Why is it valuable to spend time alone?

Most of our suffering comes from our relationships and spending time alone means you lock out your human relationships from your life on a physical level. So by spending time alone you can help yourself in starting to heal your relationship issues and grow your level of consciousness.

Spending time alone is probably one of the best ‘tools’ to do inner work and to develop. In this post, I concentrate mostly on how spending time alone can help you to heal your relationship issues. I do this with good intentions and I do not mean to imply that spending time alone is only about this. There is a lot more to it.

Why is it hard for some people to spend time alone?

It is like giving up an addiction

Our relationship traumas, unmet needs, resentments, etc. ‘create’ forms of dependencies towards others. We have unmet – relationship – needs and we turn to others to have those needs met. When you intentionally ‘lock out’ others from your life for a while then you do the same thing as stopping an addiction, a dependency. And this is the main reason why it is so hard for some of us to spend time alone. All the pain, fear, confusion – you name it – can kick in.

The fear of losing your safety

We look at our human relationships as our primary source of safety. No wonder we can develop an intense fear of losing our safety when we decide to be alone. This subject also goes a long way, let me just only mention it here to make it conscious for us.

The shame element

I like spending time alone, I am like this since my childhood. And I have received countless ‘comments’ on how much of a loner I am. It took quite some energy to understand that with these ‘comments’ people try to shame me. Well, I did develop shame. Until I understood that there is nothing wrong with me. Today I meet more and more people who not only see the value of being alone but are already free of this twisted logic that “If someone enjoys being alone then it means that person is not social.” Put in another way: “You must ‘be’ social the way we understand it, otherwise you don’t belong to us…”

Spending time alone doesn’t mean you are antisocial

It is quite the opposite. You just stop being needy. It is a healthy social trait when someone intentionally refrains from projecting their neediness onto others.

Also, if you like spending time alone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t want to or don’t like to socialize. You may just like to socialize with others for good reasons like helping others, teaming up for a common cause, or simply enjoying others’ company without wanting anything ‘in return’. In this respect, it is a bit strange to call someone sociable who ‘socializes’ with others because of some unmet relationship needs.

(The Covid lockdowns were a forced ‘spend time alone’ period for many of us. And though it has been painful I believe it had positive effects too. Have you heard of this phenomenon called the Great Resignation? )