"I was feeling lost and all over the place": What it's like to be lonely in your 20s

Despite having a decent job and living Paris at just 24, Fenella says she was the loneliest she had ever been in her life.

From the outside looking in, it seemed as though she had everything an ambitious young professional could want, but in hindsight, Fenella says she realises she was dealing with chronic loneliness.

"It's funny because looking back at it now I realise I suffering from chronic loneliness," she told the MEN.

It was 2018 and Fenella had moved to France to start a new job. Having just broken up with her boyfriend, Fenella wasn't in the best place mentally and says that while she enjoyed her job, she found it difficult to come to grips with a new culture and build relationships.

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“I don't know if it was the way things are in France but people just made really little effort. I would go into business meetings or parties and was unable to speak to anybody, I just couldn’t find any connections," she explained.

“I remember I mostly felt kind of like I was drained here. I was finding things got really got hard and I was feeling lost and all over the place."

Fenella says that her loneliness was born out of the long periods of isolation that she would face in a city were she knew nobody. However, even when a familiar face would come around she had become so acquainted with the solace that she found herself unable to open up to close friends from back home.

“One of my best friends came around and I couldn’t really connect with them that well.

"I was so used to being sociable and friendly at work that in my own time it felt like I was being forced to be sociable.”

According to a new report, young people are feeling lonelier than ever.

The study