Apologies for the long post (again). Consider it a "choose-your-own-reading-depth". :bigwink:
Most people assume loneliness means lack of people.
But loneliness is not one thing.
Loneliness comes in different forms depending on which developmental need was unmet and during which developmental window. Multiple forms can coexist in the same person.
In CPTSD, loneliness most commonly reflects lack of safety, holding, and/or self-continuity - and these are distinct problems requiring different forms of repair.
Below are distinct, literature-supported types of loneliness. (list might not be complete)
1. Social Loneliness
Not having enough social contact or companionship, and lacking a stable sense of belonging within a group, community, or social network.
Mechanism: This reflects reduced activation of social affiliation and reward systems (dopaminergic and oxytocin-mediated pathways). In CPTSD, social contact alone often fails to relieve distress because the primary deficit lies upstream in safety or attachment regulation, not in social availability.
This is about quantity of contact, not safety, attachment, or self.
2. Emotional Loneliness
Being with others while one's emotional states are not accurately perceived, mirrored, or responded to, resulting in a felt absence of emotional resonance.
Mechanism: Early failures of affect mirroring impair the development of emotional recognition and validation. The nervous system learns that emotional expression does not lead to relief, so emotional closeness feels empty rather than regulating.
Unlike social loneliness, people are present - but emotional resonance is absent.
3. Attachment Loneliness
The absence of a felt, dependable attachment figure, i.e. someone whose availability is experienced as stable enough to calm distress; this is regardless of whether one has partners, friends, or family.
Mechanism: In insecure or disorganized attachment, the attachment system remains chronically activated because proximity does not reliably deactivate threat. The system seeks closeness, but proximity does not reliably reduce distress or create a sense of safety.
Unlike emotional loneliness, this is not about being understood - it is about absence of a reliable attachment target.
4. Nervous System Safety Loneliness
A persistent bodily sense of being unheld, unsafe, or unsupported, reflecting a nervous system that does not encode calm or safety as a baseline state, even when emotional distress is absent.
Mechanism: Chronic absence of co-regulation prevents proper calibration of the autonomic nervous system. "Being alone" becomes biologically encoded as danger, independent of conscious emotion or thought.
Unlike attachment loneliness, this operates at a pre-relational, physiological level.
5. Self-Continuity Loneliness
The absence of a felt, continuous inner self that carries experience across emotional states, leading to emptiness, inner absence, or a sense of not fully existing; sadness, despair, or other intense emotions can sit on top of that void.
Mechanism: The self forms through repeated cycles of distress being held and returned to baseline ("serve and return"). When distress is endured alone, emotional states remain unlinked, preventing the formation of a continuous, coherent felt self.
Unlike safety loneliness, this concerns identity continuity, not arousal state.
6. Developmental Loneliness
A sense that essential developmental experiences never occurred, such as reliable protection, guidance, emotional support, or the opportunity to develop within the safety of a child role.
Mechanism: When caregiving functions are absent during sensitive periods, core capacities (self-soothing, trust, agency) fail to fully develop. Adult experiences cannot automatically compensate for skills that were never constructed.
Unlike self-continuity loneliness, this reflects missing developmental scaffolding, not fragmentation.
7. Existential Loneliness
A pervasive sense that life lacks meaning, purpose, or reason to continue, reflecting difficulty integrating self, relationships, and future orientation into a coherent sense of "why."
Mechanism: Meaning emerges from a stable self interacting with a predictable relational world. When self-continuity and attachment are compromised, meaning cannot consolidate, producing existential emptiness.
Unlike developmental loneliness, this is about future orientation, not childhood absence.
8. Relational Hypervigilance Loneliness
Feeling alone in the presence of others due to ongoing threat monitoring, where vigilance, self-protection, and anticipatory defense prevent settling into relational safety or connection.
Mechanism: Trauma prioritizes threat detection networks over affiliative systems (amygdala–salience dominance). Presence of others increases cognitive load and vigilance, preventing relational rest.
Unlike emotional loneliness, this is not lack of attunement - it is active threat anticipation.
9. Embodiment / Touch Loneliness
Feeling disconnected from, alienated from, or hostile toward the body, such that touch, care, or physical comfort does not register as safe or relieving.
Mechanism: Early deprivation of safe touch disrupts somatosensory and interoceptive integration. The body never becomes a reliable source of safety, leading to alienation from physical presence.
Unlike nervous system safety loneliness, this specifically concerns bodily connection, not arousal regulation.
10. Witnessing Loneliness
The pain of suffering that is unseen, unnamed, or unacknowledged by others, leaving experiences without validation, relational containment, or integration.
Mechanism: Witnessing is required for meaning-making and memory integration. Without it, experiences remain isolated and unprocessed, reinforcing loneliness even in relationships.
Unlike emotional loneliness, this concerns recognition of suffering, not emotional exchange.
Why multiple forms of loneliness overlap in CPTSD
Most people with CPTSD experience multiple, overlapping forms of loneliness simultaneously, because different developmental injuries disrupt different layers of connection and selfhood. These layers do not substitute for one another, so repairing one form of loneliness does not automatically resolve the others.
Loneliness is not a single construct. It maps onto distinct neurodevelopmental systems, each with its own sensitive periods:
• attachment and co-regulation
• somatic safety and bodily belonging
• self-continuity and identity
• relational trust
• social belonging
• meaning and purpose
In typical development, these systems are built hierarchically and in parallel, supported by caregivers through thousands of repeated serve-and-return interactions, meaning distress is expressed by the toddler, held by another nervous system, resolved, and returned to safety - again and again.
In developmental trauma, this process is disrupted unevenly:
• some systems are impaired very early
• others develop only partially or in compensatory ways
• none fully stabilize the others
The result is that multiple unresolved loneliness states coexist in the same person.
The key principle: injuries don't cancel each other out
This can feel like a paradox, but you can have:
• a partner → and still feel existentially alone
• friends → and still feel unsafe
• community → and still feel empty
• meaning → and still feel untethered
• competence → and still feel unseen
This is not contradiction. Each loneliness type corresponds to a different unmet developmental function, and these functions are non-interchangeable.
- No amount of social contact repairs nervous-system safety.
- No amount of meaning repairs self-continuity.
- No amount of attachment closeness repairs early bodily alienation.
What research supports this
1. Attachment research
Early attachment disruptions predict chronic internal loneliness even in later secure relationships. Adults with developmental trauma often report "feeling alone even when loved."
Key point: Later relationships do not automatically repair early attachment loneliness, because the nervous system encoded "aloneness during distress" as baseline.
2. Affective neuroscience
The neural systems governing social pain (including anterior cingulate cortex and insula) overlap with physical pain circuitry, meaning:
• loneliness alters baseline threat perception
• loneliness can persist despite social presence
This explains why people can feel profoundly lonely in company.
3. Development of the self
The self is not a narrative. It is a felt continuity across emotional states.
That continuity forms only when:
• distress states are held by another
• those states resolve
• the system returns safely to baseline
• and this cycle repeats reliably
If distress is repeatedly unheld:
• calm-self and distressed-self never integrate
• each state feels like a different "world"
• there is no internal companion who remains present
This produces self-continuity loneliness, which:
• cannot be fixed by people
• cannot be fixed by meaning
• cannot be fixed by achievement
This is why overlap is so common: self-loneliness persists regardless of other connections.
Typical overlap patterns in CPTSD
Common combinations include:
• nervous-system safety loneliness + self-continuity loneliness
• attachment loneliness + bodily / touch alienation
• relational hypervigilance loneliness + witnessing loneliness
• meaning / existential loneliness layered on top of safety deficits
Many CPTSD survivers identify with four to six types of loneliness simultaneously!
Why overlap often becomes more visible in therapy
This is often alarming. As therapy reduces borrowed safety (enmeshment, hyper-responsibility, fawning, external regulation), previously masked loneliness layers surface. Thus, people often think: "I'm getting worse."
What is actually happening:
• a compensatory structure is gone
• underlying injuries are now detectable
This is not regression, but resolution becoming possible.
Takeaways
Overlapping loneliness types are:
• expected
• developmentally coherent
• not a sign of severity or failure
They reflect:
• early and repeated aloneness during distress
• partial adaptations that kept you alive
• a nervous system that learned to survive without reliable holding
And crucially: The presence of one form of connection does not invalidate the reality of other loneliness forms.
A brief note on repair (by no means complete)
Because these loneliness types arise from different developmental injuries, they require different forms of repair. No single relationship, insight, or technique addresses all of them at once.
Very broadly:
• Social loneliness responds to access, inclusion, and shared activity.
• Emotional loneliness responds to accurate mirroring and emotional responsiveness.
• Attachment loneliness responds to repeated experiences of availability during distress.
• Nervous-system safety loneliness responds to co-regulation and autonomic settling.
• Self-continuity loneliness responds to having distress held and resolved over time, allowing states to link.
• Developmental loneliness responds to experiences that support agency, protection, and being cared for without role reversal.
• Existential loneliness responds to meaning that emerges after safety and self-coherence are present.
• Relational hypervigilance loneliness responds to environments where vigilance can gradually soften without penalty.
• Embodiment / touch loneliness responds to safe, consent-based bodily experiences that restore the body as a place of safety.
• Witnessing loneliness responds to having suffering named, acknowledged, and held in another's mind.
Importantly, repair is layered, not linear. Addressing one form may uncover another that was previously masked. This does not mean progress is lost - it means deeper levels are becoming accessible.
For many with CPTSD, the first repair is not "connection," but safety. Only from there can connection begin to register.
[P.S.: For myself, I feel like 4-5-3-6-9 clearly apply (primary), 10-7 partially (secondary) ... and 1-2-8 not so much]
This is such an important post and thank you for making it.
I'm afraid I have skipped through it because I found myself getting quite upset at considering the levels of loneliness I have experienced (and continue to do). It all got unexpectedly triggering. I am not saying this to complain about your post but to explain that my post might be a bit random and not very coherent.
I've experienced loads of those types of loneliness. In addition to all of that my mother taught me that you can only trust family and everyone else is out to get you. And even within family most of them are out to get you. Only she was the great trustworthy one. The all-loving MOTHER. (Where is a vomit emoji when you need one?). I sensed early on that she was not trustworthy. I think I then concluded that if even she was not trustworthy there was nobody in the entire world who could possibly be. So solitude must be the only safe option. Loneliness was the price of safety.
It's helpful to consider why therapy might make things feel worse at times, so thank you for talking about that. I was scared of therapy for a long time, thinking that all the tightly locked boxes in the attic of my brain were locked for a very good reason. I actually got to a stage where my T was talking about reducing frequency. I'd been meaning to make the same suggestion and was pleased at this apparent gold star in my star chart. I then discovered that all it meant was a readiness to delve deeper into the mud and I've been having a pretty rough ride. Fortunately I can see the progress so I'm sticking with it.
I recently found myself looking up a childhood hymn we sang in primary school assembly. One More Step Along the World I go. It's basically about making one's life journey always having God beside us, to help us, guide us and cherish us. I am not a believer. I don't remember the hymn being a particular favourite of mine - most of them had good tunes and were fun to sing. I was mostly dissociated anyway and never much thought about the words I was singing. But when I came across it again recently I had a terrible crying fit. I have listened to it intermittently since and it keeps provoking the same reaction, though milder. I've been trying to work out which verse in particular makes me cry as I think that is informative. Anyway, the point I am coming to is that I realise I was crying because I was so lonely. That time in my life was a particularly awful one. All these things I sang about I had no experience of. Nobody was beside me or helped me or guided me (emotionally). Nobody cherished me. Yes. I was lonely.