I'm a researcher who has interviewed over 100 people about loneliness: Here's my best advice
Most people do their best to avoid feeling lonely. Researcher Sam Carr, however, has embraced it.
The 46-year-old lecturer at the University of Bath is the self-proclaimed "scholar of loneliness" and has been studying it for the past six years and interviewed over 100 people about the feeling. His most recent research, the Loneliness Project, involved speaking to 80 older people from different countries to get a better understanding of what loneliness means for them.
"I think it's only recently that I've realized that loneliness is a big part of all human suffering. It's sort of like the common denominator," says Carr, who recently published a book called "All the Lonely People".
Carr tells CNBC Make It that while many people view loneliness as "some sort of undesirable pathology that we need to cure and get rid of," he sees it as anything but. "I actually see it as an inevitable part of life," he says, adding that "to be alive is to be lonely."
In other words, Carr believes that loneliness is a perfectly natural feeling that can't, and shouldn't, be avoided.
"That means that loneliness will come and go, quite often as it chooses, over the course of human life, quite apart from our efforts to run away from it, or deny that or pretend that that's not true," he says.
His best advice for when you feel lonely: Talk about it
If you're experiencing loneliness, Carr recommends not ignoring it or trying to wish the feeling away. Over the course of his research, he found that the best recourse for dealing with loneliness is to acknowledge it and talk about your experience with others.
He compares loneliness to grief, an emotion that he says can only be ameliorated if you "move through it." However uncomfortable it may feel, "it can't be sped through more quickly."
Carr's advice is in line with that of U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who last year spoke about America's "epidemic of loneliness and isolation," calling it "an underappreciated public health crisis."
"Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hidden in plain sight," he said at the time. "[They] can help us live healthier, more fulfilled and more productive lives."
Talking about loneliness may be "a critical driver for empathy," Carr says, and a key way for people to be reminded that other people suffer at times in their lives too.
"There is the potential for connection in loneliness," he says. "It provides the potential for us to have compassion for each other, for us to embrace each other's vulnerability."
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