We crave connection and yet it is all too easy to stay lost in loneliness.
About one third of Australians suffer from the sorrow of loneliness.
The deep ache of loneliness doesn't just affect us emotionally.
It has a very real impact on our physical health.
So much so that a new study of three million people has found that loneliness is as much of a threat to longevity as obesity.
"The effect of this is comparable to obesity, something that public health takes very seriously," said the study's author Julianne Holt-Lunstad, of Brigham Young University. "We need to start taking our social relationships more seriously."
The irony is that, just as much as we can be alone without feeling lonely, we can feel lonely even if we're not alone.
Superficial connections, looking at our phones instead of each other and living in a largely online world where functionality and efficiency reign over friendliness and any depth of engagement, all mean we can have others around externally and still feel internally isolated.
Interestingly, those who feel lonely are no less socially adept than those who don't.
If this is the case, why do the lonely remain lonely?
Another new study, lead by psychologists at Franklin & Marshall College found that lonely people have equal social skills, but struggle when put under pressure to utilise them.
The researchers asked 86 undergraduates identify the emotions of faces displaying: anger, fear, happiness, or sadness.
Those who, in a previous questionnaire, had rated themselves as being more lonely were worse at accurately identifying the emotions, but only when they were told it was a test of their social skills, and that people who failed at this task tended to have difficulty forming and maintaining friendships.
Previous studies have found similar results, suggesting that like anything that is really important to us, we want it to be perfect and become so stiff with fear about getting it wrong that we mess it up.
"This research suggests that lonely individuals may not need to acquire social skills to escape loneliness; instead, they must learn to cope with performance anxiety in interpersonal interactions," the authors wrote.
In a separate test, she told them that their social performance anxiety was just jitters from a caffeinated drink they had been given (which didn't actually contain caffeine).
The second time around, when only the lonely thought there was another reason for their feelings, they performed as well as the others.
This suggests that as much as it is a matter of creating opportunities for real connection with others, addressing loneliness may also be about addressing anxiety.
Because if our experience is that we inadvertently sabotage our chance to connect through self-doubt, then we are likely to retreat even more or begin to feel that genuine connections are unlikely or even impossible.
The second part of the Franklin & Marshall study, offers the possibility of an antidote to this problem, as New York Magazine points out.
Reframing an experience can lead to a different outcome, as Harvard Business School's Alison Wood Brooks has found.
"Individuals can reappraise anxiety as excitement using minimal strategies such as self-talk (eg, saying 'I am excited' out loud) or simple messages (eg, 'get excited'), which lead them to feel more excited, adopt an opportunity mindset (as opposed to a threat mindset), and improve their subsequent performance," she wrote of a study designed to help people overcome public speaking.
There are many ways to reconnect with others when we become lost in loneliness. We can falter in these because we care, so perhaps the place to start is to step out of the head's fear and back into reality, where those connections can be made.
Lonely people, after all, already have the social skills to make those connections happen.
