If You're Social But Still Lonely, You’re Not Alone

Key points

Loneliness can stem from not being able to get across things that are important to you.

Sociable folks with good communication skills can experience a kind of loneliness when among people.

Persons who send a call but get no response can feel cognitively isolated in some social settings.

This type of experience has implications for the ways loneliness has been conceptualized and studied.

Have you ever felt out of place at a party or profoundly misunderstood by a colleague, friend, or partner? Psychoanalyst Carl Jung said that “loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.” It could be a matter of shyness or social skills. But even an individual who possesses ample social and communic