According to a recent study reported on CNN, part of the reason you may be feeling lonely this holiday season could be due to your family–but not because they left you high and dry at the holidays or because they ditched you for other relatives. It could because of the genes you have and they don’t.

If you sister loves a night alone to watch a movie or clean house and it makes you climb the walls, it may be because you don’t share the same genetic make up. Meanwhile, nostalgia, thought to buffer the effects of loneliness, serves the purpose of creating a sense of community and social support for people.

So what’s the “gene therapy” for those with genetic loneliness? Community service, social interaction, anything to get people out and to give them a sense that they are not alone in the world, says these researchers. It gives them a sense that they belong.

Summer Johnson, PhD