Transcript - Celebrating Solitude With Dr. Robert Coplan

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Celebrating Solitude With Dr. Robert Coplan

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03] MPJ: Thank you for joining us for episode 544 of Live Happy Now. We’ve heard a lot about the physical and emotional damage of loneliness, but it’s also true that spending time by yourself can provide a much-needed reset. Join us this week as host Paula Felps sits down with Dr. Robert Coplan, a psychologist, researcher, teacher, and author who has been studying solitude for more than 30 years.

In his new book, The Joy of Solitude, Rob explores its benefits, looks at the difference between solitude and loneliness, and explains how we can all learn to benefit from embracing it. Let’s have a listen.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:43] PF: Rob, thank you so much for joining me today on Live Happy Now.

[0:00:46] RC: Thanks so much, Paula. It’s great to be here.

[0:00:48] PF: Oh, I’ve been so looking forward to this conversation. I was looking forward to this book before I even knew it was being written because it really is a book that I’ve been wanting to read that I’ve been waiting for, because you are talking about loneliness versus solitude. We’re hearing so much right now about the dangers and the damage of loneliness. So, before we start, let’s really talk about what the difference is between those two, between solitude and loneliness.

[0:01:16] RC: Yeah, thank you. I think that’s a wonderful place to start, actually, and an important place to start. Because when we talk about solitude, I always try to preface everything that I say, not to be misunderstood that I’m in any way trying to minimize basically how much loneliness sucks, right? Loneliness is awful. We talk about the loneliness epidemic, and loneliness causes real damage to our mental health, and our well-being, and even our physical health. And it’s something that we really do need to pay a lot of attention to. But loneliness is not solitude.

Loneliness is a feeling. It’s a terrible feeling. It’s a feeling that we get when our social life does not live up to our expectations. Right? It’s a disconnection. It’s a discrepancy between how we want things to be socially, how much time we spend with others, the quality of the time that we spend with others. When that’s lacking from what we want, from our ideal, then we feel lonely. And loneliness just makes us feel awful.

But solitude is a place, right? So, it’s a place, especially if we choose to go there, where we can experience lots of really positive things. Now, we can feel lonely even when we are among other people. A lot of people have had the experience of going to a party where they don’t know very many people well, and they might spend their evening maybe standing quietly off in the corner and watching other people engage in what seem like really nice, intimate conversations. And people are laughing and they’re touching each other’s shoulders, and they feel really close and connected. And you spend the entire evening among all these other people, and you could leave feeling more lonely than even when you got there.

And so we can feel lonely among people, and we can be completely by ourselves and feel blissful and not lonely at all. I really think it’s important to make that distinction. It’s important to understand the huge negative impact of loneliness. But it’s also important to understand that loneliness is not solitude. And we all need social connection. This is what stops loneliness. Humans evolved. We need others. We need to be around other people. But I would argue, and I do so, that we also need solitude.

[0:03:10] PF: And are some people afraid of having that solitude that they’re just going to fill their lives and not because they’re afraid of being lonely, and they don’t take the solitude that they need?

[0:03:20] RC: Yeah, I mean, I think people avoid spending time alone for a lot of different reasons. There’s a famous experiment from a few years ago where a researcher in the US took a bunch of undergraduate students and basically asked them to sit alone in a room for 15 minutes with nothing, no technology, nothing to do, just sitting alone with their thoughts. And as you might expect, overall, these students did not enjoy that experience. They were mostly bored, and they found it quite negative. And they reported that they would not want to do it again.

But here’s a little fun twist. In one of the versions of the experiments, he gave the participants a chance to experience a mild electric shock. So they got to try it out ahead of time just to kind of see what it feels like. And it hurts a little bit, but they tried it out. And then he gave them a choice. You can sit for 15 minutes alone with your thoughts and do nothing. Or if you want to, while you’re there, you could give yourself this electric shock.

And he found that more than half of the participants would rather experience an aversive thing, a bad thing like an electric shock, some pain, even that to interrupt their negative experience of sitting 15 minutes by themselves. A lot of people really don’t like spending time alone. I mean, and for some of them, because it feels boring. But also, as you said, because it could feel very alone and feel very lonely. But it doesn’t have to be that way, right? Even people who are extroverted, and outgoing, and sociable, and love being around people, we all can benefit from some time alone. And time alone has a lot of really important benefits that it can offer us.

[0:04:39] PF: Yeah, I love that part in your book where you talk about that study. And then you invite us to spend our 15 minutes of solitude. However, you don’t include a buzzer or anything like that with a book that we can shock ourselves. So, I really found that – that really stopped me as I was reading it because I was shocked that people would want to have this electric shock, this painful experience, versus this sitting alone.

[0:05:03] RC: Yeah. I mean, for some people, this would be a blissful experience, right? It’s relaxing. It’s calm. You’ve turned your phone off. You’re not getting any interruptions. You’re getting a chance to catch your breath, to recharge your battery, to just sit quietly and be you. These are some of the things that solitude has to offer us. But for others, instead of a full experience like I just described, solitude can feel like an empty experience.

[0:05:26] PF: I’d love for you to tell our listeners how you started studying this topic because you have an interesting background in how this came about.

[0:05:35] RC: Yeah. So, I’m a developmental psychologist by training. So, I was trained as a child psychologist. And for most of my career, which has been going on for quite a long time now, I have been studying the development of shyness, and social withdrawal, and social anxiety in children. And so, particularly earlier in my career, I spent a lot of time watching kids at daycare, at preschool, in kindergarten, on the schoolyard. And I was particularly interested in the kids who were kind of interested in playing with others, but they were kind of feeling too shy. They ended off by themselves, maybe watching other kids, but not joining in.

And so we looked for these kids who were off by themselves. And while we were looking for these shy children who were generally interested but kind of a little bit too nervous to make that first step, we also found another group of kids that seemed to be off by themselves, but just seemed to be quite happy and content to play. And they just would play, and they would build with blocks, or they would do something in the sand, or they would do a puzzle. And if someone came along and invited them to do something interesting, they’d say, “Sure, no problem.” It didn’t seem like they were nervous, or anxious, or didn’t want to play with others. But when that exchange was over, they toddled back over to where they were and kept on with their puzzle or their books.

And that really got me interested in this being alone but liking it kind of group, which had really been understudied. And we didn’t really know very much about kids who might enjoy doing that. And that kind of sparked my journey on looking at what it is to enjoy, and value, and feel good about spending time alone, and how can we promote that in people.

[0:06:58] PF: And it was so interesting as I read that part of the book, and you’re describing these children and the different way they play, because I could think about people who are adults in my own life who are that exact same makeup. And I found that really compelling to see that, yeah, that’s something we carry through all the way into adulthood and have those same kind of reactions.

[0:07:20] RC: It really is interesting to see how much of a metaphor that carries over, right? So in the book, we describe the child who’s happy to play by themselves, and we describe other children who want to play but are feeling a little bit nervous. So they watch and they don’t join in. And then other kids who are just bouncing around from place to place and happy to be a part of any group. And when they’re on their own, is when they look a little bit uncomfortable because they are quickly eyeing what the next opportunity for. And you’re right, it really does provide kind of the building blocks for the kinds of personalities and social exchanges that we see in adults.

[0:07:51] PF: And I feel like if parents have this information and they can see that in their children, that’s going to change the way that they respond to their children’s needs. Is that correct?

[0:08:03] RC: Yeah, I think that’s really important. And I think solitude has a danger of becoming a bit of a lost art in our society today because there’s so many alternatives, especially for kids, right? And I’m of the generation, when I was young, I would get kicked out onto the block and go play for a while. And if I couldn’t find any kids to play with, then I had to entertain myself. That’s much less common today for a whole bunch of different reasons. And kids are also programmed more than they’ve ever been programmed before. There’s lots of really interesting and amazing extracurricular activities available. All different kinds of sports and activities. And it’s actually quite wonderful, I think, that kids can find their niche in terms of finding a passionate activity that they want to engage in. I think that’s wonderful.

But the danger, I think, becomes if they’re programmed and they’re around other kids in these activities so much, then we kind of lose out on that unexpected, alone, solo play time that I think is really important for children’s development. And children need to develop what we call the capacity for solitude, right? It’s a bit of a skill. You have to build it up like a muscle, right? They have to learn how to be alone and how to spend time by themselves so that they can benefit from all the good stuff that solitude has to offer us.

[0:09:13] PF: And specifically for people who are very creative, that solitude is particularly important. I know, as a child, I started writing stories literally as soon as I could write words. And that was my time. I always wanted that time to write a story after school and do things like that. And I think of children today, as you said, they’re very programmed. There’s a lot of things going on. And would I still be doing that if I had had TikTok or all these other things that are grabbing at my attention? What is the importance of being able to realize, for creative nurturing and just for your psychological well-being, that you need to build in some solitude time for your children?

[0:09:55] RC: Solitude, I like to think of it as an incubator for creativity, right? So, it’s a place where ideas can grow. And it’s that for several different reasons. For one thing, boredom is a bit of a gateway for solving problems, right? If we are stuck on something, there’s actually really good research to suggest that the best way to solve a problem that’s stuck in your head is to think about something else. And not only that, just think about nothing, right? Just go off and find something that can keep you occupied enough so that you’re not too bored, but actually not going to take up too much of your conscious attention. And just let your mind kind of chew away on things. Let it churn away and spin in the background. And that’s actually how it processes a lot of really interesting ideas and lets you think outside the box a little bit.

And there’s really interesting research to suggest that problems get solved when we kind of give it that incubation period, where we just give ourselves something else to do. We switch to a different activity, and then we let our mind wander wherever it’s going to wander. And it makes connections that we’re not going to make consciously. And then suddenly, we’re going to get that little aha moment that’s going to allow us to solve that problem.

[0:10:54] PF: So what about if we are struggling with loneliness? Do we still need solitude? Because if we’re feeling lonely, but yet we still need alone time.

[0:11:03] RC: Both of those things, I think, can be addressed in different ways. One of the main themes of my book, I think, is finding the right balance between socializing and solitude. And it’s very clear that everybody needs social connection. We all need other people. And as I would argue and continue to, we also all need solitude. And I think it’s just a question of finding that right combination. And in the book, I talk about the Goldilocks fairy tale, right? And there’s this idea that Goldilocks will try first the porridge that’s too hot and then the porridge that’s too cold. And then she finds for her the one that is just right.

And it’s that just right area that everybody has to find in terms of what the correct balance is for them. What’s the optimal combination for socializing and solitude that’s going to help you personally? And that’s why I’m always a little bit skeptical when people say everybody needs 3 hours of solitude every day. Or we all need to have four hours of social connection. We all need both of those things, but we all don’t need the exact same amount of those things. And I think that’s a really important message to get out is that everybody needs both, but everybody needs their own personal just-right Goldilocks combination. And I think if we can spend a little time investing in finding the right combination that works for us, that’s going to maximize our well-being.

[0:12:16] PF: And how do they go about finding that? I find that such an interesting thing to think about because we had an aunt in our life who lived alone. She lived with her cats. I remember talking to her, and she’s like, I’ve never been lonely. She didn’t understand loneliness. And if you looked at her from the outside, you’d think that is the person who is most going to be susceptible to loneliness. And she wasn’t. And then we know other people who didn’t live alone and who are very, very lonely. How do you find what it is that you actually need?

[0:12:45] RC: Yeah. I mean, you’re talking about a couple of different issues there. One is what does the person need inside? What’s their individual need that they’re going to feel content with? And it’s important for us as a society to understand that people are going to be different in that regard. And some people are not going to need a lot of social connection and still going to feel happy, and content, and peaceful, and growing in their well-being. And others are going to require more.

And I would say for most people, we could always use probably a little bit more of the one that we don’t think we want to do. So if you’re sociable and outgoing, even if you don’t want to, you could probably use a little bit more solitude. And if you tend to spend more time alone, it’s probably good for you to spend a little bit more time than you want with other people.

And people are actually – humans are lousy at predicting how they’re going to feel in these kinds of situations. They call that effective forecasting. It’s like trying to predict how you’re going to feel in a social situation or when you’re alone. And we generally tend to underestimate how enjoyable something is going to be, particularly around meeting other people. People think that meeting a stranger and talking to them is going to feel stressful or it’s going to make them feel self-conscious. But after you do, you end up feeling happier.

I mean, there’s a very well-established principle in social psychology that spending time with others, even strangers, it raises our mood and it makes us feel better. When you’re thinking, “Okay, do I really want to go out and do this?” Sometimes it’s good to push yourself and do exactly that. But at the same time, we also tend to overestimate how boring solitude is going to be or how lonely we’re going to feel.

And here, I think choice is really important. We have to choose to spend that time alone. We have to frame it in our minds as not a punishment, which solitude can be, right? We put kids in their room alone. We call it a timeout. That’s a punishment, right? We put prisoners in solitary confinement when they do the worst offenses that they can, even when they’re already in jail.

So solitude is already construed as a punishment. But we have to kind of flip it around in our minds, and we have to think about it as an opportunity or even as a reward. You are being gifted with some me time. You are being given the present of just being able to do something that you want to do. Having control over your actions, not having to modulate your facial expressions, not having to worry about your posture, or what you’re saying, or paying attention to what someone else is saying. You have your privacy. You have your control. You have your autonomy. You can choose what you want to do. And that’s a place where some really nice things can happen as long as you frame it and see it as that opportunity, as opposed to a punishment.

[0:15:08] MPJ: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

And now let’s hear more from Dr. Robert Coplan.

[0:15:21] PF: And I think some of the people who are the best at doing that are moms. Moms with young children. Because I have never seen any subset of people crave alone time in the bathroom as much as mothers with children under the age of four. And you talk about that in your book, the woman that went running. She started jogging and was ready. When the husband came home, she’s out the door.

[0:15:43] RC: That’s right. She had a day with the kids and was standing at the door with her sneakers. And as soon as her husband opened the door, she just said hi and ran off literally.

[0:15:51] PF: Yeah. So, what can the moms teach us about that need for solitude?

[0:15:57] RC: Yeah. I think you raised a larger theme that I talk about in the book, and that’s this idea that it’s possible to feel like you’re not getting enough solitude, right? So, we talked about loneliness, and loneliness is often considered and construed as being the feeling that you’re getting too much solitude, right? Particularly unwanted solitude. And when we feel like we’re getting too much solitude, we’re on the wrong side of that just-right equation, the porridge is too hot, then it can cause bad feelings. It can cause feelings of depression. We can feel sad. We can feel angry. We can feel anxious.

But a few years ago, we also started looking into the phenomena that maybe it’s also possible to feel like you’re not getting enough solitude, that you’re not getting enough time alone. And when we went looking into what had been learned about this topic before, not only had it not really been studied before, but it didn’t really even have a name. This was a feeling that we hadn’t actually put a name on in the English language. And so we had to make one up. We called it the mirror image of loneliness.

If loneliness is a discrepancy between our desired social life and our actual social life, we defined this new term. We called it aloneliness. And aloneliness is the discrepancy between the solitude that we would like to have, the quality and the quantity of our time alone, and the kind that we are actually getting. And it turns out, now that we’ve studied it for a few years, people don’t get enough time alone. And whatever that enough is, again, it’s personal for everyone.

If you feel like you are not getting enough, then you also feel stressed, and you’re more likely to feel anxious, and depressed, and sad, and be in a bad mood. And it seems to have some of the same negative impacts on our mental health and our well-being as loneliness does. And so that’s a really important thing, I think, for people to at least acknowledge and understand and say this is a thing.

And it turns out in some subsequent studies, guess who tends to feel that the most? Moms of young kids, right? Not surprisingly, this is a group that almost gets zero time alone. And of course, they’re going to feel frustrated and they’re going to feel anxious. And then, of course, they feel guilty, and they feel somehow that they’re not doing their duty if they’re not spending every moment with their infant. And it’s absolutely exhausting.

I mean, for moms, of course, it should be absolutely okay to ask for a little bit of a break. To say I need some alone time. That should be okay, of course, for young moms. But it should be okay for anybody, right? And that’s really a message I’d like to get out there. You shouldn’t have to lie on a Friday night to your friends and say that you’re not feeling well when you really just want to stay home in cozy socks and read a book by the fire. You should be able to say, “I want to stay home and read a book by the fire. I don’t want to go out and be around people tonight.” That should be okay. We really need to normalize that it’s okay to say that you would like to be alone.

It’s even okay to say to your romantic partner that you would like to spend some time apart and you would like to have a little bit of me time, a little bit of alone time. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love them. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have a high-quality relationship. And now there’s even some research to suggest that when you get to spend that time alone, it makes you experience the subsequent time with someone else more positively. Now you can say to your romantic partner, “Let me spend a little bit of alone time. It’s going to be worth it. It’s going to be even better for both of us when we’re together. It’s going to help our relationship.”

[0:19:00] PF: Yeah. That whole absence makes the heart grow fonder applies in a lot of different ways here.

[0:19:05] RC: Yeah.

[0:19:06] PF: And so do you think – because I love the research that you’ve done. I love all the things that you present in this book. Do you think we’re going to start paying as much attention to the need for solitude as we are now giving to loneliness? Because there has been a lot of focus placed on the damage that loneliness is doing to us.

[0:19:26] RC: Yeah. I hope that’s true. And again, I don’t want to downplay the focus on loneliness because we do need to pay attention to loneliness. It really is a very serious problem. And I’m always so worried that when I play up the benefits of solitude, it might somehow be interpreted that I’m saying that loneliness is overblown or that the loneliness epidemic is not a real thing. It is a real thing. And we really do need to pay attention to it. But that doesn’t preclude also saying that we could still use some time in chosen solitude, right?

Choosing to spend time alone, making that a part of our daily routine. It doesn’t have to be 2 hours a day. That’s a myth, right? There’s a myth that says you have to walk 2 hours in the forest in order to get some of these benefits. It’s not true. Even 15 minutes a day. Start even smaller. Go 5 minutes if it’s not something that you enjoy right away. Like I said before, you can build up those solitude muscles just like you would train to run a race, right? You’re not going to run the whole marathon in the first day. You’re going to take your time and gradually build it up, right?

I think there’s another myth that says that in order to get the benefits of solitude, you have to sit alone with your legs crossed on a mat and meditate. Don’t get me wrong, meditation is awesome and it has a lot of really positive benefits for our health and well-being, but that’s not the only way to get benefits from solitude. It turns out you can do a lot of different things. Read a book, listen to music, go for a walk, knit. Anything that’s going to make you feel engaged, and enjoyable, and relaxed while you’re by yourself, that’s going to help you get those benefits. And if it’s meditation, then it’s great. And if not, then you do you. Just do your own stuff, and you’ll find you’ll get a lot of those benefits.

[0:20:55] PF: And I was going to ask you about that because, really, what qualifies as solitude time? Does it matter what you’re doing? Is it like can you be watching a true crime show and that’s still your solitude?

[0:21:06] RC: Yeah. I mean, it’s whatever you are going to feel content, and calm, and relaxed, and engaged, and enjoy, right? If, for you, it’s watching an old movie or it’s you know playing Candy Crush on your phone for a little while to let your brain wander. Whatever it’s going to do to let you unwind and relax, that’s really what we’re looking for, right? You’re giving yourself a chance to have a break. It’s a respite from all the input that we get when we’re around other people. And it doesn’t have to be sit in silence. It doesn’t have to be do yoga. Those things are great, but it doesn’t have to be just that in order to get those benefits.

I should at least put a caveat there about the use of technology because, of course, technology has a way of interrupting ourselves, too, right? Some people, particularly extroverts who will do almost anything to avoid spending time alone will be alone. And then, of course, they’ll Facetime their friends, or they’ll text, or they’ll scroll social media. And it’s almost like they’re social washing their alone time is a term that I like to use. You’re not really doing yourself a huge favor if you are engaged in social interactions, even if they’re over your phone while you’re in solitude.

One suggestion would be at least turn off the notifications on your phone while you are alone so you don’t get interrupted. Because if you’re interrupted every 5 minutes, that’s not really being by yourself. And don’t engage in social interaction because that takes away from some of the emptiness that solitude can offer, which is a good thing. But it doesn’t mean you have to turn your phone off. Because some people will listen to music on their phone. And some people might watch cat videos. And then some people might read on their phone. And there’s meditation and breathing apps and stuff that will help you in solitude.

So, it’s not really a question of turning it off, per se, although some people might want to do that. It’s really just using it for good instead of using it for evil, as I would say. And definitely don’t scroll through social media because that’s not good under any circumstances. Nobody needs to feel better doing that.

[0:22:46] PF: No. That’s not good.

[0:22:48] RC: Yeah.

[0:22:49] PF: Yeah. You wrote a fabulous column in Psychology Today. And we’re going to share that with our listeners. And that really breaks down some of the things that you can do if people need some ideas for how they can spend that time. Because you do say that, in just 15 minutes, we can recharge or reset our emotions. And how does that work? How is it that, in just that short time, we can really reset ourselves?

[0:23:14] RC: Yeah. So what we’ve learned from the research is that what solitude seems to be good at is taking the edge off of emotions, right? So you can have a high intensity and a low intensity emotion, right? So a high intensity emotion would be like excited. But a lower intensity emotion would be like calm, right? And you might have anxious versus sort of quiet. And so when we go into solitude, because we get a break from all of that input, it’s almost like we give our emotions a chance to reset. It takes the edge off. It just sort of calms them down. It doesn’t necessarily make you feel more happy or more sad. So, not necessarily more positive or more negative, just takes the intensity down a few notches, which can be helpful in helping to regulate your emotions. And when you can regulate your emotions a little bit better, it helps you regulate your thoughts a little bit better, and that can help you get out of some of those emotional constraints.

[0:24:01] PF: Yeah, there’s so many benefits. And as we talked about earlier, parents can observe this in their children. What are some ways that they can look at this and start teaching them to use that? Because as adults, now we’ve got to relearn this. Like, “Oh, finally, we have the manual here. So we know how to do it for ourselves.” How can we make this easier for our children?

[0:24:22] RC: Yeah. I think solitude serves different functions at different ages for kids. For very young children, of course, we can’t leave them alone for too much time because there’s safety issues, right? You’re not going to put a one-year-old alone in a room and leave them there for an hour. They’re going to get into way too much trouble by doing that.

But by the time they’re in the preschool age, or two, three, four years of age, my suggestion would be to just try to schedule in some solo play time just regularly throughout their weekly schedule where they just get some toys and they – you can be nearby and you can be within an earshot. And you can be checking in on them, of course. But just let them let them play and explore.

And for very young children, solitude is a place to try out new things. It’s a chance for exploration. It’s a chance for them to take the edge off of some of the big emotions that they’re dealing with at that time. And it’s really important for them to develop what I called before that, capacity for solitude. And you got to start young, right? They have to learn from a young age that they can entertain themselves. That it’s okay to not be necessarily programmed and predictable activities every time. Sometimes they just have to figure something out for themselves to do. That’s for younger kids.

For older kids, the social setting really starts to change, right? So they’re at school all the time. There’s extracurricular activities. They’re playing with friends. The expectations go up. They’re supposed to be spending more time with their friends. There’s that social norms that always peer pressure is on them. They want to conform with what everyone else is doing. And so there’s a lot of pressure to be around other people and to act in certain ways around other people. And so that’s almost like a conspiracy to deny them of solitude, right?

And it’s a particular time when they need that solitude as a break from all of those social pressures. A chance to catch their breath. A chance to think about some of the big changes that are going on in their lives as they move into this more active social life. And so they might need a little help from you to help them schedule and regulate some alone time so that they’re not always caught up in the constant pressure to interact socially with others, whether it’s in person, or on their phones, or in chats, or etc. There’s going to be so many things pulling at them. It’ll really be helpful for them to have that break. And you can give them a good excuse for having some of that solitary time.

For teenagers, of course, solitude actually tends to become more viewed as a positive place. And that’s mostly because a lot of teenagers are trying to figure out their identity, right? They’re trying to figure out who am I? And who do I want to be? Privacy concerns go up. There’s a lot of big changes that are going on inside. And solitude is a place where they can figure that stuff out, where they can be themselves, where they can feel authentic, where they can act in a way that they would want to act, where they don’t have to worry about what everyone else is thinking about them.

And so it’s important for parents to understand that teenagers are going to need that alone time. They’re going to need their privacy. We have to try to gift it to them. We have to make sure we understand that sometimes the best thing for them is going to be to be alone in their room with the door closed.

And I’ll put a little caveat there. And I think this applies to all ages. As, of course, we know, solitude can also be a sad place. It can also be a lonely place. It can be an angry place. It can be an anxious place. And of course, as parents, we always want to be very mindful that if our kids are spending time alone, we’re checking in with them. We’re monitoring. We’re making sure that they’re doing okay because we don’t want it to tip over into something that’s going to be unhealthy.

[0:27:26] PF: That’s great insight. And so, what would you say is your main piece of advice for all of us to make solitude a healthy and happy experience?

[0:27:35] RC: I would say the main piece of advice is don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Don’t put too many rules. Don’t have too many assumptions about what solitude is and what it isn’t, and what we should be doing, what we shouldn’t be doing. Everyone can find their own right balance. Everybody can find what they’re comfortable with and what they feel is going to be most helpful to them. It doesn’t have to be the same as your romantic partner. It doesn’t have to be the same as your neighbor, or your parents, or your grandparents, or someone at work. You get comfortable in your own just-right combination of socializing and being with others. And then that should be okay.

If it makes you feel good and you’re feeling happy about it and you have that right balance for yourself, then I think we should all be standing up on the tops of the buildings and yelling out that this is okay. And that everyone can find their own right balance, and that’s what’s going to make things the best for them.

[0:28:20] PF: That is fantastic. And this book is such a phenomenal guidebook to help us through that, help us reconnect with ourselves, with our solitude. I’m so excited to share this with our listeners. So excited to let them know more about you. We’re going to tell them how they can find some of your other work, how they can find you on social media, all those things. But as I let you go, what is the main thing that you hope readers get out of your book?

[0:28:43] RC: I would say the main thing I hope that readers get would just be to raise their awareness that solitude can be a good thing, and that it’s okay to ask for it, and that it’s okay to want to do it. And that solitude can be a place where we can all get some really good benefits.

[0:28:57] PF: I love it. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for writing this book. Best of success with it, because I know it’s going to change a lot of lives.

[0:29:05] RC: Thank you so much, Paula. Thanks for having me.

[0:29:11] MPJ: That was Dr. Robert Coplan, talking about the benefits of solitude. If you’d like to learn more about Rob and the research he’s doing, follow him on social media or read some of his other work. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. That’s all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Michelle Palmer Jones reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

The surprising benefits of spending just 15 minutes alone each day.
Myths about loneliness and solitude, including why living alone doesn’t mean being lonely.
The science of “aloneliness” — the longing for solitude — and how it impacts mental health.

Visit Dr. Rob’s website here.

Read his column on solitude from Psychology Today.

Follow Dr. Rob on Social Media:

X: @rjcoplan

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