Smarter Living|Why You Should Find Time to Be Alone With Yourself
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Don’t confuse loneliness with time by yourself.
By Micaela Marini Higgs
Being lonely hurts — it can even negatively impact your health. But the mere act of being alone with oneself doesn’t have to be bad, and experts say it can even benefit your social relationships, improve your creativity and confidence, and help you regulate your emotions so that you can better deal with adverse situations.
“It’s not that solitude is always good, but it can be good” if you’re open to rejecting the idea — common in the west — that time by yourself is always a negative experience you’re being forced into, according to Thuy-vy Nguyen, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Durham University, who studies solitude.
“We have some evidence to show that valuing solitude doesn’t really hurt your social life, in fact, it might add to it,” she said, pointing out that because solitude helps us regulate our emotions, it can have a calming effect that prepares us to better engage with others.
Choosing to spend time doing things by yourself can have mental, emotional and social benefits, but the key to reaping those positive rewards comes from choosing to spend time alone. In a culture where we often confuse being alone for loneliness, the ability to appreciate time by ourselves prevents us from processing the experience as a negative thing. In fact, getting better at identifying moments when we need solitude to recharge and reflect can help us better handle negative emotions and experiences, like stress and burnout, said Emily Roberts, a psychotherapist.
The added bonus? Getting started is easy — all you need is yourself.
Why it’s hard to spend time alone
“Historically, solitude has had a pretty bad rap” because it is sometimes used as a form of punishment, said Robert Coplan, a developmental psychologist and professor of psychology at Carleton University.
The problem is that we forget solitude can also be a choice — and it doesn’t have to be full time. Because there is so much research demonstrating that humans are social creatures who benefit from interacting with others, “people will try to dismiss that it’s also important to spend time alone,” he said. “It’s hard for them to imagine that you can have both.”
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