Growing up, I always indulged in and needed my own space away from social interactions. I enjoyed my own company. I never had a huge social circle, I didn’t go out partying, I was single for most of my life - and that was fine.

But there’s such a huge difference between liking or learning to like one’s own space so you don’t rely too much on others and isolation.

Like you, OP, I am absolutely sick of people who have active social lives and partners telling me I only need myself if I want to be happy. I have exactly zero friends at the moment after breaking off from some incredibly toxic relationships and being abandoned after a sudden bereavement. My family are estranged.

I have spent months on end of this pandemic not speaking to another person bar my therapist or doctor. I constantly reach out to social groups, to peer support resources, I try to make new connections, but making new friends as an adult is already difficult, doing so when nobody can actually go out to meet has made it near impossible. I am really, really trying. God, I’m trying. All I want is a best friend or two to share life with, that’s all most lonely or isolated people want. To be seen and heard and not feel as if they could die and not have a single person spare a moment to remember them.

I am okay with my own company, but this kind of loneliness and isolation is genuinely unnatural. It makes me feel physically unwell, and to say my mental health is worse than ever is an understatement.

My frustration is immeasurable with people who say this nonsense. Self-acceptance is not ever going to replace socialisation for those who want and need it. It’s just not. It can only go so far to alleviate the pain and allow us to reframe our lives in a healthier, more positive way.

If you’re always telling people to learn to love themselves when they’re isolated and lonely, I think it’s better you just hold your tongue and instead learn to appreciate what you yourself have, because clearly you don’t grasp what it’s truly like to be completely and utterly alone.