When you're surrounded by people and still alone
You have friends. You go to things. You show up, make conversation, laugh at the right moments. But underneath there's this persistent sense of disconnection. Like you're watching life through glass, present but not quite there.
Or maybe you don't have friends. You've tried - dating apps, meetups, hobby groups - but nothing sticks. People seem to connect easily with each other but somehow not with you. You're always on the outside looking in.
You can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly alone. Loneliness isn't about quantity of contact - it's about quality of connection. About feeling fundamentally unseen, unknown, separate.
Often chronic loneliness comes from learning early that real connection wasn't safe. Maybe you had to hide who you were to be acceptable. Maybe your needs were met with rejection or neglect. Maybe you learned that being truly known meant being abandoned.
So you developed ways of being with people that keep you protected: performing a version of yourself, staying surface-level, leaving before you can be left. It works to avoid the pain of rejection. But it guarantees the pain of loneliness.
Psychodynamic therapy looks at the walls you've built and why you needed them. Not to tear them down carelessly, but to understand what made connection feel so dangerous that isolation seemed safer. And when loneliness goes on long enough, it often tips into depression — the shutting down isn't separate from the disconnection.
We meet weekly or twice-weekly and create one relationship where you don't have to perform. Where you can risk being known without the immediate consequence of abandonment.
You'll notice the ways you keep distance even in the room. The deflecting with humour, the staying abstract, the performing competence rather than showing need. These are the same patterns keeping you lonely everywhere else.
The work is learning that connection doesn't have to mean losing yourself. That you can be genuinely known and still be safe. That the loneliness you've been carrying might be worse than the risk of reaching out.
This takes time. You can't rush intimacy, especially when every past experience taught you that closeness ends in pain. But gradually, in that consistent space, something might shift.