I experienced something I’ll never forget in a hospital room ten years ago. My first son had just been born, and the nurse ushered me in to meet him. Restless and crying, he frantically reached out his arms. I lowered my hand, and his tiny fingers gripped my index finger and didn’t let go. His crying stopped. His whole body calmed.

At the time, I didn’t realize I was witnessing six million years of fine-tuned programming. Scientists call the grip I felt the “grasp reflex,” an automatic response initiated in part to secure our first caring relationship. From our first breath, our survival depends on being important to someone.

As we grow up, the survival instinct to matter evolves into the fundamental need to be seen, heard, and valued. When that need is satisfied, we experience what psychologists call mattering—the feeling of being significant to others. Mattering is different and more elemental than “belonging” or “inclusion.” Belonging is feeling welcomed and accepted into a group. Inclusion is being invited and able to take an active role in that group, but mattering is feeling significant to its members.

When people feel they matter, they flourish. Studies show they’re more motivated, grittier, and healthier. But when people feel insignificant, they languish. Disconnection, disengagement, anxiety, and depression often follow.

Consider the panic of a newborn reaching out and finding no one. Mounting evidence suggests that too many of us today face a similar, disorienting stress of insignificance. We’re facing a mattering deficit, and it’s a hidden driver of the unfolding epidemics of loneliness, disengagement, and declining well-being.

The most visible symptom of this mattering deficit is intensifying loneliness. Estimates are that one in three people feels persistently lonely. The well-intended advice to counter loneliness is to “connect more,” putting the burden on individuals to solve their isolation by reaching out and reconnecting. In organizations, the result has been more meetings and countless online platforms promising community. The average adult sends 30-40 text-based messages daily. We’re more connected than ever, but we’re still lonely.

What have we missed?

Psychologist and fellow PT contributor Alexander Danvers’ research shows that the quantity of interactions doesn’t do much to reduce loneliness. The quality does. It’s not the lack of social contact that drives loneliness—it’s the lack of perceived social value to others that makes people feel lonely. That’s why the opposite of loneliness isn’t having more people around you. It’s the feeling that you matter to the people around you.

Another reaction to feelings of insignificance is withdrawal, which manifests as a second major symptom of a mattering deficit: disengagement.

Several years ago, I was asked to work with a supposedly “disengaged” building maintenance team. One worker led a team tasked with cleaning the bottom-floor windows every morning in the summer. But when she started the task, she noticed something peculiar. At 3 p.m. every day, the sprinkler system activated. It was aimed wrong, so it splashed the windows and left dried water splotches. This was why the team had to keep cleaning the windows.

She proposed adjusting the sprinkler system to save time for other tasks to her supervisor. Her supervisor responded, “That’s the sprinkler people’s problem. I need you to do your job.” After that, she clocked in and out and did nothing more. She told me, “I feel pointless. Why do I bother?” Her team soon fell silent too. They had learned helplessness.

She was not a “disengaged” employee. She experienced what psychologist Gordon Flett calls anti-mattering—feeling unseen, unheard, or unvalued. Anti-mattering is strongly associated with avoidance behaviors in relationships.

The maintenance worker’s story of feeling unimportant in a routine interaction is emblematic of what’s behind persistent disengagement. In January, Gallup reported employee engagement at a 10-year low, even as services to address employee engagement became a $1 billion industry and organizations spent billions on perks and well-being programs.

Two data points stand out: Just 4 out of every 10 employees in the Gallup sample strongly agreed that someone at work cares about them as individuals, and only 30 percent believe their potential is recognized and invested in. A separate poll found that 30 percent of people felt “invisible” at work.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t be surprising that the term “quiet quitting” went viral, as did China’s “lying flat” movement—a refusal to overwork in a system where younger people feel unsupported. These weren’t signs of laziness. They were predictable responses to chronic insignificance.

Perhaps the most troubling effect of this mattering deficit is its toll on our health.

In 2022, University of Ottawa researcher Amanda Krygsman tracked over 450 adults for four years. She found a vicious cycle: anti-mattering predicted future depression symptoms, and depression symptoms predicted future feelings of anti-mattering. Her study added more evidence to longitudinal studies demonstrating the clear link between feeling insignificant to others and mounting Mental health struggles.

But the toll isn’t just psychological. Ongoing feelings of insignificance can erode our physical health, too. In 2019, the sociologist John Taylor and his team studied one thousand men and women. They found that when the participants indicated feelings of not mattering to others, they had objectively higher blood pressure and elevated levels of the hormones that drive chronic stress and activate the body’s fight-or-flight system.

This is the stress of insignificance—of reaching out and finding no one.

But there is good news. Think about when you most feel that you matter to others.

If you’re like most people my team and I have asked that question to, you’re not thinking about big actions like receiving gifts, awards, or more money from your boss. You’re likely thinking about small interactions in which someone checked in on you, alleviated a struggle, took time to understand you, showed gratitude for you, named your potential, or showed you how they relied on you.

Mattering happens in moments, and our interviews reveal three characteristics of interactions in which we feel significant: feeling noticed, affirmed, or needed by others.

We can become better noticers by slowing down, re-learning to pay deep attention, and remembering and checking in on the details of others’ lives—from our delivery driver to our families to our colleagues. We can start affirming others by showing people the difference they make for us and making it a point to name the unique gifts they contribute to our lives or work. We can show people how we rely on them by saying, “If it wasn’t for you…” and reminding them that they’re indispensable.

We won’t solve our loneliness, disengagement, and Mental health crises through more programs, platforms, and initiatives alone. We’ll solve it by showing up in our next interaction and ensuring the other person feels seen, heard, and valued.

A Navajo proverb on hospitality captures how we must begin encountering one another. It says, “Always assume your guest is tired, cold, and hungry, and act accordingly.”

Given the evidence, here’s a good rule of thumb for all of us: Always assume the people around you feel unseen, unheard, and undervalued and act accordingly.