Loneliness Epidemic: The Surprising Impact on Your Health

We’re living in the age of connection; WhatsApp group chats, YouTube channels, Zoom calls, Instagram reels, TikTok videos. And yet, so many people are lonelier than ever. In fact, loneliness has become such a common and serious problem that in 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared it a public health epidemic. Yes, epidemic. Right up there with obesity and smoking.

The Surprising Health Risks of Loneliness

Loneliness isn’t just about feeling sad or bored when your Saturday night plans fall through. Chronic loneliness can wreak havoc on your physical and emotional health. Here are a few stats that might surprise you:

• Loneliness is associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015).

• People who report high levels of loneliness are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline.

• Loneliness can increase the risk of premature death by up to 60%, the equivalent risk of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

In other words, loneliness is far more than just undesirable or unpleasant, it’s downright dangerous. And yet, many people don't talk about it, either because they think it’s shameful or because they’re so used to emotional disconnection that they don’t even realize they’re lonely.

What Loneliness Really Looks Like

Loneliness doesn’t always look like social isolation. It can show up in a crowded house, a long-term relationship, or a group chat that no longer feels supportive. What we’re really talking about here is emotional disconnection. Feeling unseen or misunderstood. Feeling like nobody really wants to know what goes on inside your head.  

That kind of disconnection doesn’t just make life feel harder; it is harder. Emotionally disconnected people are less resilient to stress, more prone to illness, and more likely to struggle in their relationships.

Humans are Wired for Connection

All of us are biologically wired for connection, whether we recognize it or not. Our brains light up when we feel seen, emotionally safe, and understood. When that connection is missing, our nervous systems get stuck in patterns of hypervigilance or shutdown, and we may start to believe that there is something unlovable about ourselves. This creates insecure attachment styles and further difficulty forming bonds with others.

How EFT Can Help

As an Emotionally Focused Therapist, I help individuals and couples understand the cycle of emotional disconnection that keeps them stuck. EFT isn’t about teaching you communication hacks or how to "fix" yourself. It’s about identifying the deeper emotional needs, also known as attachment needs, that drive your reactions. With Emotionally Focused Therapy you can learn how to get beneath the surface reaction and access the unmet needs and unacknowledged emotions underneath. EFT gives you a roadmap for how to get those needs met, and how to meet those needs for the people you care about.

Why do I do this work? Because I am also a human in the world, wired for connection just like you are. I know what it’s like to feel alone in a room full of people. And I also know how healing it is to feel truly connected to myself and to someone else.

You don’t have to stay stuck in loneliness. You don’t have to pretend you’re fine when you’re not. And you definitely don’t have to fix this by yourself. If you are looking for more warmth, more attunement, and a deeper connection to yourself and others, therapy with an EFT therapist can be a wonderful place to start.

How Attachment Styles Can Impact your Relationships

Attachment styles are blueprints for how people connect with others, especially in close relationships. It’s shaped early in life by the bond you had (or didn’t have) with your caregivers, and it influences how you respond to closeness, conflict, and emotional needs as an adult.

The idea comes from psychiatrist John Bowlby, who found that separation from caregivers is deeply distressing to children. Dr. Sue Johnson, founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), expanded on this by showing that the need for emotional connection doesn’t stop in childhood. In fact, it’s wired into us for life.

If you notice patterns in your attachment style that cause stress in your relationships, therapy can help you shift those patterns.

Types of Attachment Style

There are four main types of attachment style. One is secure. The other three; anxious, avoidant, and disorganized are considered insecure.

Let’s break them down.

Secure Attachment

Secure attachment begins when a child’s needs are consistently met by a reliable, emotionally available caregiver. If they’re hungry, someone feeds them. If they cry, someone soothes them. Over time, they learn that people can be trusted and that their needs matter.

As adults, people with secure attachment tend to feel steady in relationships. They’re comfortable with emotional closeness, resilient during tough conversations, and don’t panic if someone doesn’t respond right away, because they trust that the connection is still there.

Insecure Attachment

When a child’s emotional or physical needs aren’t consistently met — due to absence, illness, addiction, trauma, or even the daily stress of overwork — they may develop an insecure attachment style.

There are three types of insecure attachment: anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.

Anxious Attachment

People with an anxious attachment style crave closeness and reassurance. They might come across as clingy, jealous, or overly reactive. Underneath, there’s a deep fear of abandonment. They often go to great lengths to keep connection intact, even when the relationship is unhealthy.

Avoidant Attachment

Avoidant types often struggle with vulnerability. They prefer independence, suppress their emotions, and may throw themselves into work or distraction. They’re uncomfortable depending on others and rarely ask for help, even when they need it most.

(If this sounds familiar, you might want to learn more about therapy for avoidant attachment, which can help you move toward healthier ways of connecting.)

Disorganized Attachment

Also called “fearful-avoidant,” this style is a mix of both anxious and avoidant patterns. It’s often rooted in trauma or unpredictable caregiving in childhood.

Adults with disorganized attachment desperately want closeness but also fear it. They may get close quickly in a relationship, then pull away just as fast. The fear of being hurt makes it hard to stay emotionally connected, even when they long for that very thing.

Attachment Styles and Compatibility

Your attachment style plays a huge role in how you show up in relationships — and in how compatible you are with a partner.

• The most stable dynamic tends to happen when both partners have secure attachment. These couples navigate conflict well, regulate emotions effectively, and feel comfortable being emotionally open.

• A common pairing is an anxious partner with an avoidant partner. These couples often find themselves in the classic pursuer/withdrawer cycle: one protests disconnection by actively continuing to engage, while the other shuts down to avoid overwhelm and protect the relationship from further discord. They can make it work, but it’s painful without support.

• Two avoidant partners may never fully connect.

• Two anxious partners can unintentionally fuel each other’s insecurities.

• Disorganized partners often gravitate toward anxious ones at first, but when the relationship deepens, fear of closeness can trigger distance and conflict.

Understanding how these patterns play out is a key focus in Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples

Can Your Attachment Style Change?

Yes, but it takes awareness, effort, and often, supportive relationships.

Attachment patterns are relatively stable, but they’re not fixed. Being in a relationship with a partner with a more secure attachment style than you can lead to a series of corrective emotional experiences, helping you heal the wounded parts of yourself and form a new template for connection.

Your style may also shift depending on the person you’re with or the context. Even avoidant types may have one person they feel safe with. Even secure people can feel temporarily insecure if their needs go unmet for too long.

How Therapy Can Help with Attachment Style

The best starting point is understanding your own style and where it came from. Who showed up for you in childhood? Who didn’t? How did you learn to ask for (or avoid) emotional connection?

But awareness alone isn’t enough. To truly change your patterns, you need new experiences of connection. That’s where therapy comes in.

Through attachment-based therapy approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy (for couples) and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (for individuals), you can:

• Recognize and interrupt painful relational cycles.

• Learn to regulate emotions and express needs more openly.

• Practice building secure, healthy bonds with yourself and others.

If you’re ready to move beyond old patterns, schedule a consultation to start working on your attachment style in therapy.

Elevating Emotional Connection with Your Partner

Stuck in Conflict

When you are trying to express yourself to your partner, do you often end up feeling worse than when you started?

During a conversation or conflict with our partner, we often tend to focus on our surface emotions, thoughts and perceptions, but far less so on our deeper, core emotions and our unmet emotional needs.

Our communication comes out as critical, angry, or frustrated and our partner becomes angry and frustrated too, or just throws their hands up and walks away, leaving us all alone with our unmet needs. Nobody feels heard or understood and nobody wins.

Often, we are not even aware that there is another layer of emotion happening beneath the surface of communications like these, especially if we grew up in a family where emotional expression was not encouraged or modeled by our caregivers.

Many of us get stuck in a chronic attack/defend or mutual blame pattern with our loved one when we try to express our emotional needs and over time this can erode our secure connection to each other and create emotional distance.

Once a person is able to shift their awareness to their deeper emotions and unmet needs, it can be a game changer for connection and healing.

When I work with clients, I like to explain it as an “experience elevator”.

The magic happens when you take the elevator from the top floor (surface emotions) all the way down to access what’s in the basement (deeper emotions).

How can you tell which emotions are surface and which are deeper?

There are some clear differences between the two.

Surface Emotions

On the top floor, it feels safe. You can see everything from there, or at least you think you can. This is where the surface emotions exist. The most common ones are  anger and frustration. People feel safe when they express these surface emotions. They tend to come easily and quickly to us, often as a reaction to an external trigger. The feelings are observable to others and can change or escalate quickly. These emotions are typically more socially acceptable or easier to express than the deeper feelings that lie beneath.

They are often used as a way to defend ourselves from perceived or actual criticism  and we can use them to deflect blame and avoid vulnerability.

Unfortunately these surface emotions don’t help us get our needs met. In fact, they tend to push other people away.

Deeper Emotions

Deeper emotions, or primary emotions, are the core feelings that are often hidden beneath the surface. These emotions are more fundamental and relate to our basic needs and desires, such as the need for connection, safety, and acceptance. Primary emotions include feelings like sadness, fear, hurt, and loneliness.

Core emotions are much harder to express because they involve being much more vulnerable.

It is so much easier to approach our partner with anger or frustration, saying something like,

“You never listen!”

than to say,

“It really hurts when you tune me out. I feel the hurt like a pit in my stomach and I get so afraid that maybe I am not important to you”.

Our primary emotions tend not to be reactive or defensive in nature. Often they are more persistent and are related to our view of ourselves, which was most likely formed during childhood. For example, a child who was neglected will probably grow up feeling unsure about how valued and lovable they are. As an adult, they will be sensitive to this and may unconsciously look for evidence that they are not good enough or that they don’t matter to their partner.

Unmet Needs

Usually when a primary or deeper emotion is being experienced, it points to a core unmet need. In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we refer to these as attachment needs. These needs, when met, are the things that let us know we are safe, secure and loved in our relationship. Here are some of the most common attachment needs that people identify during  EFT couples therapy sessions:

·      To feel seen, heard and understood

·      To know they matter

·      To know they are good enough

·      To work as a team/partnership

·      To be respected

·      To have efforts acknowledged

Vulnerability Leads to Empathy

So why delve into deeper emotions and unmet attachment needs when they are so much harder and more vulnerable to acknowledge and express?

The big payoff to accessing and sharing primary emotion is empathy. Whilst surface emotions like anger tend to push the other person away, primary emotions typically do the opposite and draw the other person closer.

Your partner is more likely to understand what you are feeling and be motivated to help you feel better. Part of the vulnerability of expressing these emotions is that you don’t actually know for sure that the other person will respond well to you. They might be stuck in their own experience, lacking  the emotional capacity to hold space for your feelings right at that moment.  

Practical Steps for Accessing and Sharing Emotion

Understanding the distinction between surface and deeper emotions can be transformative in everyday life. Here are some practical steps to apply this knowledge:

Self-Reflection: Take time to reflect on your emotional responses. Ask yourself, “What am I really feeling beneath this anger or frustration? What unmet need drives this feeling?”

Connect with your Body: Tune in to the physical sensations that give clues about your deeper emotion. Is there heaviness in your chest? A knot in your stomach? Does your body suddenly feel colder or warmer? Pay attention to these signs and try to hear what your body is telling you about what emotion you are feeling.

Open Communication: In relationships, strive to communicate your deeper emotions. Instead of saying, “I’m angry,” try expressing, “I feel hurt because I need to feel valued.”

Empathy: When others express strong emotions, consider what deeper feelings might be driving their behavior. Try to respond with empathy and curiosity. Often this can defuse anger and shift the conversation dramatically, paving the way for reconnection.

Therapeutic Support: If navigating these emotional layers feels challenging, seeking support from an EFT therapist can be very helpful.

Recognizing and understanding the difference between surface or secondary emotions and deeper or primary emotions is a key concept in Emotionally Focused Therapy. By taking the elevator of our emotional experiences down to the basement, we can achieve greater self-awareness, improve our relationships, foster deeper emotional connection and create opportunities for mutual healing with our partner.