Q: What causes loneliness?
A: Therapists consistently observe that loneliness is rarely just about being physically alone. Across different therapy niches, it is often linked to unmet emotional needs, attachment wounds, life transitions, grief, identity struggles, relational trauma, and experiences of not feeling seen or understood. Counsellor & psychotherapist perspectives suggest that loneliness frequently reflects a lack of felt connection rather than a lack of people, with many clients feeling alone even in relationships when their inner world has not been met or attuned to over time.
A Note on Loneliness
Loneliness is a complex and often hidden experience that can appear across many different client presentations. Research and clinical experience suggest that its roots are frequently relational, shaped by early experiences such as childhood emotional neglect, attachment disruptions, and early relational trauma. Rather than presenting only as overt loneliness, it often shows up through grief, relationship difficulties, fertility journeys, identity concerns, life transitions, and other experiences where clients feel unseen, misunderstood, or emotionally alone.
Research across attachment theory, loneliness studies, and developmental trauma literature suggests that loneliness is not simply about social isolation, but about how connection is internally experienced. When emotional needs were inconsistently met or overlooked in early life, clients may grow up expecting disconnection, even in the presence of others. This helps explain why many people report feeling alone within relationships, families, and social environments that appear supportive on the surface.
From a clinical perspective, recognising these underlying relational patterns allows therapists to see loneliness as a foundational dynamic rather than a standalone symptom. The same core experience of unmet emotional attunement may present differently across niches, including grief, reproductive challenges, relational trauma, and significant life transitions.
What Causes Loneliness? A Therapist Round-Up of Perspectives
This round-up brings together practitioner perspectives from diverse therapeutic niches to explore how loneliness is understood, experienced, and worked with in counselling and psychotherapy practice. By integrating the latest research on loneliness with clinical insight, the collection highlights the many ways loneliness can manifest and encourages therapists to reflect on the hidden loneliness that may sit beneath a wide range of presenting concerns.
When the Village Vanishes: Navigating Mid-Life Alone by Mel Eden
Most of us have felt the dull ache of loneliness at one time or another. For many though, loneliness has become a chronic issue that is having detrimental impacts on their health and wellbeing.
Read more here.
Why Highly Sensitive People Need a Different Approach to Loneliness by Jerry Souter
Ever notice how you can be at a party, surrounded by conversation and laughter, and still feel completely alone? For Highly Sensitive People (HSPs), this kind of loneliness is painfully common.
Read more here.
The Lonely Aloneness of IVF by Anne Altamore
The IVF Roller Coaster is a crowded, yet lonely place. At times, one can feel extremely alone and abandoned.
Read more here.
The Hidden Loneliness of Straight Spouses by Karen Bieman
Aloneness can be neutral – even restorative. Loneliness is different. It’s a painful awareness of emotional disconnection, a sense of longing mixed with invisibility, abandonment, or being unseen by those who matter most. No one understands this more acutely than straight spouses.
Read more here.
Loneliness and the Ask for Belonging by Frederikke Jensen
Just as there is always potential to feel lonely, there is potential to reach a point where an inner core of resilience is found, and loneliness is dealt with differently than before.
Read more here.
Is Your People-Pleasing Keeping You Lonely? By Daniela MacAulay
People-pleasing might seem like an effective strategy for preventing rejection and loneliness and perhaps, at some point in your life, it was. Now, however, it’s likely standing in the way of the closeness you’re longing for.
Read more here.
Belonging Before Behaviour: When Students Feel Alone at School by Lillian Mary Tan
Loneliness in schools is often misunderstood as a social problem or a behavioural issue. In reality, it is more accurately understood as a lack of felt belonging. A student can be surrounded by peers, actively participating in class, and still feel deeply alone if they do not feel seen, understood, or emotionally safe.
Read more here.
Alone at the Top: Why Health Business Owners Are Quietly Lonely by Jo Muirhead
We built our businesses to be with people – to help clients, collaborate with colleagues, and contribute to our communities. Yet for many of us, there’s a quiet truth sitting beneath the busy diaries, the back-to-back appointments, and the neatly curated “I’m fine” responses: We are lonely.
Read more here.
How To Deal With Loneliness In The Mother-Daughter Relationship by Jan Williams
Loneliness in the mother-daughter relationship is more common than many people want to admit. It can happen slowly over the years or show up suddenly during a big life change.
Read more here.
Why Loneliness Is Rising: The Emotional and Nervous System Factors We Do Not Talk About Enough by Nisha Trivedi
Loneliness is not the absence of people. It is the body asking for an emotionally safer way to be met.
Read more here.
Loneliness, Childhood Emotional Neglect, and Emotional Eating by Jodie Gale
Many people who emotionally eat describe experiences like “food is my best friend” or “food keeps me company.” These coping strategies often trace back to early relational wounds, where emotional needs were unmet or overlooked.
Read more here.
