This is especially true in times of personal turbulence, when the instinct is often for people to reach outside of themselves for support. “When people are experiencing crisis it’s not always just about you: It’s about how you are in society,” explains Jack Fong, a sociologist at California State Polytechnic University who has studied solitude. “When people take these moments to explore their solitude, not only will they be forced to confront who they are, they just might learn a little bit about how to out-maneuver some of the toxicity that surrounds them in a social setting.”

Therapeutic Nature Of Solitude

Fong developed this idea from the late German-American sociologist Kurt Wolff’s “surrender and catch” theory of personal epiphany. “When you have these moments, don't fight it. Accept it for what it is. Let it emerge calmly and truthfully and don't resist it,” Fong says. “Your alone time should not be something that you're afraid of.”

Surrender And Catch Theory Of Personal Epiphany

Productive solitude requires internal exploration, a kind of labor which can be uncomfortable, even excruciating. “It might take a little bit of work before it turns into a pleasant experience. But once it does it becomes maybe the most important relationship anybody ever has, the relationship you have with yourself.”

Productive Solitude And Relationship with Yourself

Productive Solitude 

“We’re drawn to identity-markers and to groups that help us define [ourselves]. In the simplest terms, this means using others to fill out our identities, rather than relying on something internal, something that comes from within,” Bowker says. “

Group Identity Markers

Such a separation requires what psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called the “capacity to be alone.” This is key to Bowker’s idea of solitude as self-strengthening.&nbsp;“You have to have that capacity: the ability to know that you’re gonna survive, that you’re gonna be okay if you’re not supported by this group,” Bowker says. “Put another way, a person who can find a rich self-experience in a solitary state is far less likely to feel lonely when alone.”

Self-Strengthening Solitude

For solitude to be beneficial, certain preconditions must be met. Kenneth Rubin, a developmental psychologist at the University of Maryland, calls them the “ifs.” Solitude can be productive only:&nbsp;if&nbsp;it is voluntary,&nbsp;if&nbsp;one can regulate one’s emotions “effectively,”&nbsp;if&nbsp;one can join a social group when desired, and&nbsp;if&nbsp;one can maintain positive relationships outside of it. When such conditions aren’t met, yes, solitude can be harmful.

Conditions Of Beneficial Solitude 

The only real teacher is not in a forest, or a hut or an ice cave in the Himalayas,” he once remarked. “It is within us.” One imagines him reaching the conclusion alone.

Teacher Within

I often feel lonely when I'm in groups and face an ongoing existential crisis. This article has affirmed some perspectives and gave me new ones to mull over.

Under the right circumstances, choosing to spend time alone can be a huge psychological boon.

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Religion & Spirituality

mindfulness

Mindfulness

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Health

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Travel

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Meditation

Being Alone Can Be Good for Your Mental Health

And crucially, there are geographic differences.&nbsp;A 2016 paper&nbsp;looking at the happiness levels of people with and without children in 22 countries found that the extent to which children make you happy is influenced by whether your country has child-care policies such as paid parental leave. Parents from Norway and Hungary, for instance, are happier than childless couples in those countries—but parents from Australia and Great Britain are less happy than their childless peers. The country with the greatest happiness drop after you have children? The United States

Geography Matters When Having Children

Raising children, then, has an uncertain connection to pleasure but may connect to other aspects of a life well lived, satisfying our hunger for attachment, and for meaning and purpose. The writer Zadie Smith puts it better than I ever could, describing having a child as a “strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight.”

Meaning And Attachment To Parenthood

Research has found that having children is terrible for quality of life—but the truth about what parenthood means for happiness is a lot more complicated.

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Philosophy

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Motivation & Inspiration

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Parenting

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Love & Relationships

What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness

Working for pay can be tedious, disappointing, even crushing, and having meaningful work is one way to make the hours pass more pleasurably. But the solution to those challenges should not necessarily be to position work as a centerpiece of our identity. By understanding the traps of passion, we can be better equipped to envision alternatives to it. Follow your passion if you must, but also find places outside of work to anchor your sense of self.

Work And Identity 

One solution is to trim paid work to fit into a more confined space in our lives: Work that can be contained in predictable hours, that provides freedom to engage in meaningful outside activities, and that allows ample time for friends, family, and hobbies may be a more desirable and self-preserving goal. The more pertinent question, then, isn’t “How can I change my career path to do work that I love?” but rather “How can I wrangle my work to leave me with more time and energy for the things and people that bring me joy?”

Containing Work In Predictable Hours

The passion-principle doctrine has become ubiquitous career advice; even most of the college career counselors and coaches I interviewed espoused it. But advising career aspirants and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/how-do-you-make-7-million-workers-disappear/620475/">burned-out workers </a>to “follow their dreams” presumes financial safety nets and social-network springboards that only upper-middle-class and wealthy individuals typically have reliable access to. I found that when working-class college graduates pursue their passion, they are about twice as likely as wealthier passion seekers to later end up in unstable, low-paid work far outside that passion.

Inequality In Passion Principle Doctrine

Another solution is to diversify our meaning-making portfolios—actively seek out new places to root a sense of identity and fulfillment. No one should entrust the bulk of their sense of self to a single social intuition, especially one within something as tempestuous as the labor market.

Diversify Meaning Making Portfolio

Defining my identity outside of work is the most important goal I set out for myself this year. This article has been insightful and helpful for me to work towards that goal.

Doing work that is fulfilling has become ubiquitous career advice, but no one should depend on a single social institution to define their sense of self.

Being Alone Can Be Good for Your Mental Health

What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness

Loving Your Job Is a Capitalist Trap

Desiree Lim