People often talk about how isolated one can feel in Los Angeles.
In your car, stuck in traffic. In your neighborhood, perhaps feeling nations away from friends or colleagues across town. In your apartment … by yourself (almost one-third of Americans live alone).
Attempting to stay connected to others in a city like L.A. can be daunting, and might even feel impossible.
“There's a revolving door feeling about lots of spaces in L.A.,” says Cat Moore, human connection specialist and director of belonging at the University of Southern California. “It's so sprawling, it's so fast paced. There's a sense of scale that can become overwhelming, and people often come in and spin out.”
These days, large metropolises like L.A. seem to breed the perfect conditions for chronic loneliness: The cost of living is high, and people are constantly working at the expense of personal relationships. Many flock to the city to chase a dream, only to leave if it isn’t fulfilled. And of course, the ever-growing presence of technology, winding its way into all facets of our lives, keeps us tethered to screens and starved of human interaction more and more each year.
“Everyone here in L.A. is doing their own thing,” says Tori Leppert, an independent musician originally from Chicago whom we spoke to for this story. “If you aren't intentional about finding those people, and making sure that your values and interests are aligned, they're not paying attention to you.”
“There were just so many times where I just questioned what I was doing in this city where I was like, ‘I'm never gonna achieve what I wanna achieve here,’” says Kat Hamilton, curator at the music collective Writers 'Round, a group that brings musicians, like Leppert, together in L.A. together.
A lot of Angelenos — and many other Americans — are in fact lonely. Among a host of lingering mental and physical health effects related to isolation — like depression, dementia, insomnia, and stroke — new research shows that loneliness physically hurts.
It shows up in the brain in the same area as hunger and as pain. It's literally physical and, at a soul level, painful. In the same way you need a sandwich, say every day at noon, you need people.
Research from the surgeon general’s advisory says the “mortality impact of being socially disconnected” is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
“It's f****** scary,” says Eddie Navarro, another independent musician who we met through Writers ‘Round. “It's like a dragon. You have to find it and you have to tame it.”
So how can one fight the beast of loneliness in our giant, sprawling, transient city?
First, Moore says, we must reframe how we fundamentally understand it. She suggests that rather than “pathologizing” loneliness as a mental health problem — which often exacerbates the painful feelings, Moore says — we should look at it as a natural, very human condition.
“Because, really, it's an inescapable part of being human,” she says.
To emphasize her point, Moore describes the first experience of connection, and of loss, that all humans have: in their mother’s womb, being tied to one another by an umbilical cord.
“But then, the moment you emerge, the first experience you have is of that cord being cut,” she says.
From those first moments on Earth, loss continues to occur through one’s life. It’s inevitable, Moore notes, and the feelings of loneliness that accompany it are complex and ever-changing. She believes that understanding this can slash the stigma and ease the pain.
“Loneliness is maybe the oldest part of the human condition,” she adds. “It comes in waves and all kinds of different flavors and degrees across the lifespan.”
The next step for working through feelings of loneliness, says Moore, is to be proactive about it. There are some simple ways one can do this, and create community in the process — even in a city as complex as L.A. As Moore notes, most people naturally want to connect, even if they don’t always present that way. Here are some of her suggestions:
Due to a phenomenon called a “liking gap,” Moore says, many falsely assume other people don’t want to be bothered or spoken to in public. But striking up conversation in public with strangers — or even the simple act of making eye contact — has proven to decrease both people’s experience of loneliness. Better yet, it may cause a ripple effect and encourage others to break social barriers in a public setting (it doesn’t have to be a coffee shop, by the way.)
I've never had someone respond poorly to simply looking at them and asking them how they're doing. We can spark those kinds of experiences that can totally make someone's day.
Moore says she developed this exercise to help her clients determine where to invest energy in their social landscape.
Sit down in a quiet place, find a blank piece of paper and make circles on the page that represent different spheres of relationships that you could pursue in your life. Circles may include one’s neighborhood, work, hobbies, social or political causes, charity or even online communities.
Make the circles larger or smaller, relative to how interested you are in that community.
“It helps you know that there's multiple pathways available to you to pursue, and you get some agency in determining how interested you are in any number of those,” Moore says.
Then, identify the top two to three circles and make an action plan to do one thing to get involved and move yourself closer to someone in that sphere.
“You're gonna make just small goals for yourself each week and then reflect on how that went and what you wanna do next,” she says.
For those struggling with severe social anxiety, or who otherwise aren’t ready to take steps like joining a class, league or club, Moore suggests finding what she calls a safe “third space.” For her, it was a coffee shop. She says that simply placing yourself around other people in a public space can ease feelings of isolation and loneliness.
“You don't have to commit to talking to anyone, just make yourself part of the flow of human life,” Moore says.
While we’ve established that a city as sprawling as L.A. can sometimes feel disjointed, lacking a central thread that ties everyone together, the vastness also means there’s something for everyone.
“L.A. has enormous potential, if you look into the fine grain of different communities,” Moore says. “People have made incredible strides in building cool spaces.”
There’s groups out there for folks who like to get physical, who want to make stuff, get engaged in social justice and, yes, even for quieter types.
“Most of my friends are from this league at this point,” said Micah Mumper, who joined a pickleball league in Long Beach last year. “It’s a true, tight-knit community.”
For some additional ideas on how to find your people, tune in to How To LA’s series on how not to be lonely in this city. From speed dating to salsa classes, music collectives to sports leagues, we’ll be profiling a variety of scenes and communities all around the city that have helped Angelenos feel a sense of belonging, and a lot less lonely.
“There's so many different things happening here that whatever you're into, your people are here,” says Greg Gilman, founder of Writers ‘Round. “Whether that's 'Dungeons & Dragons', or being a singer-songwriter, or a book club, your people are here.”
