2023-06-27 08:31:31
June 27, 2023
Often misunderstood, loneliness is one of the best ways to listen to yourself and calm strong emotions. You still have to know how to tame it and make it your ally. Explanations.
Numerous studies have shown the health risks of loneliness. It can increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and early death, notes the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Loneliness is also considered a risk factor for mental health, capable of causing stress, anxiety and depression.
However, does loneliness really only have flaws? Isn’t it necessary to reconnect with oneself? For Johanna Rozenblum, a psychologist in Paris, solitude is a time for oneself, a time for “Listen to your “inner weather”, feel the emotions that drive us. It also allows you to calm your thoughts by slowing down.
Loneliness therefore means giving yourself time to live at your own pace, listen to the messages of your body, hear what our emotions are saying and make choices. It is probably at this time that we can make the most informed decisions. Concretely, what does this mean? “When the pace is frantic and you’re surrounded all day, it’s not easy to listen to each other and perceive discomfort, inconsistency, disagreement. Caught up in the tumult of our lives, we can miss certain signals. This is, for example, what happens in people who are burnt out. Time passed without them managing to see the exhaustion. It was then necessary for the body and the spirit to let go so that they understood that they must allow themselves time and rest”, says Johanna Rozenblum.
“A Discipline”
Despite a life at 100 km/h – family, work, sleep, gym, outings… – it is nevertheless necessary to take the time to slow down, clear your mind and listen to yourself regularly. So as not to miss what really matters. “Our emotions are changing, life events follow one another so taking time regularly is a way of taking stock as things happen, says the expert. For her, “it is a discipline”.
So like any discipline, knowing how to be alone is not innate, it can be learned. Loneliness is often scary – and we understand it given the bad reputation that sticks to its skin. Some have had the chance to learn it in childhood, others will have to learn to tame it and benefit from it later. “It’s not uncommon to see people who don’t know how to live alone, who don’t know how to take advantage of solitude. All of this makes you dependent on others and you spend more time figuring out how to take care of yourself than how to listen to yourself.” regret the psychologist. She continues, “you just have to be able to hear it and accept that you need this time for yourself”.
Differentiate loneliness from isolation
Psychology researcher Thuy-vy Nguyen, from the University of Durham, has worked on loneliness for ten years and has devoted an article to it in the online media The Conversation. As a preamble, she distinguishes loneliness from isolation, which is experienced on a daily basis and which, indeed, implies a feeling of distress.
Loneliness is very different. “Many of us have had days where there are problems at work, where things don’t go as planned, or where we take on too much and feel overwhelmed. What I found was that learning to take some time for yourself, a moment of solitude, might help you deal with those feelings.” she writes in this article published in April 2023.
For her work, she isolated students, with nothing to occupy themselves with or with a book or even a telephone. After 15 minutes of solitude, the strong emotions had fallen. “I concluded that loneliness has the ability to lower arousal levels, which means it can be helpful in situations where we feel frustrated, agitated or angry,” she explains.
It is necessary to change the paradigm, to succeed in seeing loneliness as a choice and not as an activity suffered. Choose to go to the cinema alone, to the restaurant alone, to travel alone. “I challenged myself to undertake some of these fun activities in my moments of solitude, and found the experience quite liberating. Other women have similar experiences, especially when traveling, which has made them feel empowered and liberated.” So of course traveling alone may be a bit of an extreme goal, but introducing a dose of solitude into your schedule regularly will be a very good start.
Source : Interview de la psychologue Johanna Rozenblum ; The importance of solitude – why time on your own can sometimes be good for you, Thuy-vy Nguyen, The Conversation, 27 avril 2023
Written by: Dorothée Duchemin – Edited by Vincent Roche
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