Imagine for one second you found the perfect person, who was at your side, for the last 25 years. You travel the world together. You eat at restaurants together. You laugh together. Then, one day, you wake up, and they disappeared. You search and search for them trying to figure out how to go about the world without them. You realize you can’t. You can’t eat dinner without crying. You can’t travel without feeling sad. You feel lonely.
I lost my uncle earlier this past year and my aunt tremendously loved him. She would recall stories of fanciful dinners and traveling to cities where they would enjoy life. When she lost him, she sought to replace him in some way or some sort of companion to finish her life.
“Joel (she calls me by middle name) I can’t bear to eat alone at dinner. I cry when I do. You dad (her brother), and my aunts (her sisters) already moved on with their lives. I want someone to travel with. I want someone to spend the rest of my life with.” She said over the phone as I tried to solidify a confirmation to RSVP for our wedding. A couple coming together while my widowed aunt sadly separated.
When someone tell you, “first you need to be okay with being by yourself before you can be with someone else.” I always glared and thought bullcrap. Sometimes if you meet the right person, and they make you a better person then who cares if you have to be alone.
Alone and Solitude are two different things. In self care terms, solitude is like rejuvenation, resetting to be able to function with others. Alone is wanting that social connection but can’t attain it.
Have you ever gone to a restaurant to eat dinner with someone only to be stood up? That’s alone. Unwanted alone, self loathing, and cold alone. It’s not the fear of judgement of others, although that could be one possible reason. It’s that you feel dejected and unsure of this uncomfortable feeling.
So what’s the remedy?
Self care blog recommends to work on that solitude. If we gain strength in solitude, we gain strength in self esteem. Research has found that the more we are in tune with ourselves, the more we can gain deeper insight with our thoughts.
A recent study at the University of Virginia had participants choose to electric shock themselves rather than be alone in their thoughts. Theatlantic.com (people prefer electric shocks) The article discusses how a person can rely on their inner solitude. Solitude can only be productive if it’s voluntary, controlled by one’s emotions, and one can maintain positive relationships outside of it.
If you have these three things 1) self seeking solitude 2) in touch with emotions and 3) happy relationships with people around you, then you have reached inner strength.
The Washington Post’s found that people who sought solitude were more likely to be creative, highly intelligent, and superiorly intuitive. More recently, a 2003 paper explored how solitude was associated with “freedom, creativity, intimacy, and spirituality.” Being alone “reduces the need for impression management without imposing a pattern of behavior to which one feels pressure to conform.”
5 Ways to Get In Touch Within Yourself
1) Walk a trail, go to the park, and walk by yourself. Even for just 5 minutes, you have time to create this space in your head as you walk through the path to clear your path in your head. You smell the air, see the sky, and feel the earth beneath you. (That’s the mindfulness part) Then, you reflect. Reflection is powerful. It changes you and in 2014 study, it was found “Reflection builds one's confidence in the ability to achieve a goal (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn translates into higher rates of learning.”
2) Write in that journal, type on that self care app, and let those thoughts flow. Those people who would rather electric shock themselves don’t realize the power of thoughts can give you the ultimate mind workout. Writing in journal allows your mind to use again reflection to help improve upon yourself. If you look back at your journal, you will see patterns arising of how and why you think things. Ever say why did I write that or what was I thinking? You now have record and can make better decisions next time based on your reflection.
3) Can’t find time to be alone? Park the car before you head in to work, the store, or get dinner. A few minutes to yourself with closed eyes helps you for that very precious moments of quietness. Incidentally, you may already be doing this if you have kids. Hang up a sign on the bathroom door, sit in the tub and say “DND.”
4) Eat by yourself-no phone, no TV, no tablet. I’ve ate breakfast and found it surprisingly nice. The silence and crunching of my food made me feel less stressed about eating on the go and rushing to the next appointment. It turns out all those external stimuli become background noise as you focus within yourself and your thoughts -with food becoming your meditative practice.
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels
5) Clean. Clean your house in silence. I thought this was excruciatingly hard due to not having something to dance to while I’m cleaning lol but after a while my thoughts swarmed me as I wiped away the grime around me, organized the closet, and recycled countless Amazon boxes. Before I realized it, the house was clean and my thoughts were processed. We take for granted the bazillion thoughts that rummage through our mind. Some like random thought bubbles but others like provocative art to be critiqued and sought for soul searching clues in our mind.
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