Loneliness has, in the last decade, moved from a private discomfort to a public health concern. The American Psychological Association’s 2025 Stress in America report put a number on it: 54% of U.S. adults said they had felt isolated from others, with another 50% saying they had felt left out or lacked companionship, often or some of the time.

Most of us reading that figure will think of somebody — a friend who has gone quiet, a parent who lives alone, a version of ourselves during a hard month. What fewer of us know is that one of the institutions arguably best placed to think about isolation in the modern world is also the one that sends people away from the rest of humanity for a living.

NASA has spent decades studying what happens to astronauts who are cut off from family, friends and, in the most literal sense, the planet. Early in the pandemic, when the rest of us were finding out what extended confinement felt like, the agency shared a framework distilled by Tom Williams, the lead scientist for its Human Factors and Behavioral Performance work. He calls it CONNECT — a seven-letter acronym for what astronauts have learned about staying psychologically intact when contact with everyone else is rationed.

I came across it then and have thought about it on and off since. The letters themselves are not, individually, surprising. What is unusual is the source. Here is what each one is, and what it might be worth borrowing.

C — Community

The first letter is the idea that the work you are doing matters to people outside the room you are doing it in. Astronauts endure long stretches in confined spaces partly by holding on to the weight of the mission beyond the cabin. Williams reaches for an older example to illustrate the point: “The Moon landing helped people around the world feel more united because they felt the sense of belonging, of oneness, with shared hopes and dreams fulfilled.”

On Earth, the equivalent is harder to manufacture but worth trying. Volunteering and mentoring are the standard suggestions; less standard, and possibly more useful in a quiet stretch, is the simple practice of telling somebody out loud that what they are doing matters to you. Reciprocity gets built that way too.

O — Openness

The second letter is a personality trait that turns out to be a survival skill. As Williams puts it, “People who are open tend to be more resilient because they see more ways to approach a problem and adapt to life’s challenges.” Astronauts who can adapt — who find new ways to handle problems when the familiar ones stop being available — last longer in confined environments without psychological wear.

For anyone in an isolated stretch of life, the practical version is to keep trying things. New formats, new routines, new ways of staying in touch. The version of the routine that worked before the isolation tends to be the version that breaks first; the people I have watched do well in long quiet periods are the ones who rebuilt their days rather than tried to preserve them.

N — Networking

The third letter is about keeping real contact with the people who matter. ISS crews use video chats with family. They receive care packages with photos and small personal items. NASA also gives them access to private conferences with mental health providers when needed.

The translation for an Earth-bound version of isolation is the unglamorous work of staying connected — particularly in the asymmetric ways. A voice note carries more than a text; a posted letter carries more than a voice note; a recipe shared by hand, with notes in the margin, more again. The medium is part of the message. The more friction it took for somebody to send something, the more it tends to mean when it arrives.

N — Needs

The fourth letter is the boring one, and possibly the most important. Astronauts in isolation eat well, exercise on a schedule, follow a sleep routine and protect time for leisure. It is the baseline against which everything else either works or does not.

For anyone in a stretch of isolation, this is the part that drifts first when nobody is watching — the morning walk gets postponed, the vegetables get replaced by something easier, bedtime slides by half an hour and then another. NASA’s recommendation, distilled, is that the bodily-needs floor is not negotiable in isolation; the mind does not stay well if the body is being treated badly. It is also the only letter of the seven that you can do for somebody else by doing it with them. A standing weekly walk with one friend has done more for both of us than most things I have tried.

E — Expeditionary Mindset

The fifth letter is the social and cultural piece. As James Picano, an operational psychologist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, puts it: “Self- and team care, cultural communication, group living and teamwork are essential expeditionary skills.” Sharing a confined environment with other people requires its own set of behaviours, and those behaviours can be practised.

On Earth, the relevant version applies to anyone sharing a space — household, family, flatmates, neighbours. Picano’s specifics: “astronauts practice skills in how to manage conflict, de-escalate situations, keep personal work areas clean and care for another crewmate.” Most of us would benefit from practising those skills before we need them, rather than during the argument.

C — Countermeasures

The sixth letter is the active toolkit. Astronauts journal. They practise mindfulness. They use specific strategies to reframe difficult days. NASA’s research is still investigating what works best — including virtual reality interactions and structured exercise — but the general principle is that isolation calls for active responses rather than passive endurance.

On Earth, the practical version is to have a few moves you reach for when isolation gets sharp: a walk, a phone call to a specific person, a meditation app, a journal. The point is to have them ready before you need them, the way you would place a fire extinguisher in a kitchen — not because you expect to use it, but because if you do, the moment will not be one in which you can think clearly about where to put it.

T — Training and Preparation

The last letter is the most counter-intuitive: isolation gets easier when you have practised for it. NASA crews train in analog environments — small confined spaces that approximate the conditions of long-duration missions — before they ever go to space. By the time the conditions are real, the response is rehearsed.

On Earth, there is no neat analog. The modest version is to get comfortable with smaller stretches of solitude in advance, so that a longer one — a move, a bereavement, a phase of life change — is not the first time you have ever been alone with yourself for any length of time. Aloneness, like anything else, is a skill that responds to practice.

How to use it

The seven letters of CONNECT are not, individually, surprising; many of them appear, in some form, in self-help books and advice columns going back decades. What I find useful about the framework is the balance built into it. Three of the seven — Needs, Countermeasures, Training and Preparation — are about what you do on your own. The other four — Community, Openness, Networking, Expeditionary Mindset — are about how you relate to other people, present and absent.

Neither half holds well on its own. The astronauts who do well in long missions tend to attend to both, and so do the people I know who have come through hard, quiet stretches on Earth.

None of this guarantees that a hard stretch will not still be hard. It will. CONNECT is not a cure for loneliness, and it is not a substitute for professional support. If isolation has begun to feel sharp and sustained — bleeding into your sleep, your appetite, your sense of whether things will get better — that is worth talking to a GP or therapist about, sooner rather than later.

I am not a clinician, and nothing in this piece is medical advice. The CONNECT framework was distilled by NASA’s Human Research Program; the quotes from Tom Williams and James Picano are drawn from NASA’s own write-up of the framework.