Loneliness and the ask for Belonging
Hope is in the voice that asks: 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.
It is the time of year for get-togethers of all sorts. Get-togethers at work, in families, and with friends.
In a time when loneliness arises, we might be missing that significant other; visited by grief as written about here, by my colleague Kirsten from Conversations in Nature; or we feel like an outsider to ourselves or to the people around us. Loneliness is shared but also unique, just have a look at the constellation of experiences in this search I did on loneliness in the archives of The Marginalian.
What loneliness is can only narrowly be understood in the realms of research and evidence-based controlled trials. I am not anti-research, and I read this meta-analysis (Lasgaard et al., 2025), when it was put to me to write about my understanding of loneliness in relation to the meta-analysis (thank you for the invite Jodie Gale).
I read it through the lens of my undergraduate psychology degree and units in Advanced Research & Statistics. But I also looked at it with life experience, accumulation of working with many different clients and colleagues over the years sharing their wisdom. I also drew on understandings from poets and writers and folk psychology as described in narrative therapy (White, 2004).
How do we grapple with loneliness, and is there an antidote?
Central to loneliness is NOT belonging. At the same time, belonging reached through the impetus of longing is also the doorway to get to belonging and a place of anti-loneliness and connection.
The transformation of walking through that metaphorical door can feel risky and frightening (and therapy can initially feel like that too, as it is, after all, about transformation).
This is eloquently expressed by Irish Poet David Whyte (2019, p. 104) in the section about ‘Longing’ from the book Consolations: The solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (as featured on The Marginalian):
‘Longing is nothing without its dangerous edge, which cuts and wounds us while setting us free, and beckons us exactly because of the human need to invite the right kind of peril. The foundational instinct that we are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world’
Perhaps you will ‘will’ yourself performing in social situations despite your inner loneliness and find solace and temporary survival in writing or journaling, or other things.
But beyond surviving, and in my experience, finding a more solid sense of belonging and alleviating loneliness is not something that can be willed or forced quickly if one is deeply lonely and has felt it for a while or faced the instant shattering of one’s world by a sudden traumatic loss.
It can thus be a longer process, whether in therapy or navigating this on your own or with a supportive community of people around you.
If what you grasp for or receive is surface-like, it might only warm you up briefly, such as the girl with the matchsticks in Danish poet Hans-Christian Andersen's fairy tale, taking place on New Year's Eve (first published 1845 ). The girl lit the matches that she was meant to sell on a cold winter’s night to buy food. But she used up all her matches whilst she fantasised about food and warmth, and connection, and she froze and died.
It is a harsh and cruel tale. Anderson knew loneliness and NOT belonging related to identity and self as articulated in his story about The Ugly Duckling:
The Ugly Duckling (really a swan) by Danish poet Hans-Christian Anderson
‘Born different, the ugly duckling is mocked by his siblings, rejected by other ducks, and even shunned by his own mother. The sad little bird leaves home, starting a journey where he is jeered at and hunted as he struggles to survive on his own - only to discover that the identity he longed for was within him all along.’
The learning from the tale of the Ugly Duckling is, that the identity he longed for was within him all along. Thus, the ask for BE-longing that leads to longing, which in turn leads to action, can be inside us; we just need to find it.
Can Therapy help alleviate loneliness?
The study by Lasgaard et al. (2025) says, ‘Loneliness interventions help but are not a cure-all’.
I say ‘yes, but it depends’, and I think the question asked by Lasgaard et al. is not the right question to ask. I would not work with loneliness in isolation as an identified ‘patient’ to be fixed or repaired using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT).
Not only is loneliness unique for each human being, which is why perhaps cognitive behavioural approaches in the study only showed moderate improvement. And mind you, most of the studies incorporated were done with elderly people in retirement homes or in schools. Research like that needs neat, conform populations to study, and rarely is there funding to do long-term follow-up to check if the change lasts. The efficacy of the interventions in the meta-analysis was measured four weeks after and six months after, which, in my experience, is a very short time to enable meaningful change in therapy if someone has struggled for decades – common sense really.
Hope is in the voice that asks
But, 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.
I will leave you with the hopeful words by David Whyte (2019, p. 99) and a small excerpt of his description of loneliness as ‘a voice that asks’ (also found in the book Consolations: The solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (as featured on The Marginalian):
‘LONELINESS
In the doorway to unspoken and yet unspecified desire. In the bodily pain of aloneness is the first step to understanding how far we are from a real friendship, from a proper work or a long-sought love. Loneliness can be a prison, a place from where we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; Loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes the voice that asks for that great unknown someone or something we want to call our own.’
References
Lasgaard, M., Qualter, P., Løvschall, C., Laustsen, L. M., Lim, M. H., Sjøl, S. E., Burke, L., Blæhr, E. E., Maindal, H. T., Hargaard, A., Christensen, R., & Christiansen, J. (2025). Are loneliness interventions effective for reducing loneliness? A meta-analytic review of 280 studies. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001578
White, M. (2004). Folk Psychology and Narrative Practices. In L. E. Angus & J. McLeod (Eds.), The handbook of narrative and psychotherapy: Practice, theory, and research (pp. 15–51). Sage Publications, Inc.
Whyte, D. (2019). Consolations: The solace, nourishment and underlying meaning of everyday words. Canongate Books.
