# Why Being Alone Might Be Better Than You Think

An episode of [The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1474245040), 3 Aug 2026, 46 min.

Audio: https://pdrl.fm/e76c46/podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/96c5c41e-0bc8-4661-b184-ae32006cd726/1db8f036-0b3f-4fb7-8df1-b49800f2b23b/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=d623ef0b-3fee-4c26-b815-ae32006cd739

In recent years, we've heard a lot of unsettling news about the loneliness epidemic and the dangers of social isolation. But could all this talk about loneliness paradoxically be making the problem... worse? Dr. Laurie unpacks what we get wrong about loneliness. Along the way, she speaks with historian Fay Bound-Alberti about why loneliness, as we think of it today, is a surprisingly modern phenomenon. Psychologist Micaela Rodriguez explains why we often confuse loneliness with being alone — and why learning to enjoy solitude can actually make us less lonely. And writer Emma Gannon shares practical tips for embracing the joy of your own company. Laurie discovers why spending time alone is a skill, and how getting better at it can help us regulate our emotions, spark creativity, and strengthen our connections with others. Experts Mentioned: • Vivek Murthy, 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States • Fay Bound-Alberti, Professor of Modern History at King’s College London • Micaela Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University • Emma Gannon, author, blogger, and podcaster • Matthew Killingsworth, Senior Fellow at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania • Timothy Wilson, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Virginia • Scott Campbell, Professor of Mediated Communication at The Ohio State University • Julia Cameron, author, poet, songwriter, filmmaker, and playwright • Blaise Pascal, 17th-century French philosopher Resources Mentioned: • “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community,” by Office of the Surgeon General (2023) • “Social connection linked to improved health and reduced risk of early death,” by World Health Organization Media Team (2025) • A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion, by Fay Bound-Alberti (2019) • “Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind,” by Timothy Wilson, David Reinhard, Erin Westgate, Daniel Gilbert, Nicole Ellerbeck, Cheryl Hahn, Casey Brown, and Adi Shaked (Science, 2014) • “How people think about being alone shapes their experience of loneliness,” by Micaela Rodriguez, Kathryn E. Schertz, and Ethan Kross (Nature Communications, 2025) • “From ‘isolation’ to ‘me-time’: Linguistic shifts enhance solitary experiences,” by Micaela Rodriguez and Scott Campbell (Cognition and Emotion, 2025) • “Solitude can be good—If you see it as such: Reappraisal helps lonely people experience solitude more positively,” by Micaela Rodriguez, Samuel Pratt, Benjamin W. Bellet, and Richard J. McNally (Journal of Personality, 2023) • A Creative Compass: Finding Your Way to a Creative Life, by Emma Gannon (2026) • “A love letter to solitude,” by Emma Gannon (The Hyphen, 2025) • “‘Don’t you have friends to go with?’: the stigma and joy of a table for one,” by Emma Gannon (The Guardian, 2026) • The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron (1992) Related Episodes: • “Beat Your Isolation Loneliness” • “Fighting that "Meh" Feeling of Languishing” • “Emotions Are Data…So Listen to Them” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you've
[0:24] Speaker 1: surely heard about the powerful benefits of social connection as
[0:27] Speaker 1: well as the dangers of its opposite, loneliness.
[0:31] Speaker 2: Loneliness is strongly associated with an increased risk of heart
[0:34] Speaker 2: disease and dementia, and depression and anxiety.
[0:38] Speaker 1: This is doctor Vivigmerty. Back in twenty twenty three, when
[0:41] Speaker 1: he was Surgeon General, he famously issued a landmark public
[0:44] Speaker 1: advisory to sound the alarm about the negative effects of loneliness.
[0:48] Speaker 1: Vivic joined us on the show a few years ago
[0:50] Speaker 1: for an episode about the dangers of isolation. During that conversation,
[0:54] Speaker 1: he referred to our country's lack of social connection as
[0:57] Speaker 1: an epidemic, one that he argued was deadly.
[1:00] Speaker 2: And if you looked at the degree of life shortening,
[1:03] Speaker 2: it appeared similar to the immortality impact of sloping fifteen
[1:07] Speaker 2: cigarettes to day and greater than the mortality impact of obesity.
[1:12] Speaker 1: Vivik also told us that the health problems associated with
[1:15] Speaker 1: loneliness were growing. One recent report by the World Health
[1:19] Speaker 1: Organization found that one in six people worldwide is affected
[1:22] Speaker 1: by loneliness, and Vivig found that rates of loneliness in
[1:26] Speaker 1: our own country can be as high as twenty two percent.
[1:29] Speaker 2: And just to put this in context, twenty two percent
[1:32] Speaker 2: of adults in the United States is more than the
[1:35] Speaker 2: percentage of adults who smokes cigarettes. It's more than percentage
[1:39] Speaker 2: of adults who have diabetes, So this is exceedingly common.
[1:43] Speaker 1: It's no surprise then, that news reports these days are
[1:46] Speaker 1: brimming with scary stories about the terrifying costs of the
[1:49] Speaker 1: loneliness crisis. I mean, the World Health Organization has argued
[1:53] Speaker 1: that loneliness is linked to an estimated one hundred deaths
[1:56] Speaker 1: every hour. Scary stuff, right, Well, that's why this week's
[2:01] Speaker 1: Happiness hot take is bound to be a very, very
[2:03] Speaker 1: fiery one, because today's happiness hot take is this, Lately,
[2:08] Speaker 1: I've been starting to think think that all this talk
[2:10] Speaker 1: about the dangers of loneliness might be a little overblown,
[2:14] Speaker 1: or at the very least counterproductive in ways that our
[2:16] Speaker 1: lying minds don't realize. Today's happiness hot take is that
[2:20] Speaker 1: we desperately need to change how we think about and
[2:22] Speaker 1: how we talk about loneliness, because the science shows that
[2:25] Speaker 1: there are lots of unexpected benefits that can come from
[2:28] Speaker 1: a little more alone time. Our minds are constantly telling
[2:36] Speaker 1: us what to do to be happy. But what if
[2:38] Speaker 1: our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying
[2:41] Speaker 1: to us, leading us away from what will really make
[2:43] Speaker 1: us happy. The good news is that understanding the science
[2:46] Speaker 1: of the mind can boind us all back in the
[2:48] Speaker 1: right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor
[2:51] Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. When you think about loneliness, what comes to mind?
[3:03] Speaker 3: I was studying happy TOSTV work and there were lots
[3:07] Speaker 3: of ntating geese outside my bedroom window and they did
[3:12] Speaker 3: that honking noise which still fills me with dread.
[3:15] Speaker 1: For doctor Faye bound Alberti, a historian at King's College
[3:18] Speaker 1: in London, loneliness conjures up the sounds she remembers hearing
[3:22] Speaker 1: when going through a rough breakup as a college student.
[3:25] Speaker 3: And it made me feel a very kind of profound
[3:29] Speaker 3: and physical sense of loneliness that linked to other times
[3:32] Speaker 3: I've heard those geese and the sort of the isolation
[3:35] Speaker 3: attached to that.
[3:36] Speaker 1: Fay is the author of a biography of loneliness, The
[3:39] Speaker 1: History of an Emotion.
[3:40] Speaker 3: I'm also a historian of medicine emotion in the body,
[3:44] Speaker 3: and I write about feeling between the classical period in
[3:48] Speaker 3: the present day.
[3:49] Speaker 1: I came across phase work one day when I was
[3:51] Speaker 1: scrolling through social media and saw her tweet asking what
[3:54] Speaker 1: loneliness sounds like, and.
[3:56] Speaker 3: The responses were really interesting. Some people said, when they
[3:58] Speaker 3: were alone in their flash at night and they hear
[4:01] Speaker 3: that click click noise when the radiations start to tend
[4:03] Speaker 3: themselves off. Some people talked about hearing the whistling down
[4:07] Speaker 3: the chimney when they were alone in their Some people
[4:10] Speaker 3: found the sort of morning bird call, the twittering of
[4:14] Speaker 3: the birds in the morning isolating, because it reminded them
[4:17] Speaker 3: that yet in the day they were waking up alone.
[4:19] Speaker 3: Other people said, oh, when they're walking past a pub
[4:22] Speaker 3: or a bar and you can hear people chatting inside,
[4:26] Speaker 3: and often you get that blast of warmth, don't you
[4:28] Speaker 3: at the same time as you walk past, And that's
[4:30] Speaker 3: another kind of sensorial feeling, and all of which is like, oh,
[4:33] Speaker 3: I don't have that, And so those are the kinds
[4:35] Speaker 3: of things. It was wanting to open up a conversation
[4:37] Speaker 3: about physical experiences of loneliness.
[4:40] Speaker 1: I love you sharing the pub example, because it feels
[4:42] Speaker 1: so desceral to me. I spent a year in the
[4:45] Speaker 1: UK in grad school in Bristol, when I didn't really
[4:48] Speaker 1: know anybody, and I had that exact experience, like walking
[4:50] Speaker 1: by the pubs and you hear the sort of din
[4:52] Speaker 1: of chatter and you just feel this deep sense of
[4:55] Speaker 1: not having social connection with yourself. It's so sad, not
[4:59] Speaker 1: just the sound, but also for me, I have the smell,
[5:02] Speaker 1: like when you're walking by and you get this blast
[5:04] Speaker 1: of sort of old beer smell, that like you could
[5:06] Speaker 1: be in there with those people, but you're not, and
[5:08] Speaker 1: you just kind of feel so by yourself.
[5:10] Speaker 3: It's really interesting, isn't it. I think does nothing like
[5:13] Speaker 3: other people's relax sociability to make you think, oh, I
[5:16] Speaker 3: miss that. Loneliness is very much part of the body
[5:20] Speaker 3: as well as the mind, and I think that about
[5:21] Speaker 3: all our emotions. And one of the things that I
[5:23] Speaker 3: know as a history of emotion is that with the
[5:26] Speaker 3: rise of the scientific medicine, we separated our mind and body.
[5:28] Speaker 3: It was also seen as a physical thing before the
[5:31] Speaker 3: rise of scientific medicine. It made the body of machine
[5:33] Speaker 3: that produces and the mind this kind of complex organ
[5:36] Speaker 3: which is reduced to brain. And we tend to think
[5:38] Speaker 3: of emotions like loneliness as being cognitive processes, but they're
[5:42] Speaker 3: very felt. We feel them in the body. Those in
[5:44] Speaker 3: terms of our emotional reactions, but also in terms of
[5:48] Speaker 3: our memories, the ways in which memories of experience get
[5:51] Speaker 3: locked into the body.
[5:53] Speaker 1: In order to understand what we might be getting wrong
[5:55] Speaker 1: about the loneliness crisis, I wanted to better understand where
[5:58] Speaker 1: this feeling comes from in the first place. And that's
[6:01] Speaker 1: why I was so excited to have Faye join me
[6:03] Speaker 1: for this episode. Because fins take on the historical origins
[6:06] Speaker 1: of loneliness differs from that of a lot lot of
[6:09] Speaker 1: the academics I hang out with. You see, my colleagues
[6:12] Speaker 1: have long assumed that loneliness is a product of biology,
[6:16] Speaker 1: an emotion that has been shaped over generations by natural selection.
[6:20] Speaker 1: Humans are, of course, social primates. We rely on one
[6:23] Speaker 1: another for survival. Loneliness can therefore be thought of as
[6:26] Speaker 1: an evolutionary signal, one that's built to help us avoid
[6:30] Speaker 1: the dangers of isolation. Loneliness is there to alert us
[6:33] Speaker 1: that we need to return to the safety of the tribe.
[6:36] Speaker 1: Under this view, one would predict that our species has
[6:39] Speaker 1: been experiencing this yucky feeling for a long time. But
[6:42] Speaker 1: Fay argues that that's not the case. Her historical analysis
[6:45] Speaker 1: has found that loneliness, at least as we think of
[6:48] Speaker 1: it today, didn't really exist before the nineteenth century.
[6:51] Speaker 3: I think often people think about the history of emotions
[6:53] Speaker 3: as being people felt the same, just the landscapes were different,
[6:57] Speaker 3: but the emotions themselves were changed by the landscapes.
[7:00] Speaker 1: And Fay says that being lonely before the Industrial Revolution
[7:03] Speaker 1: meant something entirely different than it does today. Loneliness was
[7:07] Speaker 1: used interchangeably warnliness, and it just meant being alone. It
[7:10] Speaker 1: just meant being solitude. There wasn't anything like the emotional
[7:14] Speaker 1: weight that it has today. So when Wordsworth talked about
[7:18] Speaker 1: wondering lonely as a cloud, he just meant he was alone.
[7:21] Speaker 1: At that point, you could be warmly or you could
[7:24] Speaker 1: be lonely, but you would not have that sort of
[7:27] Speaker 1: sense of emotional loss and lack that we have today.
[7:30] Speaker 1: I find this so striking. The ache that I got
[7:33] Speaker 1: walking by a crowded pub back in grad school, or
[7:35] Speaker 1: that sense of invisibility that newly rejected Fay felt listening
[7:39] Speaker 1: to those geese. They says that people didn't really experience
[7:42] Speaker 1: that feeling for most of human history.
[7:45] Speaker 3: If you imagine in the early modern period, when God
[7:48] Speaker 3: is always there, you're never actually alone. If we are
[7:50] Speaker 3: aware of something bigger than ourselves, we are less likely
[7:53] Speaker 3: to feel lonely. And so it's only when you have
[7:56] Speaker 3: the decline of religion as the only explanation for why
[7:58] Speaker 3: we're in the world, and the rise of urbanization and
[8:02] Speaker 3: economic individualism. All of these kind of transformations make us
[8:07] Speaker 3: into smaller parts, and they don't give us that kind
[8:10] Speaker 3: of sense of the collective or collective identity. So round
[8:12] Speaker 3: about eighteen hundred you do get more and more people
[8:15] Speaker 3: talking about loneliness. People aren't any longer feeling that they
[8:19] Speaker 3: are enough on themselves with themselves. We've got the rise
[8:23] Speaker 3: of the individual, the decline of the collective. So those
[8:26] Speaker 3: are the broad patterns I think that affect our emotional state.
[8:31] Speaker 1: Fay points to two famous stories of isolation that nicely
[8:34] Speaker 1: illustrate the different emotional reactions that people had to solitude
[8:38] Speaker 1: before and after this rise of the individual. Story Number one,
[8:42] Speaker 1: the old school version of solitude, is from Robinson Crusoe,
[8:46] Speaker 1: the famous novel by Daniel Defoe published in seventeen nineteen,
[8:50] Speaker 1: in which the main character is shipwrecked on a remote
[8:52] Speaker 1: island for twenty eight years. Story number two. The more
[8:56] Speaker 1: modern notion of solitude is from Castaway, the award winning
[9:00] Speaker 1: movie released back in two thousand, in which the actor
[9:03] Speaker 1: Tom Hanks survives a plane crash and spends four years
[9:06] Speaker 1: struggling to survive on a deserted island.
[9:09] Speaker 3: So robis and Cristo when he's kind of cast adrift,
[9:11] Speaker 3: it follows the convention of being this sort of pestling,
[9:14] Speaker 3: this spiritual journey, this notion of being in isolation or
[9:18] Speaker 3: solitude as a way of understanding oneself better. And if
[9:22] Speaker 3: you compare that to Castaway, it's very much about the
[9:26] Speaker 3: loss of other people and how do we cope. And
[9:28] Speaker 3: for me, that's such a sort of fantastic transition in
[9:32] Speaker 3: what's happened across the period that I'm talking about. We
[9:34] Speaker 3: are not alone with God anymore. We are alone with ourselves,
[9:38] Speaker 3: which for many people is quite terrifying, because what do
[9:41] Speaker 3: we do when we look inward?
[9:43] Speaker 1: Psychologists have been looking at what happens when modern people
[9:45] Speaker 1: get stuck alone and have to look inwards, and it's
[9:48] Speaker 1: not pretty. Take one famous study by psychologists Matt Killingsworth
[9:52] Speaker 1: and Timothy Wilson. They brought subjects into the lab and
[9:56] Speaker 1: asked them to sit alone in a room without distractions
[9:58] Speaker 1: for fifteen minutes. No cell phones or internet access, not
[10:02] Speaker 1: even a pennrot paper. The one thing subjects did have
[10:05] Speaker 1: access to was a machine that gave out a mild
[10:07] Speaker 1: electric shark. Participants were not told to shock themselves, but
[10:12] Speaker 1: when faced with the boredom of actually sitting alone with
[10:15] Speaker 1: their own thoughts for fifteen minutes, twenty five percent of
[10:18] Speaker 1: women and sixty seven percent of men voluntarily chose to
[10:22] Speaker 1: shock themselves. They thinks that part of our version to
[10:26] Speaker 1: sitting alone with our thoughts in the modern day comes
[10:28] Speaker 1: from how we talk about what it means to be alone.
[10:31] Speaker 3: We have this language of loneliness, which is global. Now
[10:34] Speaker 3: we talk about it as an epidemic. So we have
[10:37] Speaker 3: produced this medicalized, problematic notion of loneliness as something bad.
[10:42] Speaker 3: And what happens is that people think, oh, that must
[10:45] Speaker 3: be what I'm feeling, and I think that that also
[10:48] Speaker 3: increases loneliness. If we say that loneliness is one thing
[10:52] Speaker 3: that's inevitable, we medicalize it, so it's like a disease
[10:55] Speaker 3: that comes from outside, not a product of how we live.
[10:57] Speaker 3: Then what we're doing is we're massively over simplifying.
[11:01] Speaker 1: This is phase big concern with the idea of a
[11:03] Speaker 1: quote loneliness epidemic. It makes loneliness sound like one single
[11:07] Speaker 1: conditioning you either have or don't have, when in reality,
[11:12] Speaker 1: they argue, loneliness is much more complicated than that.
[11:16] Speaker 3: I talk about loneliness really as a cluster of different emotions,
[11:19] Speaker 3: because it's not a single emotion. It's a peculiar state
[11:23] Speaker 3: that might be composed of grief and sadness, it might
[11:27] Speaker 3: be composed of resentment or anger. And so the particular
[11:31] Speaker 3: emotions that make up loneliness depend on where we are
[11:34] Speaker 3: in our lives. There are pinch points where we might,
[11:37] Speaker 3: for instance, get married, get widow, get divorced, or even
[11:40] Speaker 3: be a teenager going to have to college, and we
[11:43] Speaker 3: feel some sort of transitory sense of loneliness which is
[11:47] Speaker 3: in relation to our circumstance and actually a very positive
[11:50] Speaker 3: thing because it means we're ready for the next stage
[11:53] Speaker 3: and what do we want. And that's different to the
[11:55] Speaker 3: kind of chronic loneliness that can settle in when people
[11:58] Speaker 3: aren't able to connect and maybe they're disadvantaged by health
[12:01] Speaker 3: or economics or geography. Those sort of nuances I think
[12:06] Speaker 3: are very very important. Otherwise we start thinking that a
[12:10] Speaker 3: who's just lost her husband of thirty years is going
[12:12] Speaker 3: to be feeling exactly the same kind of loneliness as
[12:14] Speaker 3: a teenage boy who is online all at the time,
[12:17] Speaker 3: but asn't our friends. I mean, it just seems to
[12:18] Speaker 3: be obvious and these are not the same emotions, so
[12:21] Speaker 3: we can't have a one size fits all approach. I
[12:23] Speaker 3: think that a lot of the emotional experiences we have
[12:26] Speaker 3: are opportunities for growth and development. If your psyche and
[12:30] Speaker 3: body is saying something is missing, it's an opportunity. If
[12:33] Speaker 3: we treat it all us a bad thing, what we're
[12:34] Speaker 3: doing is closing down the opportunity for growth. We're closing
[12:37] Speaker 3: down the opportunity of connection, and we're really taking away
[12:41] Speaker 3: what are the different complex kinds of emotions they're going
[12:44] Speaker 3: towards this state. We need to really drill down into
[12:47] Speaker 3: that because it's so subjective, so our interventions need to
[12:50] Speaker 3: be tailored.
[12:52] Speaker 1: When we get back from the break, we'll meet a
[12:53] Speaker 1: psychologist who's trying to follow phase advice, someone who's trying
[12:57] Speaker 1: to drill down into the language we use to talk
[12:59] Speaker 1: about loneliness so that we can fight this feeling more effectively.
[13:03] Speaker 1: She'll break down what we get wrong about loneliness and
[13:06] Speaker 1: what we can do better when the happiness Lab returns.
[13:08] Speaker 4: In a moment, when I first started studying this topic,
[13:20] Speaker 4: I actually really struggle to be alone. I had this
[13:23] Speaker 4: perception that being alone is loneliness. You know, I had
[13:27] Speaker 4: never considered that these two are separate things. One moment
[13:31] Speaker 4: that really comes to mind is in college, I had
[13:35] Speaker 4: sort of a lunch plan. It fell through, and I thought, Okay, well,
[13:39] Speaker 4: I guess I'll just go to the dining hall and
[13:42] Speaker 4: eat by myself.
[13:43] Speaker 3: Now.
[13:44] Speaker 4: I walked in the dining hall and I realized that
[13:46] Speaker 4: pretty much everybody was chatting with others. I remember feeling
[13:52] Speaker 4: in my body pretty anxious, like, oh my gosh, I
[13:55] Speaker 4: have to sit by myself, and how are other people
[13:58] Speaker 4: going to perceive me?
[13:59] Speaker 2: Right?
[14:00] Speaker 1: This is Mikaela Rodriguez, a new colleague of mine in
[14:03] Speaker 1: the psychology department at Yale and an academic expert on
[14:06] Speaker 1: what we tend to get wrong when it comes to loneliness.
[14:09] Speaker 4: I mean, it's a little embarrassing to say, but I
[14:11] Speaker 4: did worry are other people going to think that I'm
[14:13] Speaker 4: weird that I have no friends. And so anyway, I
[14:16] Speaker 4: found a spot in the very back of the dining
[14:18] Speaker 4: hall that was a little bit more sort of secluded
[14:20] Speaker 4: where other people wouldn't really see me, and I ate
[14:24] Speaker 4: my lunch, but just sort of felt kind of awkward
[14:27] Speaker 4: the whole time.
[14:28] Speaker 1: Mikhaela's interest in the psychological effects of loneliness began back
[14:31] Speaker 1: when she was a college student.
[14:33] Speaker 4: This is really I think common, especially in that age, right,
[14:36] Speaker 4: and often on social media, seeing that other people at
[14:40] Speaker 4: least seem to be having these really rich social lives
[14:43] Speaker 4: and traveling and going to parties. It feels like there's
[14:46] Speaker 4: this expectation that we also need to be very social,
[14:49] Speaker 4: and that if we're not, that there's something wrong with us,
[14:52] Speaker 4: that we're doing something wrong. I think there is this
[14:55] Speaker 4: understanding that, well, if you have, for example, depression or
[14:59] Speaker 4: an anxiety disorder, it's not necessarily that there's something wrong
[15:02] Speaker 4: with you, right, It might be something's going on in
[15:04] Speaker 4: your brain, there's this chemical imbalance, as people say, right,
[15:07] Speaker 4: there's other genetic, environmental factors. But I do think that
[15:12] Speaker 4: when it comes to loneliness, there still is this perception
[15:15] Speaker 4: that if you're lonely, it's something about you. You know,
[15:18] Speaker 4: you're not able maybe to make those connections. You're not
[15:22] Speaker 4: socially skilled enough, And so it does feel like there's
[15:25] Speaker 4: an extra level of sort of shame that's attached to
[15:28] Speaker 4: loneliness that maybe we're not seeing anymore with these other
[15:31] Speaker 4: sort of mental health, negative sort of emotional.
[15:33] Speaker 1: Experiences, and studies have shown that the stigma associated with
[15:37] Speaker 1: loneliness can have big consequences for people who happen to
[15:40] Speaker 1: be a bit solitary by nature.
[15:42] Speaker 4: When American adults are told about a hypothetical person who
[15:48] Speaker 4: likes to spend their time alone, those people rate that
[15:51] Speaker 4: person as less desirable, as a friend, less attractive, less competent.
[15:58] Speaker 4: We make these sort of negative evaluations and negative assumptions
[16:02] Speaker 4: about that person.
[16:03] Speaker 1: And MICHAELA says that these negative assumptions have only gotten
[16:06] Speaker 1: worse in the last few years.
[16:08] Speaker 4: There are so many articles I feel like I see
[16:12] Speaker 4: one every single day on the dangers of loneliness. But
[16:16] Speaker 4: even in sociology, philosophy, public health, these related fields, we
[16:21] Speaker 4: see that the vast majority of research on these topics
[16:25] Speaker 4: is looking at sort of the dangers of being alone
[16:27] Speaker 4: and the serious risks associated with loneliness, and I recognize
[16:33] Speaker 4: that you know, these messages are intended to be helpful
[16:37] Speaker 4: and to encourage people to go out and seek social connection,
[16:41] Speaker 4: which course, as we know, is very important. At the
[16:44] Speaker 4: same time, a few years ago, I sort of wondered
[16:48] Speaker 4: whether these messages that we're receiving might have unintended negative consequences,
[16:53] Speaker 4: Might they be counterproductive.
[16:56] Speaker 1: Mikaela decided to test this directly. She had subjects read
[16:59] Speaker 1: a news article that either discuss the risks of being alone,
[17:02] Speaker 1: like most news articles do these days, or one that
[17:05] Speaker 1: talked about the benefits of alone time. She found that
[17:08] Speaker 1: the simple apt to reading one article about the downside
[17:11] Speaker 1: of solitude changed subjects beliefs about the dangers of being alone.
[17:15] Speaker 1: The participants who read the negative news article assume that
[17:18] Speaker 1: being alone would feel less enjoyable, that it would make
[17:21] Speaker 1: you less hopeful, and that overall you'd be less healthy.
[17:24] Speaker 4: Okay, so makes sense, right. The information that we get
[17:27] Speaker 4: from the media, we know influences our beliefs, But how
[17:30] Speaker 4: did these beliefs that we hold about being alone actually
[17:33] Speaker 4: influence our day to day experiences.
[17:35] Speaker 1: To test this, Michaela recruited a different group of subjects.
[17:39] Speaker 1: She first surveyed their beliefs about alone time, and then
[17:42] Speaker 1: divided her subjects into two groups, those who had positive
[17:45] Speaker 1: beliefs about alone time and those who thought more negatively
[17:48] Speaker 1: about solitude. She then used a procedure known as experience sampling,
[17:52] Speaker 1: in which researchers pink people at random times of the
[17:55] Speaker 1: day and ask how they're feeling to test what happened
[17:58] Speaker 1: when the two different groups of subjects got stuck in
[18:00] Speaker 1: short moments of solo time.
[18:02] Speaker 4: People who believe that being alone is bad, right, that
[18:06] Speaker 4: it's inherently lonely, that it's harmful for their well being.
[18:10] Speaker 4: Whenever they were alone in their daily lives LORI, they
[18:14] Speaker 4: felt significantly lonelier, more anxious, more stressed, more bored They
[18:20] Speaker 4: felt worse right. Interestingly, though, when we look at people
[18:25] Speaker 4: who view being alone as a positive experience, we see
[18:29] Speaker 4: the opposite. We see that when they spend time alone,
[18:32] Speaker 4: they actually experience a decrease in loneliness and a decrease
[18:36] Speaker 4: in stress, and a decrease in anxiety and boredom. Not
[18:40] Speaker 4: only that, they also experienced increases in positive emotions like
[18:43] Speaker 4: contentment and relaxation.
[18:45] Speaker 1: These findings are pretty incredible. How we think being alone
[18:48] Speaker 1: is supposed to feel influences how being alone actually feels
[18:52] Speaker 1: in the moment, and Mikaela has observed this striking effect
[18:55] Speaker 1: again and again. Take for example, her recent study exploring
[18:59] Speaker 1: cross cultural differences in people's perceptions of loneliness.
[19:03] Speaker 4: We recruited participants from nine countries, and this was spanning
[19:07] Speaker 4: six continents an except Antarctica. Really hard to find people
[19:11] Speaker 4: there to take our studies, so almost every continent, i
[19:14] Speaker 4: will say, And so we had for example, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Poland,
[19:19] Speaker 4: South Africa, couple others, and essentially we wanted to know
[19:24] Speaker 4: how adults in these different countries view being alone, to
[19:28] Speaker 4: what extent do they think being alone is positive or negative, right,
[19:33] Speaker 4: beneficial or harmful. We see that in countries like the US,
[19:39] Speaker 4: the UK, Poland in other words, countries that are more individualistic,
[19:44] Speaker 4: people view being alone as more negative, as more unhealthy,
[19:50] Speaker 4: whereas people in Japan and Mexico, two very different countries
[19:54] Speaker 4: but both we would consider collectivistic countries viewed being alone
[19:59] Speaker 4: as significantly more positive and healthier.
[20:02] Speaker 1: What are some of the hypotheses for why collectivist culture
[20:05] Speaker 1: is value solitude?
[20:06] Speaker 4: For one of the things we know about more collective
[20:09] Speaker 4: cultures is that people view the self as more interdependent.
[20:14] Speaker 4: So what I mean is that people view themselves as
[20:18] Speaker 4: an individual as intertwined with their family members, their friends,
[20:24] Speaker 4: their community. In other words, who I am is linked
[20:28] Speaker 4: to who you know, my friends and family are. And
[20:31] Speaker 4: so I think that actually changes what being alone means, right,
[20:36] Speaker 4: Because when I'm physically alone, yes, I'm by myself. But
[20:40] Speaker 4: if I have this sense that my identity is always
[20:44] Speaker 4: tied to my loved ones, then maybe that aloneness is
[20:48] Speaker 4: actually less threatening because even though I'm physically by myself,
[20:52] Speaker 4: I'm carrying my mom, right, I'm carrying my dad, I'm
[20:55] Speaker 4: carrying my two little sisters with me all the time.
[20:58] Speaker 4: I'm carrying these sources of meaning with me wherever I go.
[21:03] Speaker 4: Whereas in more individualistic cultures, we know that the self
[21:06] Speaker 4: is really viewed as a DiscT entity that is not
[21:10] Speaker 4: connected really to anybody else. Right, We're unique, We're our
[21:14] Speaker 4: own person.
[21:15] Speaker 3: I will not.
[21:15] Speaker 4: You know, it's not that that's inherently better or worse.
[21:18] Speaker 4: These are just sort of different ways of viewing oneself.
[21:21] Speaker 4: But if we do see the self as independent and
[21:25] Speaker 4: not linked to other people, then I think when we're alone,
[21:29] Speaker 4: we really are sort of disconnected, right, and so I
[21:32] Speaker 4: think there could be this sort of protective effect of
[21:37] Speaker 4: having this more interdependent view of the self.
[21:41] Speaker 1: Mikaela's work seems to be bearing out what historian Fay
[21:44] Speaker 1: Bound Alberti said earlier that how a culture thinks being
[21:47] Speaker 1: alone is supposed to feel influences how being alone actually feels.
[21:52] Speaker 1: In this and so many other studies, Mikaela has found
[21:55] Speaker 1: that if you believe alone time is going to suck,
[21:57] Speaker 1: then you're alone time will feel luckier and lonelier. And
[22:00] Speaker 1: that is a very worrying conclusion, especially for someone who
[22:04] Speaker 1: hosts a podcast that talks a lot about social connection.
[22:07] Speaker 1: So much of our modern public health messaging tries to
[22:10] Speaker 1: teach people about the negative effects of loneliness, but that
[22:13] Speaker 1: messaging might ironically be making the loneliness crisis even worse,
[22:18] Speaker 1: and Michaela says that this stems from a specific thing
[22:21] Speaker 1: that many news articles get wrong. When it comes to loneliness.
[22:25] Speaker 4: We see the vast majority of news articles using loneliness
[22:29] Speaker 4: and solitude interchangeably, which I think is not only inaccurate,
[22:34] Speaker 4: I think it's also harmful. These experiences are distinct. Being
[22:39] Speaker 4: alone is not loneliness. We can think of loneliness as
[22:43] Speaker 4: a feeling, right. It is a subjective experience of feeling disconnected,
[22:49] Speaker 4: regardless of whether you're physically by yourself or with other people.
[22:53] Speaker 4: You can feel lonely even when you're in a crowd,
[22:56] Speaker 4: right in a party. And actually, what I found in
[22:58] Speaker 4: my work we see that the most sort of intense
[23:04] Speaker 4: or painful loneliness often comes when we're with others because
[23:08] Speaker 4: we have expectation that we should be feeling connected to them,
[23:12] Speaker 4: but for one reason or another, we don't.
[23:15] Speaker 1: And so how correlated our loneliness and solitude?
[23:17] Speaker 4: We've seen from decades of work that loneliness and solitude
[23:20] Speaker 4: are actually weakly correlated, and the correlation is around point two.
[23:25] Speaker 4: So just for those listening, you know, we think of
[23:28] Speaker 4: correlations as the strength of a relationship between two experiences.
[23:33] Speaker 4: Zero means there's no relationship at all. One means that
[23:37] Speaker 4: they're the same thing, they're completely related. When one goes up,
[23:40] Speaker 4: the other goes up. And so point two is I mean,
[23:44] Speaker 4: it's not nothing.
[23:45] Speaker 1: Right.
[23:45] Speaker 4: We know that in general, when people are alone, especially
[23:49] Speaker 4: for longer periods of time, it is common for them
[23:51] Speaker 4: to experience loneliness. That said, point two is still not
[23:55] Speaker 4: super high, and so there are many many instances in
[23:59] Speaker 4: which people are alone and not lonely at all. So
[24:02] Speaker 4: loneliness is this subjective feeling, whereas solitude we can think
[24:08] Speaker 4: of as the objective state of being alone. And so
[24:13] Speaker 4: solitude in that sense is not inherently a positive or
[24:16] Speaker 4: negative experience.
[24:18] Speaker 1: Solitude is inherently neutral. But Mikaila has also found that
[24:21] Speaker 1: more effective alone time can actually make us happier.
[24:25] Speaker 4: We're taught so much about how to interact with others,
[24:27] Speaker 4: how to work as a team, we're not often explicitly
[24:30] Speaker 4: taught how to be alone. It's something we sort of
[24:32] Speaker 4: have to figure out on our own. I really view
[24:36] Speaker 4: solitude as a skill. You know, it takes practice, It
[24:38] Speaker 4: takes time to really cultivate this positive relationship to solitude.
[24:43] Speaker 1: What are some of the best benefits of solitude?
[24:46] Speaker 4: One of the I would say biggest benefits of spending
[24:51] Speaker 4: time alone is emotional deactivation, or essentially, when we spend
[24:56] Speaker 4: time alone, you know, in general, our intense negative emotions
[25:00] Speaker 4: as well as our intense positive emotions become less intense,
[25:04] Speaker 4: emotions become a little bit more neutralized. We know, for example,
[25:09] Speaker 4: that when we spend time with other people, that presence
[25:12] Speaker 4: of others can amplify our emotional experiences. Right being with
[25:16] Speaker 4: others makes anxiety often even more intense, or can make
[25:20] Speaker 4: excitement happiness even more intense. And so when we're alone,
[25:23] Speaker 4: we don't have that sort of feedback from others, and
[25:26] Speaker 4: often there's less stimulation in the environments, and so it
[25:30] Speaker 4: can help sort of deactivate intense negative emotions. I've run
[25:34] Speaker 4: several studies where I've had participants come into the lab
[25:37] Speaker 4: indicate how they're feeling in that moment, and then they
[25:40] Speaker 4: spend ten to fifteen minutes. In one study, we had
[25:44] Speaker 4: them spend thirty minutes by themselves without actually any laptop,
[25:48] Speaker 4: any phone, any device, with no activity, just truly by
[25:52] Speaker 4: themselves with their thoughts, sitting in a chair, and even
[25:55] Speaker 4: then we see that both positive emotion and negative emotion decreased,
[26:01] Speaker 4: emotions became more neutral.
[26:03] Speaker 1: Mikaela has found that being left alone with our thoughts
[26:06] Speaker 1: without the option of electrocuting ourselves can you full for
[26:09] Speaker 1: regulating our feelings. Honestly, this result surprised me a bit.
[26:13] Speaker 1: Whenever I'm feeling an intense emotion, my instinct is to
[26:16] Speaker 1: reach out to a friend so that I can talk
[26:18] Speaker 1: through what I'm experiencing. I hadn't realized that being by
[26:21] Speaker 1: myself could also be helpful.
[26:23] Speaker 4: There are many situations in which, for example, seeking social
[26:26] Speaker 4: support and talking to others can help. Other people can
[26:30] Speaker 4: help shift our perspectives, or they can just give us
[26:32] Speaker 4: a hug and remind us that everything's going to be okay,
[26:36] Speaker 4: or they can help normalize our experiences. There's lots of
[26:38] Speaker 4: things we can gain from talking to others when we're
[26:41] Speaker 4: feeling upset. But sometimes when we're in this really hot
[26:45] Speaker 4: and emotional state, people want to be by themselves, and
[26:49] Speaker 4: I think that's not inherently a bad thing. Stepping back
[26:53] Speaker 4: and spending some time by yourself can help you sort
[26:55] Speaker 4: of cool off a little bit. Just like when you
[26:58] Speaker 4: know people are in the middle of an argument, whether
[27:00] Speaker 4: it's a romantic couple or friends, sometimes it's like, hey,
[27:03] Speaker 4: let's take a minute, let's go into our rooms, and
[27:06] Speaker 4: then let's come back right to just sort of relax
[27:08] Speaker 4: for a moment. That can be really powerful.
[27:11] Speaker 1: And for those who are uncomfortable with being alone without
[27:14] Speaker 1: any distractions. Mikaela has some good news. To reap the
[27:17] Speaker 1: emotional benefits of alone time, you don't necessarily just have
[27:21] Speaker 1: to stare into the void.
[27:22] Speaker 4: Being alone doesn't just have to be sitting by yourself, thinking,
[27:26] Speaker 4: reflecting on your life. It can, but you can do
[27:29] Speaker 4: so many different things. You can take a walk, you
[27:31] Speaker 4: can read, you can tidy things up, you can cook,
[27:35] Speaker 4: and so you know, when people engage in these different
[27:38] Speaker 4: activities when they're alone, it can both serve as a
[27:40] Speaker 4: sort of distraction from what's going on and also just
[27:44] Speaker 4: help them kind of relax right and even physiologically help
[27:47] Speaker 4: their bodies sort of recover from maybe a stressful experience,
[27:52] Speaker 4: which really I think stands in contrast to a lot
[27:56] Speaker 4: of what we're hearing now in the media and also
[27:59] Speaker 4: a lot of what psychologists are studying.
[28:03] Speaker 1: Your research has these really clear implications for public health messaging.
[28:07] Speaker 1: If coverage of loneliness might be made making things worse,
[28:10] Speaker 1: what should media, you know, this podcast included, honestly be
[28:13] Speaker 1: doing differently.
[28:15] Speaker 4: I think that we should be emphasizing the importance of
[28:20] Speaker 4: social connection while also communicating to people that being alone
[28:25] Speaker 4: can be okay, that it can be good, that there
[28:28] Speaker 4: are situations in which it can promote our well being,
[28:30] Speaker 4: and not just our well being, it can promote our
[28:32] Speaker 4: social lives and our relationships and enhance them.
[28:35] Speaker 3: Right.
[28:36] Speaker 4: I think if we had messaging that better sort of
[28:40] Speaker 4: portrayed both social connection and solitude as good for us,
[28:45] Speaker 4: then I think we're in the situation where no matter
[28:47] Speaker 4: what people are doing, whether they're by themselves or with others,
[28:50] Speaker 4: they can make the most of that experience.
[28:53] Speaker 1: You've also done some fascinating work on how the language
[28:55] Speaker 1: we use matters. Tell me about that work.
[28:58] Speaker 4: I ran this really simple study with my wonderful collaborator,
[29:01] Speaker 4: Scott Campbell at the Ohio State University, and we essentially
[29:07] Speaker 4: ask participants to report their perceptions of, and beliefs about
[29:13] Speaker 4: and experiences of five different words for being alone.
[29:17] Speaker 3: So we had.
[29:18] Speaker 4: Solitude, being alone, time alone, me time, and isolation, words
[29:24] Speaker 4: that are often used interchangeably, but they have very different connotations.
[29:28] Speaker 4: And indeed we found that people viewed me time as
[29:32] Speaker 4: the most positive, and they viewed isolation as the most negative.
[29:35] Speaker 4: I also want to mention really interesting finding, which was
[29:39] Speaker 4: that people viewed time alone as more positive than being alone.
[29:44] Speaker 4: Even though it's so easy to just say this interchangeably, right,
[29:47] Speaker 4: but I think the idea there is that time alone
[29:51] Speaker 4: is maybe this like evening that we're spending by ourselves,
[29:54] Speaker 4: whereas being alone feels a little more long term.
[29:58] Speaker 1: Mikhaela ran an experiment to test how these different phrases
[30:01] Speaker 1: affected people's mood and behavior. She split a group of
[30:04] Speaker 1: college students into two experimental groups and asked them all
[30:07] Speaker 1: to spend thirty minutes by them. So the only difference
[30:10] Speaker 1: between the two groups was in the instructions they received.
[30:14] Speaker 4: Half of the participants were told to spend thirty minutes
[30:16] Speaker 4: in me time. The other half were told to spend
[30:19] Speaker 4: thirty minutes in isolation. So what we found in this
[30:22] Speaker 4: study is that people who spent those thirty minutes in
[30:26] Speaker 4: isolation experienced a reduction in their negative emotion and also
[30:33] Speaker 4: a reduction in their positive emotion. So, like I was
[30:37] Speaker 4: saying earlier, right, we see this deactivation effect where people
[30:40] Speaker 4: are feeling less bad, but they're also feeling less good.
[30:43] Speaker 4: In the mean time group, we see something different. We
[30:45] Speaker 4: see that positive emotion significantly went up and negative emotion
[30:50] Speaker 4: went down even more so than it did in that
[30:54] Speaker 4: other group. Right, And so the me time group felt
[30:58] Speaker 4: better after those thirty minutes. Not just that, we asked
[31:01] Speaker 4: our participants to report what they had thought about in
[31:05] Speaker 4: that thirty minute period and also what they did. Interestingly, Lorie,
[31:09] Speaker 4: we didn't see any differences in what participants reported doing
[31:11] Speaker 4: in those thirty minutes between me time and isolation. We did, however,
[31:16] Speaker 4: see a significant difference in what participants reported thinking about.
[31:20] Speaker 4: So in the medtime group, participants were more likely to
[31:24] Speaker 4: think about personal growth, whereas an isolation they were more
[31:29] Speaker 4: likely to think about work and school. And so it
[31:32] Speaker 4: is a little interesting, right, how even just the words
[31:34] Speaker 4: we use can maybe shift what we do in this time.
[31:38] Speaker 1: So to recap, loneliness and being alone two very different things,
[31:42] Speaker 1: and how we think about and describe these concepts matters
[31:45] Speaker 1: a lot, because neither loneliness nor solitude are inherently bad.
[31:49] Speaker 1: Being alone can leave you feeling calmer, clearer, and more
[31:52] Speaker 1: emotionally grounded, and that ech of loneliness can be a
[31:55] Speaker 1: helpful signal that you need to make changes or as
[31:58] Speaker 1: a push for personal growth. Now does that mean that
[32:01] Speaker 1: social connection isn't beneficial or that people experiencing chronic isolation
[32:06] Speaker 1: don't require serious intervention? Of course not. But what these
[32:09] Speaker 1: findings do mean is that we might all benefit if
[32:12] Speaker 1: we change the way we discuss feelings like loneliness and solitude,
[32:16] Speaker 1: both on a societal level and as individuals. Mikayla's research
[32:20] Speaker 1: demonstrates that talking about these experiences differently might prevent a
[32:24] Speaker 1: lot of unnecessary suffering. But Mikayla's work also shows that
[32:28] Speaker 1: alone time is a skill one that we need to
[32:31] Speaker 1: learn to use more effectively if we want to get
[32:33] Speaker 1: more of its benefits, which raises a question, what does
[32:36] Speaker 1: embracing healthy solitude actually look.
[32:39] Speaker 3: Like in practice?
[32:40] Speaker 1: After the break, we'll speak to a world renowned advocate
[32:43] Speaker 1: for a loan time. We'll hear her tips for incorporating
[32:46] Speaker 1: more well being boosting solo moments into our day to
[32:49] Speaker 1: day lives. That Happiness Lab will be right back.
[32:58] Speaker 3: Hi, how's it going good? Good?
[33:00] Speaker 1: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this.
[33:02] Speaker 3: I'm really excited.
[33:03] Speaker 5: I love your show. I don't have my podcast anymore,
[33:05] Speaker 5: so every time I do it, I'm like, can I remember?
[33:08] Speaker 5: But it sounds like you can hear me.
[33:09] Speaker 3: Okay, So this.
[33:10] Speaker 1: Is Emma Gannon. Emma is a writer, podcaster, and the
[33:14] Speaker 1: author of a new book, A Creative Compass, Finding Your
[33:17] Speaker 1: Way to a creative life. She's written extensively about the
[33:20] Speaker 1: connection between loneliness and solitude, and that's in part because
[33:24] Speaker 1: Emma is a huge fan of a lot of time.
[33:27] Speaker 5: It's such a nuanced topic because loneliness and solitude are
[33:33] Speaker 5: so different. You can be lonely in a crowded room,
[33:37] Speaker 5: you can be lonely in a marriage, you can be
[33:39] Speaker 5: lonely at a party. When you're feeling lonely, I believe
[33:43] Speaker 5: it's because you're really disconnected from yourself. You feel lonely
[33:46] Speaker 5: inside yourself, like you feel lonely because no one understands
[33:50] Speaker 5: you and you don't even understand you. And so in
[33:53] Speaker 5: my solitude, I don't feel lonely. Have chosen it, and
[33:57] Speaker 5: I honestly think that some of my favorite memories are
[34:01] Speaker 5: of me being alone. And sometimes I feel like it's
[34:05] Speaker 5: controversial to say it because we're meant to be on
[34:08] Speaker 5: our deathbed and think that our best moments in life
[34:11] Speaker 5: are with our loved ones. And of course that is true.
[34:14] Speaker 5: I'm not saying it's not. But I think I'm also
[34:17] Speaker 5: going to be on my deathbed thinking that trip was
[34:20] Speaker 5: amazing that I had by myself, Like I went to
[34:22] Speaker 5: New York by myself for a month two years ago,
[34:26] Speaker 5: and I think about it all the time, and I
[34:27] Speaker 5: want to do something like that again.
[34:29] Speaker 1: When you think of an experience like traveling alone or
[34:32] Speaker 1: dining alone, how does that differ when you're with another person.
[34:35] Speaker 5: It's a totally different experience. So when I'm with a
[34:38] Speaker 5: friend and having dinner, I'm super focused on them. I'm
[34:41] Speaker 5: focused on the experience and I want to be present
[34:45] Speaker 5: and I want to be listening, and I want to
[34:48] Speaker 5: be conscious of it being kind of reciprocal.
[34:51] Speaker 3: You know.
[34:51] Speaker 5: It's a dance and it's enjoyable and I love it.
[34:53] Speaker 5: But when I'm in those environments, I'm not looking at
[34:56] Speaker 5: my surroundings as much. I'm not tasting the food as
[34:58] Speaker 5: much because I'm you know, my attentions on the other person.
[35:01] Speaker 5: So when I'm on my own, I'm having a sensory experience.
[35:05] Speaker 5: I'm taking in everything and looking around and people watching,
[35:08] Speaker 5: and I absolutely see it as an essential thing for
[35:12] Speaker 5: my nervous system. I can like regulate myself back to
[35:16] Speaker 5: my default setting. I think, like I just went away
[35:19] Speaker 5: for three nights last week by myself to a little
[35:22] Speaker 5: town called Brye in England. It's an hour train from
[35:25] Speaker 5: my house, super easy to get to and within maybe
[35:29] Speaker 5: about half an hour of just getting off the train,
[35:32] Speaker 5: being by myself, putting my bag down in the hotel room,
[35:36] Speaker 5: lying on the bed, no one was going to get
[35:38] Speaker 5: me for three days, and I had this like joy
[35:42] Speaker 5: that went through my body. But more than that, I
[35:44] Speaker 5: had this just sense of taking the mask off and
[35:48] Speaker 5: like completely relaxing my whole entire body. And whenever I
[35:53] Speaker 5: come back from those trips, my husband is like, Wow,
[35:56] Speaker 5: it's like a medicine. It's not something that you should
[35:59] Speaker 5: think about as a luxury. You should think about it
[36:01] Speaker 5: as like a mental health toolkit. Once a month, I
[36:05] Speaker 5: need to do something, and it doesn't have to be
[36:06] Speaker 5: you know, it's expensive to go away. I'm not saying that,
[36:09] Speaker 5: but it needs to be at least like a long
[36:11] Speaker 5: walk in silence or something like that.
[36:13] Speaker 1: And it does admit, however, that spending time alone is
[36:15] Speaker 1: not always super easy in a society that's biased against owners.
[36:20] Speaker 5: Busy restaurants treat a solo diner as sort of less
[36:25] Speaker 5: important because they're not making as much money from you.
[36:28] Speaker 5: They'll sit you at the bar a lot. You know,
[36:30] Speaker 5: you're like shoved in the corner a little bit, or
[36:32] Speaker 5: you're ignored. I've had that a bit actually, where I
[36:34] Speaker 5: haven't really been sort of checked in on. You know,
[36:36] Speaker 5: you're sort of left and you're trying to get the
[36:38] Speaker 5: bill and you want another drink and then it's too late.
[36:40] Speaker 5: So I think it would be great for kind of
[36:42] Speaker 5: restaurants or whatever to understand that you're still having an
[36:45] Speaker 5: experience and you're still trying to have a lovely time.
[36:47] Speaker 5: When I was in my twenties, I was more sort
[36:50] Speaker 5: of unsure of myself, and I think people would come
[36:52] Speaker 5: up to me more, or you know, you'd get men
[36:55] Speaker 5: being weird, or you would get people thinking you wanted
[36:58] Speaker 5: company when you didn't, and I felt self conscious. But
[37:02] Speaker 5: people don't come over to me as much. Like I'm
[37:04] Speaker 5: older now and I'm confident, and I'm like, don't come
[37:06] Speaker 5: near me, like I give that energy of like I'm
[37:09] Speaker 5: busy and I'm eating.
[37:11] Speaker 1: So we talked about traveling alone and dining alone. I'm
[37:13] Speaker 1: curious about some of the other activities you've done on
[37:16] Speaker 1: your own. Can you share some of those with me? Yeah?
[37:20] Speaker 5: So I do like going with my friends to things,
[37:22] Speaker 5: but I also actively choose moments to go alone. So
[37:26] Speaker 5: I love going to the cinema by myself, especially to
[37:29] Speaker 5: see something really moving. I saw a film called H's
[37:33] Speaker 5: for Hawk recently, which is about grief and relationships to
[37:37] Speaker 5: animals and had some deep themes, and I just knew
[37:40] Speaker 5: I wanted to watch it alone. I just wanted to
[37:42] Speaker 5: really immerse myself. I didn't want to talk to anyone afterwards.
[37:45] Speaker 5: I wanted to just go for a walk then really
[37:47] Speaker 5: digest the film. Like I really don't always want input.
[37:52] Speaker 5: I love sitting and like reflecting.
[37:54] Speaker 1: I'm so glad you brought up that example of going
[37:56] Speaker 1: to the film by yourself, because I don't do that often,
[37:58] Speaker 1: But there was this one period in grad school where
[38:00] Speaker 1: I did it a lot. I was over in the UK.
[38:02] Speaker 1: I was studying at the University of Bristol, and I
[38:04] Speaker 1: just like didn't know that many people. There's like great
[38:07] Speaker 1: indie cinema and Bristol at the time, and i'd walk
[38:09] Speaker 1: there by myself and I would watch the movies by myself,
[38:12] Speaker 1: and I did have that feeling of feeling like a
[38:14] Speaker 1: little bit of like a freak. If someone see me
[38:16] Speaker 1: by myself, they'd be like, who's that weird person? But
[38:18] Speaker 1: I remember walking home from those movies and having such
[38:21] Speaker 1: interesting thoughts about them of just kind of like sinking
[38:24] Speaker 1: into them in a different way. And even now when
[38:26] Speaker 1: I think about the specific films that I watched back then,
[38:28] Speaker 1: I remember them in a really different way than like
[38:30] Speaker 1: the last movie that I watched in the cinema with
[38:32] Speaker 1: my husband. Here you have a connection to the things
[38:35] Speaker 1: that you experience on your own, and that's kind of special.
[38:39] Speaker 5: It really is, and I think it kind of preserves
[38:42] Speaker 5: your individual experience. Like I remember once going through this
[38:45] Speaker 5: film and I loved it. I was crying at the end,
[38:47] Speaker 5: like I had such a relationship with it. And then
[38:49] Speaker 5: the person next to me who I went to watch
[38:51] Speaker 5: the film with, just turned to me and said that
[38:53] Speaker 5: was awful, wasn't it. They were like picking it apart
[38:56] Speaker 5: for certain reasons, and I was like, Oh, you've kind
[39:00] Speaker 5: of just burst the moment I was having with it.
[39:02] Speaker 5: So I think sometimes it's just nice to kind of
[39:05] Speaker 5: sink in. And I did go to a concept by
[39:07] Speaker 5: myself recently as well, which was a first I think, actually,
[39:11] Speaker 5: and I was like, Oh, this is going to be
[39:13] Speaker 5: a bit weird going by myself because you're really aware
[39:16] Speaker 5: of how alone you are when you're in those big stadiums.
[39:18] Speaker 5: And then I was wedged in the middle of two
[39:20] Speaker 5: couples and they were having like a date night and
[39:23] Speaker 5: I was like, Oh, this is really challenging, but I
[39:25] Speaker 5: had a good time. I got into it.
[39:27] Speaker 1: You've also written about something that you've called artist dates.
[39:30] Speaker 1: Where does this concept come from and how do artist
[39:32] Speaker 1: dates work?
[39:34] Speaker 5: Yes, so this is from Julia Cameron, the author of
[39:36] Speaker 5: The Artist's Way and many other books. And I love
[39:39] Speaker 5: it and it's something that I do every week actually,
[39:42] Speaker 5: and it's essentially a solo date that you go on
[39:48] Speaker 5: where you have to do something just for the joy
[39:50] Speaker 5: of it. So you know, her thinking is that it
[39:54] Speaker 5: really helps you come up with new ideas, but you're
[39:56] Speaker 5: not really hunting for them. You're just having a little
[39:58] Speaker 5: day out by yourself essentially. And she has a list
[40:01] Speaker 5: in The Artist's Way to sort of prompt you, and
[40:03] Speaker 5: there are things like go to a pet store, go
[40:06] Speaker 5: for a walk, go to an art gallery, go to
[40:09] Speaker 5: the cinema. It's so joyful coming up with ideas for
[40:12] Speaker 5: artists dates. And I think her thinking behind it is like,
[40:16] Speaker 5: you can't really be a creative person if you're not
[40:18] Speaker 5: refieling the well. You need to go and do things
[40:20] Speaker 5: and live out things for you to have ideas.
[40:23] Speaker 1: Any good artist states that you've been on recently.
[40:25] Speaker 5: I mean something that I do do is I go
[40:27] Speaker 5: on Google Maps and I'll type in independent bookstore and
[40:31] Speaker 5: I'll just see what ones I haven't been to within
[40:34] Speaker 5: like an hour's walk or whatever. And there's a little
[40:37] Speaker 5: bookstore in London which is on a canal boat, and
[40:42] Speaker 5: I just thought, I'm going to walk to the canal boat.
[40:45] Speaker 5: I'm going to see what's going on in this part
[40:47] Speaker 5: of London, and I'm going to go to the bookstore,
[40:49] Speaker 5: and then I'm going to walk home again. And that
[40:51] Speaker 5: was my artist date for that day.
[40:53] Speaker 1: I'm curious, do you still ever feel lonely when you're
[40:56] Speaker 1: on your own?
[40:57] Speaker 5: Well, when I was in New York for a month,
[40:59] Speaker 5: I had moments of feeling a bit lonely. There is
[41:02] Speaker 5: a tipping point of too much alone time. A month
[41:06] Speaker 5: was long. My husband did come and visit me right
[41:08] Speaker 5: in the middle for a few days, so it broke
[41:11] Speaker 5: it up a little bit. But there were just a
[41:12] Speaker 5: few nights where I was like walking down the Hudson
[41:15] Speaker 5: River path or whatever, and I would see like a
[41:18] Speaker 5: group of four girlfriends laughing their heads off, and I
[41:20] Speaker 5: would be like, Okay, I really miss my friends right now.
[41:23] Speaker 5: Or I would see them like a romantic sunset and
[41:27] Speaker 5: someone taking like a selfie with their boyfriend, and I'd
[41:29] Speaker 5: be like, oh, actually, you know, I really miss my partner.
[41:32] Speaker 5: But I think that's just normal. And then those feelings
[41:34] Speaker 5: would come and then they would go again. So it's
[41:37] Speaker 5: such a normal human emotion and so I just let
[41:41] Speaker 5: myself feel it, I think.
[41:42] Speaker 1: And so you mentioned this idea of the New York
[41:44] Speaker 1: trip was starting to feel long, right, Any advice on
[41:47] Speaker 1: getting the balance right between the kind of effective alone
[41:50] Speaker 1: time but not too much alone time.
[41:52] Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's about really understanding your own self
[41:57] Speaker 5: and your own mind and knowing when, and this is
[42:00] Speaker 5: a huge one that I'm still trying to work out,
[42:02] Speaker 5: is like sometimes what I need is a night in
[42:06] Speaker 5: by myself, and sometimes I need to put my shoo
[42:09] Speaker 5: on and I need to go out and see a friend.
[42:12] Speaker 5: So yeah, I think it's about thinking about what you
[42:15] Speaker 5: need in.
[42:16] Speaker 1: That moment anyways, that you've got an insight into what
[42:18] Speaker 1: that looks like over time.
[42:20] Speaker 5: I think over time it's like making a note of
[42:24] Speaker 5: how you feel. For example, recently, I just got over
[42:29] Speaker 5: an illness and I kept being like, no, no, no, I
[42:32] Speaker 5: should stay in again, I should stay in again. And
[42:34] Speaker 5: I was like, no, I know what I need. I
[42:36] Speaker 5: need to go out with someone who makes me laugh,
[42:38] Speaker 5: like one of my funniest friends. And that's what I did,
[42:41] Speaker 5: and I felt a million times better, Like it kind
[42:43] Speaker 5: of was like helping me heal my illness. And so yeah,
[42:48] Speaker 5: it's like being very intentional with what you need. And
[42:51] Speaker 5: we go in and out of being a caterpillar and
[42:53] Speaker 5: being a butterfly, don't we you know. But at the
[42:55] Speaker 5: heart of all of this, I've got to say, I
[42:57] Speaker 5: always need a bit of solitude.
[42:59] Speaker 1: And so for someone who's listening right now, who might
[43:02] Speaker 1: be really afraid to spend more time alone, what do
[43:04] Speaker 1: you think that fear is really about.
[43:06] Speaker 5: It's the same reason why maybe we're scared to put
[43:11] Speaker 5: down the alcohol in the evenings, or I don't know,
[43:15] Speaker 5: sit in a room and think about something. I think
[43:17] Speaker 5: there's a quote that's like every person's problem stems from
[43:22] Speaker 5: being unable to sit alone in a room.
[43:24] Speaker 1: The quote is actually from the French philosopher Blaze Pascal
[43:28] Speaker 1: All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit
[43:31] Speaker 1: quietly in a room alone.
[43:33] Speaker 5: So if it's like, for all the reasons we're on
[43:35] Speaker 5: our phones for like fourteen hours the day, it's the
[43:37] Speaker 5: same thing, Like we don't want to be alone with
[43:40] Speaker 5: our thoughts, I would assume it's because there's something that's
[43:45] Speaker 5: not quite right, and if we stop, we have to
[43:47] Speaker 5: confront what that thing is, whether that's that your marriage
[43:50] Speaker 5: is falling apart, or that you hate your job or
[43:55] Speaker 5: you don't like your life. I mean, it's easier to
[43:58] Speaker 5: plug the gap, isn't it than go and sit by
[44:00] Speaker 5: yourself and figure out what's going on. And I don't
[44:03] Speaker 5: blame anyone for that.
[44:05] Speaker 1: The first time you do it, in part because taking
[44:07] Speaker 1: this time to be alone can cars of you to
[44:09] Speaker 1: notice all the stuff that you've been avoiding. It can
[44:12] Speaker 1: be very uncomfortable, and so any advice for kind of
[44:14] Speaker 1: getting over that hump so that you can get to
[44:16] Speaker 1: enjoying it more.
[44:18] Speaker 5: I mean, I don't think it needs to be this
[44:22] Speaker 5: whole like I'm going to be a Buddhist monk for
[44:25] Speaker 5: the weekend and only be with myself and my thoughts. No,
[44:29] Speaker 5: I don't want to do that, that's too much. I
[44:32] Speaker 5: start the day with my morning pages, which is like
[44:34] Speaker 5: the Julia Cameron thing of journaling, writing three pages out
[44:39] Speaker 5: and honestly, if I do that in the morning, I'm
[44:41] Speaker 5: kind of done with the introspection. I don't need to
[44:43] Speaker 5: spend all day kind of you know, meditating or whatever.
[44:47] Speaker 5: It's not an exam that you need to pass. And
[44:50] Speaker 5: I think it's too daunting sometimes to have to be
[44:53] Speaker 5: with our thoughts all the time. Solitude for me is
[44:55] Speaker 5: about pleasure and enjoyment and enjoy enjoy it and celebrate
[45:00] Speaker 5: it and take up space even if you're on your own.
[45:03] Speaker 1: Loneliness can be painful, especially when it's chronic and leaves
[45:06] Speaker 1: us feeling disconnected well from other people and from ourselves.
[45:10] Speaker 1: But loneliness can also be a totally normal and totally
[45:14] Speaker 1: temporary feeling, one that signals the need for change or
[45:18] Speaker 1: an opportunity for growth. And that is the logic behind
[45:21] Speaker 1: this week's Happiness hot take. We need to rethink how
[45:24] Speaker 1: we talk about loneliness, and we need to fight our
[45:27] Speaker 1: urge to treat solitude as something suspicious. That way, we
[45:30] Speaker 1: can enjoy the benefits of social connection while also making
[45:34] Speaker 1: room for time alone, a skill that many of us
[45:37] Speaker 1: never learn to practice, but one that can help us
[45:39] Speaker 1: regulate our emotions, reconnect with ourselves, spark creativity, and even
[45:44] Speaker 1: strengthen our relationships. Next week, we'll wrap up our Happiness
[45:48] Speaker 1: Hot Take series with one final ever so hot Happiness
[45:51] Speaker 1: hot take. We should all bother each other a little
[45:54] Speaker 1: more often. I'm going to try to borrow one hundred
[45:57] Speaker 1: dollars from a strengder Excuse.
[45:59] Speaker 3: Me, we think I'll borrow a hundred dollars from you.
[46:02] Speaker 1: That's next week on a Happiness Lab with me, Doctor
[46:05] Speaker 1: Laurie Santos

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