Learning to Be Alone: Finding Peace in Solitude

I wanted this, but when it came, it wasn't what I wanted. Not at first!

After Christmas, I found myself feeling a deep longing for solitude. My middle son had been staying with us, which was utterly wonderful - he lives in America now and we won’t see him often in the years to come. I’d spent time with family and friends, all of which filled me with joy and deep connection. I was happy and connected, and desperately in need of time on my own to reset.

So why is it, I wonder, did I find myself feeling so utterly miserable, lonely and totally unmoored, alone on Friday evening. Why was the piercing pain of isolation so hard for me to bear?

Well, when I was imagining my alone time, I was picturing time on the mountains, time to read, to write, to meditate and stretch, to be who and how I wanted to be. I imagined a retreat style existence, living in harmony with my life, my values, my body and mind.

Which isn’t what I have at the moment.

Post surgery, I have abdominal wounds, with internal and external pain. I can’t drive, can’t walk further than around my house, and am completely dependent on other people for company, shopping and care. There’s no meditation, no stretching, no harmony, no sense of being on retreat.

I hadn’t really noticed before just how isolated my life is. I often spend time in the company of others. But I do spend more time on my own than with anyone else.

I’ve been single for a long time and just got into the habit of getting on with life, doing the things I want to do on my own more than with company. I might not have much money, but I’ve always been able to decide what I do with my time. I often do things on my own because I want to to them, and only when I’m in the middle of doing them do I think ‘Oh, this might have been more fun with a friend’. And because of my impulsive solo activities, I’m no longer part of anyone’s regular routine of life, no Friday evening drinks with friends, no day job, no regular catch ups to miss.

It took the forced isolation of forced rest to show me. And I didn’t like it.

I found myself sinking into self pity, misery, resentment, and some dark, spiralling thoughts. Luckily, I was able to catch these thoughts, and remind myself that I had lots of good people around me. That I was being cared for and supported. That I was tired and needed to rest even more than I thought I would have to. That my body is trying to heal, and I will be ok, but I’m a bit more fragile than I realised, physically and emotionally.

Yesterday, after my friend recommended I opt for ‘easy reading’ rather than trying to read the literary and self development books I’ve got on my ‘to be read’ list, I downloaded a book by poet David Whyte , called Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. I’ve seen his work shared on social media, and thought this would be a beautiful, gentle, healing read.

I was absolutely correct in my assumption.

On opening it, and seeing that the first chapter was called ‘Alone’, I knew it was the book for me. I read that chapter (twice!) with tears in my eyes, as Whyte guided me tenderly to a new understanding of my situation, one that is filled with joy, acceptance and gratitude.

Our greatest fear, being cast out from the group

Whyte begins by addressing the challenges we feel when we are alone. In our ancient brains, being alone can feel like being cast out from the group. And to our primitive ancestors, being cast out from the group was most likely a death sentence.

We know how important connection is to our wellbeing. We know that babies raised without love and connection will struggle to survive, or will at best, have their development severely curtailed by the trauma of neglect.

And in our hyper connected, always on, social media obsessed society, we can mimic that feeling of connection in a few clicks on our magic rectangles in our pockets. How long can you be on your own for in a restaurant, or at a bus stop, before the phone comes out and you’re on social media? I’m far from judging. It’s a very conscious choice I sometimes make, and sometime can stick to, to keep my phone in my pocket during these brief pockets of alone time.

Whyte tells us, in one of the ‘often highlighted’ parts of his essay, that ‘the first step in spending time alone is to admit how afraid of it we are’.

I’ve always feared being on my own. As a child, I never really felt like I fitted in with any groups in school, always struggled to maintain friends, and never felt like I really belonged anywhere. I was desperate to belong, but a sense of alienation and rejection accompanied me for most of my life. The reason was clear to me…. other people didn’t want me in their life because of who I was.

I started drinking and taking drugs so I could fit in with a group of new friends who accepted me as I was, but all drank and took drugs. I thought I was fitting in, that I belonged, but 10 years sober me sees that all I was doing was putting on a mask made of cider and weed. It wasn’t the real me that was fitting in, it was a disguise I wore so I could pretend. And when I drank on my own, I was putting on the mask for myself, I didn’t even belong with myself.

Two very different versions of me, only one even remotely happy!

When I got sober, I took some of my disguise off, and started to meet the real Esther and present her to the world. Discovering I have ADHD helped me take even more of the disguise off, as I let go of a lot of the pretence and attempts at being ‘normal’, and settled into my own brand of weird.

But if my recent journeys into the darker corners of my mental health have shown me anything, it’s that there are still plenty of dark corners, and that I still seem to be wearing a couple of masks.

Finding the true self

I noticed recently how very different I am when I’m on my own than when I’m with others. Last week, I even questioned if the depressed me that I so often am when I am in my own company is who I really am, and the bubbly, cheerful person I am when I’m in good company is a lie. But I know that it’s not. I can be bubbly and cheerful when I am with others because I can co-regulate with them, I benefit from the connection, the mental stimulation, the conversations, the shared experiences. Alone, there’s no-one for my bubbliness to bounce off, and I don’t have anyone to co-regulate with and to share my experiences with, so when those experiences feel painful, it’s easy to let them dominate my thinking.

David Whyte explains “To be alone for any length of time is to shed an outer skin. The body is inhabited in a different way when we are alone than when we are with others. Alone, we live in our bodies as a question rather than a statement”.

So I was partially correct in my wondering. I AM a different person, or a different version of my true self, with others than I am when alone. And it’s OK, completely natural in fact! I’m not faking, it’s just that our embodiment is different in company than it is when we’re alone.

We respond to the embodiment of the people we are with, nervous system connecting with nervous system. Alone, there is no one to co-regulate with, and if we are struggling with being alone, it can be hard to regulate ourselves. As Mark Walsh tells us, we aren’t design to regulate in isolation. We can, but we do it best when we can co-regulate with others, with nature, or some form of spirituality.

Stuck in the house, unable to get out to the mountains I so love, and lacking any form of meaningful faith, all I have when I’m alone is my own self regulation. And when I’m feeling weakened and exhausted by surgery and the healing process, tuning into my own self regulation skills is more challenging. My old faithful deep breaths, yoga and meditation are a bit of a challenge when a deep breath hurts, focusing on the body highlights all the places that are sore, and movement of any type can cause pain and intense tiredness.

But in this intense discomfort, there is opportunity for growth, for healing, and for peace.

Peace and healing in acceptance

Becoming aware of my anxieties about being alone, and the loneliness and fear that came with it allowed me to recognise what was happening. I was able to remind myself that my fears that I had been abandoned, rejected or shunned simply weren’t true. I was able to remind and reassure myself that I have friends checking in on my, family and friends who will change plans to help me when I need to go to or from hospital, and who want me to be well. I was able to reframe my discomfort at being alone by recognising that I had, in fact, got what I longed for only a month ago, even if the circumstances weren’t quite what I had in mind.

And I was able to recognise that I am ok on my own. I am used to it. I do well alone. I like the independence that comes with it. I like the peace I get from being single, a welcome relief to the emotional roller coasters most of my relationships have been. And I know that all my healing and growth, while it rests on the foundation of love and connection I have in abundance in my life, has all happened in quiet moments of solitude, when I allow myself to reflect on what is and what has been.

Finding Strength in Being Alone

We are social creatures, not meant to be alone all the time. But the more we learn to be comfortable in our own company, the stronger we become when we do connect with others. Can we sit with ourselves without distraction? Can we resist the urge to reach for our phones in moments of stillness? Can we be alone without feeling lonely?

Learning to be alone is learning to be with ourselves, exactly as we are.

Solitude is not something to be feared. It is a space where we meet ourselves with honesty, where we shed the outer skin of performance and expectation. It is an invitation to know ourselves deeply, without distraction. And in that knowing, we find peace.

How do you let yourself be alone with yourself in your daily life?

I’ve taken a break from the PEACEful Path of Recovery series that I’ve been sharing over recent weeks. After not being able to spend any time writing last week, David Whyte’s essay and recent thought journey’s I’ve been on inspired this piece, which simply demanded to be written. I’ll resume the PEACEful Path series next week, when we will look at Acceptance, something I have covered to a large extent in this essay.

You can catch up on the previous essays I’ve written in this series below

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