For decades, we have assumed that spending time alone is a bad thing. Yet solitude can help us to flourish, says Heather Hansen
RECENTLY, I was walking alone on a quiet, winding trail. The path was hard to follow and slick with snow.
The sun felt warm on my face. As I trudged uphill, I missed my partner, but felt grateful to be visiting my sister who I don’t see often.
I was on my own for a couple of hours that day. During that time, I felt wide-ranging emotions, including curiosity, anxiety and joy. It was a welcome period of solitude and I returned to civilisation feeling calmer and more clear-headed than when I had set out.
Think about the last time you were alone. Maybe you were commuting to work or had woken up before the rest of your household. Perhaps you live alone. Did you revel in that period of solitude, long to connect with another person or let it pass by without much thought?
Solitude is inevitable. Adults in the UK and US spend around one-third of their waking lives alone and that increases as we get older. In many places, we live alone in greater proportions than ever before. A recent survey of 75 countries shows that 17 of them have more than 25 per cent solo households.
As social creatures, research has historically pointed us away from time alone. But recently, more people are spending time away from the crowd, and even seem to crave it. Now, we have evidence as to why alone time can feel so good and may in fact be vital to your health and wellbeing. Moreover, we have discovered the best ways to be alone – learn these secrets and you could grasp the real power of solitude.
Researchers have been cataloguing the negative aspects of feeling alone, including loneliness, social isolation, anxiety and ostracism, for over a century. From that body of work, we know that isolation – which is often wrongly conflated with solitude – is harmful. We see this clearly in studies of the solitary confinement of prisoners, which show that being alone in these conditions increases the long-term risk of cardiovascular disease and mental health problems.
Recently, though, researchers have begun to re-examine time spent alone in less extreme circumstances. In Solitude: The science and power of being alone, a book I co-wrote with researchers Netta Weinstein at the University of Reading and Thuy-vy Nguyen at Durham University, both in the UK, we set out to understand how everyday solitude affects people’s lives. Together, we wanted to know whether these moments are beneficial, and possibly essential to living a balanced, happy life.
In the largest study of its kind, thousands of participants from the UK aged between 13 and 85 told us their solitude stories through online surveys. From that data, we were able to more clearly define solitude and its requirements, then begin to sort out who feels good in solitude and why.
