How to be lonely in LA
People move to Los Angeles for work, art, school, relationships, freedom, or the chance to become someone new. At first, there’s momentum and excitement. But eventually, the newness wears off. You know some people. You have places to go. Yet you can still feel strangely untethered, as though you live in LA without quite belonging.
Los Angeles can make building a community unusually hard. The city is spread out; we spend a lot of time in cars, and many people work alone from home. Getting together requires more planning, more driving, and more coordination than it would in a denser city. Spontaneity is harder. And if you are new to LA, you may quickly notice that many people already have established friend groups and full schedules. They may be friendly and open to newcomers, but they are not necessarily looking to build a new social world from scratch.
But loneliness is not one thing. And different kinds of loneliness call for different responses.
Sociologist Robert Weiss distinguished between social loneliness and emotional loneliness. (Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation, 1973.)
Social loneliness comes from lacking a network of relationships. You may simply not have enough people in your life. Emotional loneliness is different. You may have friends, coworkers, family, even a partner, and still feel that no one really knows you or that the closeness you want is missing.
This distinction is important. Sometimes loneliness really is circumstantial. You left behind people who knew you well, and you have not yet built enough local relationships to replace that daily sense of connection. The response may also need to be circumstantial: joining something, becoming a regular somewhere, saying yes to invitations, seeing the same people repeatedly, and allowing acquaintances to become friends.
Of course, knowing what would help does not make it easy to do.
You may spend all week telling yourself you need to get out of the house, only to reach Friday evening and want nothing more than to stay in. One part of you wants connection. Another part wants to avoid the anxiety of walking into a room where everyone else seems more comfortable than you are. Another part may fear rejection or embarrassment. Another may insist that staying home is easier and safer.
Staying home may bring immediate relief. It can also make loneliness worse.
This is where circumstantial loneliness can become mixed with something more psychological. Some people repeatedly feel outside of groups even when they are invited into them. They assume everyone else is closer. They wonder whether they were invited out of politeness. Different parts may develop different ways of handling this uncertainty. One part becomes quiet and watchful. Another becomes overly agreeable. Another tries to be funny, useful, impressive, or easy to like. Another gives up on people altogether and takes pride in being self-sufficient.
Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein wrote about an “inner sense of loneliness,” which she distinguished from simply being without companionship. She was interested in the loneliness a person can feel even while among friends or receiving love. (“On the Sense of Loneliness,” 1963.)
This kind of loneliness may ask for something different. Rather than simply adding more people, we may need to understand what makes closeness difficult to trust or receive. Parts work can be useful because it helps us to be curious about the different reactions that arise around connection. The part that withdraws may be trying to protect against rejection. The part that scans the room may be trying to prevent humiliation. The part that performs may believe that belonging has to be earned.
When we understand our withdrawal, room scanning, and performance as protective, they start to make more sense.
Therapy can help us notice them, understand what they are trying to prevent, and create a little more space between the feeling and the automatic response. Often, the fear isn't that something terrible will happen, but that reaching out will feel awkward, disappointing, or leave you even more aware of your loneliness. Parts work can help make those risks feel more tolerable, so connection becomes easier to approach even when there’s no guarantee that it will feel good.
There is also a loneliness that neither friendship nor therapy can completely remove. Irvin Yalom called this existential isolation: the basic separation between one person and another. No matter how close we become, no one else can completely inhabit our experience. (Existential Psychotherapy, 1980.)
This kind of loneliness may require less fixing and more recognition. Feeling lonely does not always mean that our social life is inadequate or that something is wrong with us. Some separateness comes with being a person. The task may be to develop a different relationship to it, rather than expecting another person, a partner, or a community to make it disappear.
So when loneliness shows up, it may help to ask a more specific question: What kind of loneliness is this?
Circumstantial loneliness may ask us to change something in our lives, even when making that change feels difficult. Psychological loneliness may ask us to understand the parts of us that want closeness and the parts that fear it. Existential loneliness may ask us to tolerate some degree of separateness without immediately treating it as a problem.
Therapy can help where these forms of loneliness overlap. We can pay attention to what happens when we reach toward other people: the tightness in the chest, the urge to cancel, the expectation of being left out, the belief that we need to perform in order to be wanted. We can also get to know the parts that organize around those reactions and help them become less alone in carrying what they have been protecting.
Donald Winnicott wrote that the capacity to be alone develops through the experience of dependable connection. Over time, some sense of that connection becomes internal. (“The Capacity to Be Alone,” 1958)
Perhaps belonging works similarly. The more securely we can relate to ourselves, the easier it may become to risk reaching toward other people.
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Loneliness doesn't have one cause, and it doesn't have one cure. Sometimes we need more people. Sometimes we need more intimacy. Sometimes we need to understand the parts of us that make forming connections so challenging. Sometimes we need to strengthen our relationship with ourselves so that reaching outward feels less urgent, less frightening, and less dependent on immediate reassurance. And sometimes we need to make room for the loneliness that comes with being human, while continuing to build a life among other people. Reach out to schedule a free consultation.
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Bret Hanson is an Associate Marriage & Family Therapist, #155624, supervised by Courtney Watson, LPCC, #21190. Trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and currently pursuing further certification in Level 1 Internal Family Systems (IFS), Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy, and psychodynamic psychotherapy, he supports individuals and couples in understanding emotional patterns, navigating conflict, deepening intimacy, and building more authentic relationships with themselves and others.