Is Loneliness a Distance from Others—or Ourselves?

One day in 2020, when the world was shut down and I was living alone, missing my partner and feeling isolated, I started to feel a sense of loneliness creep in. It was especially noticeable because it felt unfamiliar, surprisingly so. I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by an excess of deep, meaningful relationships in my life—from friends, family, and coworkers, to classmates and neighbors. I make friends easily, and I also hold onto them, sometimes to the point of overwhelm.

When I moved to San Francisco at 23, knowing only two people, I expected to really lean into loneliness. I was actually craving it—something about it felt romantic, like a rite of passage in my 20s, fresh out of college. But something unexpected happened: instead of loneliness, I discovered how deeply fulfilling and spontaneous alone time could be. It felt like the ultimate adventure. I’d spend entire days walking the city, getting lost in different neighborhoods, stumbling upon hidden stairways, bookstores, and viewpoints—sometimes clocking 10 miles or more, my phone always dying somewhere along the way.

Through these experiences, I started to discover what a joy it was to spend time alone. Taking myself out to dinner, sitting alone at a bar with a book, swaying in the crowd at a show by myself, volunteering at a community kitchen with strangers—it all felt expansive, liberating. For someone who had spent so much of my life people-pleasing and accommodating others to the point of exhaustion, there was something profoundly freeing about moving through the world on my own terms. But at the root of that freedom was something deeper: I was developing a strong sense of self, a real relationship with myself. And I’ve come to believe that this—our connection to self—is what’s really at the core of loneliness.

But back to that feeling in 2020. Despite being physically isolated, I was hyper-connected—FaceTiming family daily, playing virtual games with friends over Zoom, attending webinars and online shows. I was oriented outward in every way, and yet, I felt really lonely. And then I started to wonder: What if my loneliness wasn’t about distance from others, but distance from myself?

Because when I’m connected to myself, alone time feels like solitude—rich, nourishing, peaceful. But when I’m disconnected from myself, alone time feels isolating, empty, even painful.

Now, as a coach and therapist, I see this theme all the time with my clients. They come to me feeling lonely, convinced that something external needs to shift in their life—a partner needs to change, more friends need to show up, they need more social events on their calendar, or they need to find the right person. But so often, the deeper opportunity is about rebuilding the relationship with self. When we are rooted in ourselves, alone time doesn’t feel like an absence—it feels like an opening. And from that place, relationships become richer, because we’re not grasping at them to fill a void—we’re meeting them from a place of wholeness.

Loneliness is real, but it’s not always about the absence of others. Sometimes, it’s an invitation to return home to ourselves and tend to what’s been neglected and/or turn toward what’s being avoided.

So next time you’re feeling lonely, pause and take stock of your relationship to self, and see if that needs tending to first. The extent to which we can connect to ourselves is the extent to which we can connect to others. Our relationship with self is the foundation for every other connection in our lives.

I love thinking about my relationship to self as a garden I must tend to daily—I do this through daily rituals and practices that make me feel grounded and connected. But when I’m really feeling off, one of my favorite ways to reconnect is to go on a hike in the Redwoods in Oakland without my phone.

What’s yours?