The holidays can be hard. Billed as “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” they can also be the most painful. They bring opportunities to gather with friends and family, as well as feelings of increased loneliness and isolation. A PBS News Hour article lays out the ways loneliness can affect your physical and mental health, offering a way to combat it this holiday season.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased isolation and distance for many of us. For some, it’s ongoing. A 2021 study from Morning Consult found that 58 percent of Americans feel lonely. Some may be choosing distance during what some are calling the “tridemic” of flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Others are lonely by circumstance, grief, or loss.

But according to Dr. Jeremy Nobel, who teaches a course on loneliness at Harvard, societal expectations play an outsize role in our feelings of loneliness. “It’s not just the isolation — it’s the expectation that’s created by culture, by advertising that the only normal way to be in the holidays, the only way to access joy and celebration is to be with others,” he explained. “So imagine the feeling if you don’t have a way to make those kinds of connections.”

There’s a significant difference between loneliness and being alone. Being alone can be positive, enabling you to get in touch with who you uniquely are. But Nobel explains that loneliness is rooted in a sense of lack: “Being lonely is a very specific feeling of something missing, and what’s missing is the sense of connection to people at the level that you want to have that connection.”  He adds, “That gap between the social connections you aspire to and what you feel you have is what we call loneliness.” It’s this gap we can feel acutely during the holidays.

It turns out loneliness is not merely unfortunate, but it has serious effects on our physical, mental, and emotional health – even deadly consequences. “What’s only recently come to light is that loneliness won’t just make you miserable, it’ll kill you. And not just from suicide or drug overdose, but from heart disease, cancer or other kinds of physical ailments,” said Nobel. “It turns out that loneliness increases risk of early death by 30 percent — as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”

Loneliness cuts across all strata of American life, but the Cigna study found that people of color, low-income individuals, and younger people are most affected. According to the study, 79 percent of young adults (aged 18-24) report feelings of loneliness, versus 41 percent of seniors 66+. Social media plays a huge role in feelings of loneliness among younger people, as social comparison both makes people feel left out and hampers genuine connection.

“It’s very performance-oriented when you think about it. You’re continually putting yourself out into the world as if you’re on stage,” said Nobel. “Now, there’s nothing wrong with occasionally being on stage, but when you’re always on stage, that kind of forces almost a separation from your performance state and your authentic state.”

So how do we combat loneliness? By forming connections with others. According to Nobel, it starts with connecting with yourself. The first step is identifying what you genuinely enjoy, what you’re “authentically curious” about, what matters to you. “And as you move towards that and explore that, it often opens up channels to connect with other people who have similar curiosities and similar interests.”

Nobel founded and heads up Project Unlonely at the Foundation for Art & Healing, which promotes creative arts as a way for people to explore what they’re curious about and create connections with others. “Whether it’s a drawing, a poem, or even a cheesecake that you then bring to your next-door neighbor,” Nobel explains, the creative things we make open up avenues for conversation, connection, and relationship.

Read the full PBS NewsHour article here.

You can learn more about Project Unlonely here. There’s also an initiative for college-age students as well at Campus Unlonely.

Rasnic, Matt et al. “Loneliness can affect physical and mental health. An expert shares ways to combat it this holiday season.” PBS NewsHour, 14 Dec 2022, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/loneliness-can-affect-physical-and-mental-health-an-expert-shares-ways-to-combat-it-this-holiday-season.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash