NEW YORK – Reaching for a book might not be your first impulse when you feel lonely. Reading is a solitary pursuit, after all. But loneliness is rarely just about needing more connections.

“Many of my clients come in talking about loneliness as a lack of people in their lives,” said Ryan Howes, a clinical psychologist in Pasadena, California. “But after a little digging, we usually find there are plenty of people in their world.”