How to Cultivate Solitude in your Everyday Life

For over three decades, researchers have stigmatized solitude. They observed that solitude can cause a high level of suffering and loneliness, particularly among teenagers. That people perceive loners as “weird,” and the majority might rarely accept them.

Several studies suggested that being alone inevitably causes loneliness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, social isolation or loneliness is linked to serious health conditions.

But in 1999, school psychologist Beverly Terrel-Deutsch suggested that loneliness and solitude are two different concepts. Rather than solitude, it is loneliness that damages health. Those who feel lonely do not always lack social relationships.

That same year, other scholars who studied teenagers like Terrel-Deutsch suggested that socially-isolated teenagers do not feel lonely but could enjoy being alone and capitalize on it once they realize the benefits.

In the early 1990s, other researchers in the positive psychology tradition insisted that the capacity to enjoy solitude is important for happiness and stress management. Psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed in 1970 that appreciating solitude was “one of the defining characteristics of self-actualized individuals.”

The first step for enjoying solitude is to prioritize your need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. “Any activities that we enjoy can help in self-expression and also gives us a sense of autonomy.

“The scientific literature on the benefits of solitude is scarce,” says Thuy-Vy T. Nguyen, Assistant Professor of social quantitative psychology at Durham University, UK. “It becomes even more challenging to appreciate solitude during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

As people have stayed home to avoid contracting the potentially fatal SARSCoV-2 virus and aiding its spread, it has become extremely challenging to distinguish between solitude and loneliness. After all, globally, most people have been forced into self-isolation and are experiencing significant reductions in their normal social interactions and connections.

“Loneliness is when there is a mismatch between the desired level and the actual level of social connections. That is the experience of many people during this time,” explains Nguyen. As opposed to solitude, that is defined as the state of being alone.