How to Stop Feeling Lonely at Night: Why It Hits After Dark

The house goes quiet and the feeling that was there all day finally has room. How to stop feeling lonely at night, and what to do in bed when it comes.

Rytis Violeta By Rytis & Violeta
Updated
Silhouette of a woman's profile with a ponytail against softly blurred warm city lights at night.

The dishes are done. The TV is off. You pick up your phone, scroll, put it down, pick it up again. There’s nobody to text, or nobody you want to bother at this hour. The house is so quiet you can hear the fridge.

And there it is. The ache. A hollow under the ribs that wasn’t there at lunchtime.

Or was it?

Here’s how we see it: the night doesn’t make you lonelier. It just stops covering it.

That’s not a bleak thought. It’s actually the start of a way through, because a feeling you can finally hear is a feeling you can finally meet.

Why do I feel lonely at night?

Look honestly at a normal day. The emails, the errands, the radio in the car, the people at work, the podcast while you cook. In our book we put it bluntly: “Most of what fills a modern day is a pacifier.” Not because any of those things are bad. Because they keep us moving, and movement keeps feelings covered.

Then night comes. The busy stops. You lie down. And here’s a line from the way we teach the Feeling Session that may explain what happens next: “When the body is still, the feelings that movement usually covers begin to rise.”

That’s why loneliness at night can feel so sudden and so big. It isn’t new. It’s been waiting all day, and now there’s finally room.

Add the mind to it, and it gets heavier. As soon as the ache appears, a voice starts explaining it. Nobody really cares. It will always be like this. Everyone else is asleep next to someone. In our sessions we sometimes call that voice the dragon, because it is loud and it guards its cave very well. Its job is to keep you away from what you feel, and it does that by keeping you in the story.

Loneliness at night lives in your body

Try this, just for a moment. Instead of thinking about being lonely, look for it. Where is it, physically?

It might be a hollow under the ribs. Or a tightness in the throat, a cold spot in the belly, a weight on the chest, an ache in the arms that want to hold someone. However it shows up, it’s something you can feel, not just something you think.

That matters, because you can argue with a thought for twenty years. A feeling in the body doesn’t need arguing with. It needs to be felt.

And there’s something that happens when you do. In our book: “When your attention is fully in the body, on the place that presses, the dragon goes quiet by itself. Not because you defeated it. Because you stopped feeding it.”

Violeta knows this from her own bed. There was a time Rytis left for Lithuania without her, and the story started immediately: “We built everything together, and now he went off without me.” With the story came a pressure in her chest, heavy and familiar. She could have picked up the phone, or argued the whole thing out in her head. Instead, as we wrote, “she lay there and put all of her attention on the pressure itself. Every time the story pulled at her, she came back to the chest. The story never got its fuel.”

The phone, the fridge, the glass

At night, the hand reaches for something. The phone, to see if anyone has written. The fridge, though you’re not hungry. One more glass. One more episode. Each one takes the edge off for a few minutes, and the ache is waiting when it’s done.

You don’t have to fight this. You don’t have to win every night. But once, tonight, when your hand reaches, you could say inside: “Thank you, but this time I’m going to be with the feeling.” Then be with it for a moment, before you decide anything.

A five-minute practice for lonely nights

Your bed is fine for this. Lights off. Phone face down on the floor, or in another room. If the hollow is under your ribs right now, that’s exactly where your attention goes. You don’t need to understand the loneliness, or trace it back, or fix it. Just find it, and keep it company.

Practice5 min

A five-minute Feeling Session

  1. Lie down. Floor or bed. Twenty minutes, or five.
  2. Cover your eyes. Let the outside go dark.
  3. Arms by your sides, palms down. Nothing to grab.
  4. Close your mouth. Leave the breath alone.
  5. Don’t move. Not even a little.
  6. Find the heaviest place in your body right now.
  7. Put all of your attention there, and keep it there.
  8. Don’t follow the thoughts. When you notice one, come back to the body.
  9. Don’t run. If you can, stay one more minute.

What you might notice: the hollow may grow for a while, or the ache may travel up into your throat. Tears may come, or sleep. Or the night may feel the same as before, and that’s allowed too.

Stopping is not failing. And don’t make a decision while the feeling is still moving: the message, the call, the plan can all wait for morning.

For the full version, including what to do if it gets to be too much, see the Feeling Session.

If evenings are the hardest part of your day, Lighter is seven evenings with us, lying down, eyes covered, with Violeta’s voice guiding you through.

When loneliness wakes you at 3 a.m.

Sometimes it isn’t at bedtime. You fall asleep fine and wake in the dark with your heart pounding and the whole house silent. That’s a slightly different night, and we wrote about it in waking up at 3am with anxiety. If your head starts running through everything at once, there’s also how to stop overthinking at night.

The same rule holds for all of them: go from the head into the body. Not “why is this happening.” Just: where is it in my body right now?

Before the next lonely evening

  1. Put the phone somewhere you can’t reach from bed, before the ache starts, not after.
  2. When the hollow comes, lie on your back, palms down, and find exactly where it is. Stay five minutes.
  3. Don’t send the 1 a.m. message. If you still want to reach out in the morning, do it then, from calm.
  4. Tomorrow, make one plan to be near someone, a walk, a coffee, a phone call in daylight. Reaching for a person isn’t a sign you’ve failed at this. People are part of the way through.
  5. If the lonely feeling has more of a hollow, empty shape, read why do I feel empty inside, or browse everything under states.

The quiet house isn’t the enemy. It’s the first room in a long while where your feelings can actually be heard. Tonight, you can sit up with them a while, the way you’d keep a friend company until the light comes.

Keep reading

States How to Stop Overthinking at Night: Why It Gets Worse After Dark Counting, arguing and thinking harder keep you awake. How to stop overthinking at night by meeting what's behind the heavy thought, right there in bed. States Why Do I Feel Numb Inside? What It Means and a Gentle Way In Numbness is a feeling too: a flatness, a fog, a dull weight. Why do I feel numb inside, what it may mean, and a 10-minute way to meet it in your body. States Why Do I Feel Like a Burden? What It Means and How to Put It Down Why do I feel like a burden to everyone? Often it's an old feeling, learned in childhood, that your needs were too much, and how to set it down. States How to Stop People Pleasing: Feel the Fear Behind the Yes Saying no makes your chest tight. How to stop people pleasing without a script or becoming harder: notice what your body does just before you say yes. States Anxiety for No Reason: Why It Comes and What Helps Right Now Life is quiet and still your chest won't settle. Anxiety for no reason is often an old feeling rising, and hunting for a cause feeds it. What helps. States Why Do I Feel Stuck? What It Means and How to Move Again Why do I feel stuck? It may be the moment before a change, when the next step comes with a feeling you'd rather not have. A gentle way to move again.