reduce loneliness: improving social skills, giving more support, creating chances for contact and working on the thoughts that feed distrust. In the best-designed studies, the last of these worked best. Having chances to see people helps, but it helps more when you dare to believe you are welcome.
If you find it hard to take the first step with people you don’t know, the kindness of a stranger explains why those brief encounters usually go better than we imagine.
If loneliness comes with sadness that will not lift, with no wish for anything, or with the feeling that nobody would care if you were not there, it is worth telling your GP or a psychologist. It is not making a fuss: it is looking after yourself. In Spain you can talk to a person at the Teléfono de la Esperanza, 717 003 717, at any time. If you are thinking of ending your life, call 024: it is free, confidential and answered 24 hours a day. If there is immediate danger, call 112. In another country, call your local emergency number or a helpline there.
And if you feel like this today, if you feel lonely today has a few words written for this moment.
In A shared universe you can light a star and say how you feel. And you can also keep other people’s stars company, which is another way of being with someone.
The star does not carry your name. Other people will read it and keep it company with a touch or a few words, and you will see how many times it has been kept company and what they have said to you. It is not therapy or a chat: it is a small gesture from someone who has stopped to read you.