Do you sometimes feel like you don’t see things like everyone else? This feeling of disconnect can reinforce the feeling of loneliness. Explanations.
Being alone and feeling alone are not the same thing
You can have loved ones around you and yet feel deeply alone. For psychologist Kendra Cherry, specialist in psychosocial rehabilitation, loneliness therefore also depends on the way we experience our relationships.
She explains it to the Verywell Mind website: “Loneliness is actually a state of mind. It makes people feel empty, alone, and unwanted. People who feel lonely often crave human contact, but their state of mind makes it harder for them to connect with others.”
Loneliness is also associated with more stress and can affect sleep, memory and even learning. Work published in December 2023 in the Journal of Research in Personality define it as “the aversive psychological experience that occurs when people perceive a lack of intimacy or connection in their social relationships.”
What the brain reveals about loneliness
In a first experiment, 80 young adults underwent an MRI evaluating their own personality, that of their loved ones and that of several well-known personalities, including Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Barack Obama.
In the participants who felt the most alone, the brain representations of these personalities differed more from those of the rest of the group.
A second experiment, carried out with 923 people, focused on their way of describing famous personalities. The texts of the loneliest people were less similar to those of others. They also felt more often that their perception was not shared by the group.
The researchers therefore conclude that “loneliness corresponds to idiosyncratic (unusual, unique) neural representations of celebrities as well as more idiosyncratic communication about celebrities.”
What to do about this feeling?
Feeling different does not necessarily mean being alone. But when this feeling becomes heavy, finding people who share your tastes or your way of seeing things can help. If loneliness sets in for a long time, talking to a healthcare professional can also be helpful.