How to Be Alone (School of Life) (6 page)

1. Face the Fear

On the very first page of this book I observed that in a practical sense it is not actually very difficult to be alone. Almost everyone is alone some of the time. So any suggestions for developing a happier relationship with solitude are going to be building on your actual experience. This should be encouraging.

Of course there are people for whom solitude is in reality far more difficult to find than I have implied: for example, the single parent of two-year-old triplets; people living with some sorts of physical illness, disability or other high-dependency condition; those confined in overcrowded prisons, forced to share a cell; young people with overanxious and controlling parents. But for most of us it is not that complicated. Even those whose circumstances apparently make it hard can refer themselves to Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), who, despite living in a household where there were at least twelve children (her mother had twenty-five babies but many of them did not survive, so the numbers changed frequently) and the family cloth-dying business was carried on, managed to create for herself a ‘hermitage of the heart’. ‘Build a cell inside your mind,’ she instructed someone later, ‘from which you can never flee.’ Even her family came to recognize and acknowledge that she was a ‘solitary’; that she lived alone within that communal household.

If you cannot find
any
regular solitude, any way to be alone, within the rhythm of your ordinary life, then at some level you might be avoiding it; if in addition you feel disgust or contempt towards those who do prefer solitude to company, ask yourself if perhaps you are projecting and scapegoating. These behaviours are classic symptoms of fear.

Although we now use the word ‘phobia’ (from the Greek: φόβος,
Phóbos,
meaning ‘fear’ or ‘morbid fear’) pretty loosely, for psychologists it is a distinct clinical condition. Wikipedia’s definition is: ‘A marked and persistent fear that is excessive or unreasonable, cued by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation.’ It is seen as a type of anxiety disorder and has clear diagnostic criteria. Among these are:

1. Exposure to the phobic stimulus almost invariably provokes an immediate anxiety response.

2. The person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable.

3. The phobic situation(s) is avoided or else is endured with intense anxiety or distress.

4. The avoidance, anxious anticipation or distress in the feared situation(s) interferes significantly with the person’s normal routine, occupational (or academic) functioning or social activities or relationships.

Among the clinically recognized ‘phobic stimuli’ are various aspects of aloneness: autophobia is the fear of being isolated or alone; monophobia is the fear of solitude.

A survey in 2008 suggested that more than 13 million people in the UK have a terror of being out of mobile-phone contact. These individuals experience anxiety and panic symptoms when they run out of battery or credit, lose their phone or have no network coverage. They are suffering from ‘no-mobile phobia’, which has been given the name
nomophobia
and could affect up to 53 percent of mobile-phone users.

Of course I am not seriously contending that everyone who cannot enjoy being alone has a pathological psychological disorder, but there are some interesting parallels. For example, phobias are often ‘learned’ or inherited, rather than acquired through a particular traumatic encounter. They have a strong cultural element. The real reason why I am looking at phobias here, however, is because of the ways they can be treated.

The standard, and highly effective, treatment for phobias is a combination of CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, a popular talking therapy that seeks to change how you think and what you do to help you feel better) and desensitization. Using this as a model, I would suggest that the best treatment for a non-clinical fear of being alone is learning more about it and exposing yourself to solitude, initially in very low ‘doses’:

Accept the fact that fear is at least one element in your dislike and avoidance of solitude.

Study the benefits and joys of being alone (read this book – and others suggested in the ‘homework’ section).

Build up various strategies for being alone, starting with the least threatening and most pleasurable ones you can imagine.

If you can tolerate solitude in the shower – have a bath instead: it takes longer, and because it is quieter it is easier to be aware of being alone. Become more aware of moments of solitude and how they make you feel.

Spend some time alone where there are other people, but only those not known to you; railway travel is good for this, and so is shopping alone.

Spend the evening in a different room from the rest of your household.

Turn your mobile off. Remember, 8 per cent of the adults in Britain – over 5 million of us – do not have a mobile phone. Large swathes of the country do not have even 2G coverage. But life goes on.

Start small.

You may surprise yourself. Once you feel secure in accessing solitude you may find that you like it, and feel its benefits and its joys; you cannot know until you try.

Spend some time alone where there are other people, but only those not known to you; railway travel is good for this.

That is what happened to me. I had never lived alone in my life. I had never wanted to live alone. I perceived myself as a deeply sociable, extroverted human being with a particular grace for friendship and highly sophisticated, noisy discussion. When asked, I would say my favourite leisure activity, my hobby, was
deipnosophy
(‘the art of or skill in dinner-table conversation’). When my marriage ended and I went to live alone in a little thatched cottage, I was constructing myself as the selfless heroine of a tragic failed love story. I was eagerly anticipating being thoroughly miserable and having one more thing to ‘blame’ my ex-husband for.

My subconscious was a great deal smarter than my conscious mind.

I started small. My first home alone was a semi-detached cottage in a small village, barely an hour outside London. My son came up at weekends; my friends visited; for some of the time I had part-time jobs of a distinctly non-solitary kind (I was a writer-in-residence in a prison for two years). So I was only getting small doses of solitude initially. But, for me, it did not take long; I could feel myself relax and expand; I had more energy, both for work and for physical exercise. I got fitter. I slowed down, woke up earlier and started to see the world more sweetly and in more detail. Since I started living alone I have less and less trouble with the depression that I had assumed, throughout my adult life, was a part of my personality.

It took me nearly two years to realize what it was that was making me so happy. Then I got greedier and greedier for solitude: now, as I said, I live in rather splendid isolation in a house designed (by me) for solitary living, in an area where most days I do not see anyone. The joy of long periods of solitude has also increased my joy in non-solitude: I love my children, my friends, my colleagues as much as ever, and I attend to them better when I am with them – and enjoy them more. But, above all, I like me better. I think there is more of me to like – a deep spaciousness of self, joyful, creatively and professionally productive and alert to both my interior and exterior life.

Try it out for yourself. Respect but do not fear your own fear. Do not let it come between you and something that might be deeply enjoyable. Remember it is quite normal to be a bit frightened of being alone. Most of us grew up in a social environment that sent out the explicit message that solitude was bad for you: it was bad for your health (especially your mental health) and bad for your ‘character’ too. Too much of it and you would promptly become weird, psychotic, self-obsessed, very possibly a sexual predator and rather literally a wanker. Mental (and even physical) well-being, along with virtue, depends, in this model, on being a good mixer, a team player, and having high self-esteem, plus regular, uninhibited, simultaneous orgasms with one partner (at a time).

Actually, of course, it is never this straightforward because at the same time as pursuing this ‘extrovert ideal’, society gives out an opposite – though more subterranean – message. Most people would still rather be described as sensitive, spiritual, reflective, having rich inner lives and being good listeners than the more extroverted opposites. I think we still admire the life of the intellectual over that of the salesman; of the composer over the performer (which is why pop stars constantly stress that they write their own songs); of the craftsman over the politician; of the solo adventurer over the package tourist. People continue to believe, in the face of so much evidence – films, for example – that Great Art can only be produced by solitary geniuses. But the kind of unexamined but mixed messages that society offers us in relation to being alone add to the confusion; and confusion strengthens fear.

One of the best antidotes to fear is knowledge. To press the analogy a little, this is the CBT element that goes hand in hand with ‘desensitization’ in the effective treatment of phobias.

But in reality there is nothing to be frightened of. There is no evidence whatsoever that even prolonged periods of being alone are detrimental to physical or mental health, so long as that solitude is freely chosen.

Unfortunately, in the arena of health, it is quite tricky to find that helpful knowledge: the effectiveness of solitude has not been tested by NICE and recommended as a – remarkably cheap – NHS therapeutic intervention. In
Solitude,
Anthony Storr comments:

Today, the fact that isolation can be therapeutic is seldom mentioned in textbooks of psychiatry. The emphasis is on group participation … [I] regret that the average mental hospital can make little provision for those patients who want to be alone and who would benefit from being so.

In consequence it is quite hard to find facts and figures on the effects (negative as well as positive) of solitude in relation to health. ‘Being alone is good for your health’ is exactly the sort of proposition that is singularly difficult to test. You would need a very large-scale longitudinal study, with a control group, to measure anything useful, because of the problems of eliminating all the random factors that can so easily sneak in here.

It is not just a matter of ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’, it is also about what research gets funded. And in the absence of full, meticulous, controlled experimental research it becomes startling easy for people to read almost anything they want to into figures.

Here, to put a case that undermines my own, is a statement about floatation tanks (floatation tanks are devices offered by spas or alternative health centres, and consist of a ‘bath’ filled with highly salinated, body-temperature water, in which the user can float without effort; they have closed lids and are basically anacoustic – you bob there in the dark, certainly alone and also deprived of most sensory input). A tank:

Promotes total calm, peaceful relaxation, eliminates fatigue and jet lag; improves sleep; alleviates stress – mental and physical; energizes, rejuvenates and revitalizes.

Stimulates left/right brain synchronization; shifts brain waves from Beta to lower-frequency Alpha, Theta and even Delta; creates mental clarity, alertness; increases creativity, problem-solving; heightens visualization; deepens meditation; expands awareness, intensifies acuteness of all the senses, accelerates learning.

Enhances hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis; increases motivation, diminishes depression, anxiety and fear; facilitates freedom from habits, phobias and addictions.

Improves athletic performance and helps prevent sports injuries, speeds healing process.

Decreases the production of cortisol, ACTH, lactic acid and adrenaline; increases production of endorphins; quickens rehabilitation and recovery; relieves pain – arthritis, migraines, injuries etc.; boosts immune function.

Improves circulation and distribution of oxygen and nutrients; reduces blood pressure, pulse, heart rate and oxygen consumption.

I have seen this list quoted in various places as a proof that floatation is good for you, but there are no citations, no figures, no indication of which ‘bit’ of the experience is so multiply enhancing. Then it transpires that the original can be found on the website of the Floatation Tank Association – it is an advertisement. Actually I have no reason to believe that any of this is
not
true, and I do appreciate the enormous difficulties that many alternative therapies of all sorts find in getting decent trials up and running. Moreover I am, from personal experience and wide reading, happily convinced that solitude is good for one’s health (mental and physical), but in terms of offering authoritative scientific reassurance to counter the common fears, I am not entirely happy with the available data.