Scientists Say Alone Time Comes With a Lot of Benefits, You’re Just Doing It Wrong |
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Scientists Say Alone Time Comes With a Lot of Benefits, You’re Just Doing It Wrong
Researchers say chosen solitude can reduce anxious energy and increase calm, even when it only lasts 15 minutes.
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People will do a lot to avoid being seen alone in public. Eat at the bar instead of a table. Stare at their phones through entire meals. Arrange plans with people they’d otherwise cancel on just to avoid being the person sitting there by themselves. As though being seen without company is evidence of being a sad, lonely loser.
According to Psychology Today, therapists hear versions of this all the time—the discomfort of being seen alone, the anxiety of not having someone to share thoughts with in the moment, the low-level dread of what it might mean if nobody reaches out. People will spend time with people they don’t even like, just to sidestep it.
The problem with all of that is the conflation of two things that aren’t the same. Being alone........