Loneliness During the Holidays: Being Human in the Season of "Togetherness”

By Jen Bennethum

There's something about the holidays that can make loneliness feel especially sharp. Maybe it's the contrast between the internal landscape of our actual experience and the external pressure to feel festive. Maybe it's the way our bodies remember every holiday we've lived through – the ones filled with warmth and the ones marked by absence. As trauma therapists, we know that loneliness during this season isn't a failure of gratitude or connection. It's often our nervous system telling us a deeper truth.

As renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score…

"Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort."

This truth becomes especially poignant during the holidays, when our bodies hold not just this December, but every December we've ever known.

Loneliness is Information

From a bottom-up perspective, loneliness isn't something to fix or solve. It's information. When we feel that hollow ache despite being surrounded by people, or when solitude feels less like peace and more like exile, our bodies are communicating something important. They're saying: this doesn't match. The performance of holiday cheer doesn't match our internal reality. The family gathering doesn't match our need for safety. The empty house doesn't match our longing for witnessed presence.

I worked with a client once who described holiday dinners as "being lonely in a crowd." Her family was all there, but no one really saw her. Her body knew the difference between physical proximity and emotional attunement. She'd sit at that table, surrounded by relatives, while her nervous system stayed in a state of vigilant isolation. The loneliness wasn't about being alone – it was about being unseen.

When December Holds Memory

Another client found that December always brought a particular heaviness. Through our work together, we discovered his body was holding the anniversary of a loss that happened during the holidays years ago. His somatic memory of that December had imprinted itself, and each year, his nervous system would begin its remembering. The loneliness he felt wasn't present-day – it was his younger self, still sitting with that loss, waiting to be acknowledged.

Our bodies are extraordinary timekeepers. They remember the holidays when someone was newly absent from the table. They remember the December when everything changed. They remember the forced smiles, the careful conversations, the moments when we swallowed our truth to keep the peace. Anniversary reactions during the holidays are incredibly common, yet we rarely talk about how our nervous systems mark time through sensation and feeling rather than calendar dates.

Meeting Loneliness With Curiosity

This is where bottom-up work becomes so vital. Instead of trying to think our way out of loneliness or forcing ourselves into connection that doesn't feel safe, we can start by simply noticing what's here. Place your hand on your chest. What do you feel? Tightness? Hollowness? Movement? Stillness? There's no wrong answer. You're just gathering information from the wisdom of your body.

Sometimes what we call loneliness is actually grief in disguise. Grief for the family we needed but didn't have. Grief for the ones who aren't at the table anymore. Grief for the version of ourselves that used to believe in holiday magic. Our bodies hold all of these holidays – the joyful ones and the painful ones – in our cells. When December comes around, we don't just experience this December. We experience every December we've ever known.

The Neurobiology of Holiday Loneliness

From a neurobiological perspective, loneliness activates the same pain regions in our brain as physical injury. When we feel socially disconnected during a time that emphasizes connection, our threat detection system goes on high alert. The amygdala fires, cortisol rises, and our body prepares for danger – because to our ancient nervous system, being alone meant being vulnerable to predators.

This is why loneliness during the holidays can feel so visceral, so urgent. It's not just an emotion; it's a full-body experience. Our social engagement system – the part of us wired for connection – is scanning for safety and not finding it. This can happen even in a room full of people if those people don't feel safe to our nervous system. Past experiences of rejection, abandonment, or relational trauma can make our threat detection especially sensitive during times that emphasize family and belonging.

When Connection Becomes Performance

Here's what I've learned: forcing connection when our bodies aren't ready for it can actually deepen loneliness. I've watched clients push themselves to attend gatherings, make phone calls, or reach out to others because they "should," only to feel more isolated than before. The mismatch between what they're performing and what they're feeling creates a kind of double loneliness – alone in their truth while surrounded by others.

The holidays often demand a particular kind of emotional labor – the work of appearing okay, grateful, festive. For those of us who've experienced trauma, this performance can be exhausting. We might find ourselves masking our true experience, curating our responses, managing others' emotions while our own go unwitnessed. This kind of relational labor can leave us feeling more alone than actual solitude.

The Wisdom of Protective Loneliness

But I've also seen the way loneliness can transform when we approach it with curiosity instead of judgment. One client began having conversations with her loneliness, asking it: What are you protecting me from? What are you trying to tell me? She discovered that her loneliness was actually a protective part, keeping her from relationships that had previously been harmful. Her body was saying no to connection that wasn't safe, and that was wisdom, not pathology.

Sometimes loneliness is our nervous system's way of saying: not this kind of connection. It might be protecting us from enmeshed family dynamics where boundaries don't exist. It might be shielding us from relationships where we're only valued for what we provide. It might be keeping us from repeating patterns that have hurt us before. When we can recognize loneliness as potentially protective, we can begin to work with it rather than against it.

Moving Forward: Creating Your Own Rituals of Connection

If you're feeling lonely this season, consider this: what if there's nothing wrong with you? What if your loneliness is your nervous system's way of saying that what's being offered doesn't match what you need? What if it's okay to feel the dissonance between holiday expectations and your lived reality?

Some gentle experiments you might try, always honoring your own pace and capacity:

When loneliness arises, pause and breathe. Notice where you feel it in your body. Does it have a shape? A texture? A temperature? Just acknowledging its presence without trying to change it can sometimes shift our relationship to it. You might even place a hand where you feel it most strongly, offering your own compassionate witness to that part of you.

Try this somatic practice: Imagine your loneliness as a younger version of yourself. How old are they? What do they need? Can you offer them the nurturing you needed? Please feel free to reach out to us at Integrate Therapy and Wellness Collective with any questions or if you would like us to walk with you on your journey to wholeness.