I stared at the screen. Flabbergasted, I scrolled through the search results.
“Loneliness: the Silent Killer.”
“The Detrimental Effects of Loneliness on Your Health.”
“Loneliness as Dangerous as Smoking 15 Cigarettes a Day.”
These weren’t the headlines I’d hoped to find amidst a period of grave loneliness. I actually looked for ways out of my loneliness maze and wanted to unveil what was happening to me. But instead, I got confronted with the fact that I was slowly… dying?
Gulp.
From then on, every moment of my loneliness felt twice as painful. On the one hand, there was the actual distress of feeling lonely; on the other, there was the corrosive guilt that isolation might harm my health. I shouldn’t feel this way, I kept thinking. Loneliness isn’t good for me.
As I devoured the headlines like a greasy bag of chips, I noticed subtle differences. Some of the less sensationalist articles mentioned words like “transient” or “chronic.” They also talked about the intrinsic benefits of loneliness. And most importantly, they didn’t treat loneliness as an incurable disease but as part of the human condition.
This restored my hope to find a way out of my loneliness maze — if only ever so slightly. I zipped through all the research I could find to get a more nuanced and fruitful view of the “loneliness kills” conundrum. I wanted to see the big picture.
Today, I’m far from having all the answers. But at the very least, I stopped seeing loneliness as a silent killer. I stopped panicking about it.
How Loneliness Kills (and why it’s like hunger)
If you only take one thing away from this, let it be this: Yes, loneliness can kill, but only when it reaches a chronic state — and even then, it’s not always a wrecking ball that causes irreversible damage. Quite the opposite: loneliness can also be an incentive for building deeper connections that are, in turn, like a soothing balm for our health.
Now, maybe you’re like me, and you’ve never been satisfied with short answers. You might ask yourself, “How can loneliness be healthy and deadly? And what does it mean when loneliness becomes chronic?” To answer these questions, we can learn from a less stigmatized sensation:
Hunger.
See, what’s fascinating is that loneliness erupts almost identically to hunger. Hunger draws attention to our physical needs. Loneliness draws attention to our social needs. These feelings — hunger and loneliness — are on the same biological level because, for our ancestors, having no food was just as risky as having no company. In this way, loneliness is a fundamental survival mechanism.
When a lonely person sees other people having fun, they have the same brain response as when a hungry person looks at a large pizza. In both cases, it’s this itch of, “I need that. I wish I could have that.” In other words, loneliness is social hunger.
Feeling lonely for a few days won’t harm you, just like skipping lunch won’t pre-order your coffin. Sure, you may feel the growling stomach of loneliness — social pain, rejection, or grief. But ultimately, you’re unlikely to walk away with lasting damage.
There’s a catch, though.
Since we’re part of a hyper-social species, our loneliness only ceases once our mind is convinced that we’re socially nourished. That we’re connected. And that’s far more tricky than quenching physical hunger. Over time, even tiny, consistent doses of loneliness can treacherously affect our health — much like missing essential vitamins in our diet. And when loneliness reaches a tipping point — be it through intense bursts or gradual buildups — our primal brain starts to think our tribe has abandoned us.
This state of long-term loneliness, the stress of seclusion, can be so nerve-wracking that it gradually abrades our bodies. It’s similar to breaking down muscles when there’s no food: it ensures immediate survival, but in the long term, it implies death.
So yes, loneliness can kill — if left unresolved for too long. But obviously, hunger can also kill if we don’t do something about it. So what is it about loneliness that makes it so immensely difficult to deal with? Why is it so hard to get our social calories?
To find out, let’s add two missing pieces to our loneliness puzzle.
From Healthy to Deadly: 2 Modes of Loneliness
Knowing that loneliness can kill, we may want to discard it from our deck of feelings. But think about it — would you want to get rid of hunger? Probably not. As we’ve seen, hunger is a vital reminder of physical needs. And in the same way, we don’t want to get rid of loneliness because it reminds us of social needs.
The crucial question is this: How can we tell if our loneliness is healthy or deadly?
The modes of transient and chronic loneliness offer some insight here. The essential difference is that transient loneliness is fleeting and useful, while chronic loneliness is persistent and crippling.
Let’s zoom in on that.
Transient loneliness
Everyone experiences transient loneliness.
It’s the loneliness we might feel when settling into a new job, sitting alone in the cafeteria, or dealing with a breakup. We can’t avoid these things in life. But as the name suggests: transient loneliness passes fairly quickly because it increases our social appetite. The effect is like craving a rich meal when you haven’t eaten all day.
Transient loneliness is a painful feeling, but precisely this pain makes it a blessing in disguise. It provokes action. In a state of transient loneliness we:
- Gain better social skills than usual.
- Become more sensitive to social cues.
- Get motivated to form new relationships or resurrect old ones.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. Again, loneliness can be sneaky and treacherous. And since modern life is full of busyness, distractions, and artificial connections, the incentives of transient loneliness aren’t always enough to reconnect. When that happens, loneliness grows thorns. It becomes chronic.
Chronic loneliness
Chronic loneliness is an overdose of transient loneliness. In a chronic state, the benefits of transient loneliness vanish and are replaced by speckles of rust — self-sustaining and corrosive.
But wait a minute.
If loneliness was traditionally supposed to ensure survival — like hunger — what’s the purpose of chronic, corrupting loneliness?
Well, for our distant ancestors, chronic loneliness evolved as an emergency tool to compensate for lost connections. During chronic loneliness, our mind enters hypervigilance — a state of constant alertness, picturing worst-case scenarios, and increased heart rate. Fight-or-flight responses become the default. As a result, even other humans seem more dangerous, and we interpret expressions and gestures as malicious rather than friendly. In other words, chronic loneliness is a switch from sociability to self-preservation.
All this might seem counterproductive. But think about it — if you had roamed the ancient savannah without a tribe, dangers would’ve loomed around every corner: vicious animals, food shortages, natural disasters. Thus, when you were alone, hypervigilance was a powerful response to maximize your chances of survival. (And apparently, it worked because we still carry this evolutionary trait with us today.)
Now, from a modern perspective, these primal mechanisms may appear irrelevant. We live in safe buildings and surround ourselves with tools and technology. Belonging to a tightly-knit tribe seems to be a concern of the past. But the thing is, our brains haven’t changed much since the stone age. They’re like 1960 Commodore computers that only recently learned to execute complex tasks — new features, same old hardware.
So: when our modern minds feel a lack of community, they start ringing the alarm bells just like they used to thousands of years ago. To our brains, chronic loneliness is as critical as starvation. Now as then.
How Chronic Loneliness Sneaks Up on Us
Maybe I made it seem like going from transient to chronic loneliness is like the switch of a lever. But, of course, it’s a gradual and treacherous process. How gradual? Some researchers argue loneliness becomes chronic when a person hasn’t felt satisfied with their relationships for at least two years. However, we should assume that the mileage may vary depending on the intensity and circumstances.
But still: why don’t we notice loneliness becoming chronic?
This has several reasons. First, we get used to living with loneliness. Social pain typically doesn’t hit us like a tsunami; it comes in many small waves that abrade us like a rock. Second, loneliness is so stigmatized in our society that we may straight-up deny it. We tend to assume that admitting to loneliness is weak and pathetic. That it pushes us further into seclusion. (In reality, though, it’s often the other way around: sharing feelings of loneliness connects.)
What adds to this is that loneliness isn’t picky about its prey. As John Cacioppo and William Patrick put it in their book Loneliness:
“Any of us can succumb to loneliness and along with it, all the other characteristics that travel as its entourage.”
It’s worth pausing on that. People who feel lonely aren’t less attractive, intelligent, or educated than average. And objectively, they don’t have fewer friends or worse social skills. The harsh truth is that even people who “have it all” aren’t immune to the hard-wired alarm bell of loneliness.
This is because loneliness is a personal emotion, not an objective state. And so, what it boils down to are our perceived connections. It’s about our subjective sense of feeling part of something bigger. To put it bluntly:
To feel lonely is to be lonely.
And yet, many of us neglect this feeling. After all, our economy is based on relentless efficiency, not emotional goodwill. And so, chronic loneliness often hits us unexpectedly because we get wound up in work and other distractions while forgetting about our relationships. By the time we notice our pangs of loneliness, we’re already stuck amidst the maze of isolation.
But even considering all this background information, it may seem absurd that chronic loneliness — a product of the mind — could kill us. So here’s exactly why chronic loneliness is so harmful.
Why Loneliness Kills Silently: 5 Ways of Decay
It’s not that the emotional pain of loneliness kills us (even though that’s what it can feel like). It’s more that the stress of loneliness damages our bodies and minds. Much like a car that’s continually driven at its speed limit, hypervigilance pushes us to an unhealthy extreme.
Loneliness isn’t one deadly strike. It’s a slow decay on all levels.
In Loneliness, Cacioppo and Patrick describe the five most threatening hazards that accompany long-lasting loneliness:
- Unhealthy behavior — Feeling lonely impairs our self-discipline, not just because we lack social support but also because we want a quick fix to feel better. When we feel chronically lonely, we eat up to 10% more fat, exercise less, and pick up harmful habits like smoking, drinking, or binge-watching.
- More stress — The self-protection mechanisms of loneliness can, over time, compound our relationship problems. Since we trust others less, we have more disputes with our partners, neighbors, and friends. We also perceive our work as less fulfilling, which causes even more anxiety. On average, chronic loneliness creates 25% more stress factors.
- Passive coping — It’s not just that the stress objectively increases. We also feel the stress more intensely. Worse, we switch to a passive coping strategy and become less and less likely to seek emotional, practical, or professional help.
- Constant alertness — Loneliness increases adrenaline and cortisol — our stress hormones — to prepare us for a fight-or-flight situation. But nowadays, the stress can’t resolve because actual confrontations are scarce. Our brain may perceive our boss as dangerous, but we might rationalize our way out of it. We cope passively. And so, our body never gets the right cue to switch off fight-or-flight mode. It always stays on guard.
- Restlessness — The lonelier we feel, the worse we sleep. Evolutionary, this is an attempt to fend off nightly dangers. We’re programmed to keep an eye open, so to speak. And while our sleep isn’t necessarily shorter, we need longer to fall asleep and wake up less restored.
The results of these stressors are myriad. One common link to loneliness is depression, adding suicide to the list of risk factors. Another one is dementia. Ultimately, it’s like Russian roulette: you never know what you’ll get, but the longer you play, the higher your chances of losing.
And yet, these are just the potential risks. Should we take them seriously? Absolutely. Should we start running in circles of panic? Probably not. Unfortunately, though, that’s what some headlines are trying to invoke.
What the Loneliness Headlines Got Wrong
The five ways of decay are what researchers actually mean when they say “loneliness kills.” They talk about the wear and tear slowly dismantling a chronically lonely organism.
(Full disclosure: transient loneliness can also negatively affect your health. But the hazards generally don’t cut deep enough to cause lasting damage. Besides, the new connections we gain through transient loneliness can easily patch up scratches of isolation. Chronic loneliness, however, is more like a deep, infected wound.)
With this in mind, it’s plain to see that most headlines paint the wrong picture of loneliness. It’s hardly accurate to overgeneralize and say, “loneliness kills” — no matter how punchy it may sound. What the headlines should actually say is this:
Chronic loneliness kills.
Chronic loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity. Chronic loneliness is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Chronic loneliness is as deadly as a lack of exercise, high blood pressure, or excessive drinking.
I’ve noticed more and more people using the oversimplified “loneliness kills” argument as a sledgehammer to draw attention to the problem. And don’t get me wrong — loneliness is a huge issue. But trying to drill panic into people’s minds is unlikely to help. We need a nuanced diagnosis to find solutions.
A more productive way to think about it is to imagine transient and chronic loneliness like a home security system. Transient loneliness is the initial alarm that goes off when you enter the house: once you’ve entered the code, the security system knows everything is safe. But chronic loneliness is when you don’t enter that code. The system goes haywire and activates every security measure it can find.
In the same way, our body deploys more and more alarm systems whenever we fail to make meaningful connections. For the chronically lonely person, the world becomes an increasingly hostile place.
But! It’s not all doom and gloom. There are ways out of the loneliness maze. Once we acknowledge the loneliness loop from hell and focus on taking steps toward reconnection, remarkable things start to happen.
The Balm of Connection
Honestly, when I first read about the hazards of feeling lonely, I kind of lost it. Well, that’s it, I thought. I’m gonna die soon. Goodbye world.
But here comes the good news: As much as loneliness can be toxic to our well-being, human connection can be restorative. If we leverage our loneliness to reconnect, we experience the soothing balm of connection. Which has the opposite effect of chronic loneliness. Feeling connected ends the fight-or-flight response of loneliness and activates the rest-and-digest system. And that means better sleep, less stress, and healthier habits.
That’s why people in happy relationships live the longest. In fact, studies have found that good relationships are the number one indicator of longevity and fulfillment. Considering how hard-wired our DNA is for connection, this shouldn’t surprise us. When we feel connected, we tap into a state of resonance and co-regulation. Which means that, thanks to social support, we find it easier to resist harmful behaviors. We make smarter decisions. We’re nicer to ourselves.
But again — and I can’t stress this enough — it’s all about your perception. A person with twenty friends, a big family, and a partner can feel just as connected (or lonely) as someone with “only” two close confidants. It’s not about the objective quantity but the subjective quality of your relationships.
In our modern hustle-bustle, we must never forget that we’re not a hyper-active but a hyper-social species. Connection is the superfood for our souls. Status, fame, and money are empty carbs.
Ultimately, the hazards of prolonged loneliness offer a glimpse into the human condition. They teach us that relationships are literally vital. And so, we’d do ourselves a great favor if we didn’t just blare, “Loneliness kills!!” but also remembered that connection heals.
Let’s focus not just on the perils of isolation but also on the power of connection. By doing so, we might realize that loneliness isn’t a maze — but more like a guide. A necessary companion to climb the mountain of the human condition.