Why being alone for a while can be dangerous
Solitude is an introvert’s superpower. This requires extensive alone time. But the tricky part is knowing how much alone time is too much alone time.
In a lot of Biblical stories, God banished people to roam the earth alone as punishment. In prisons, they put prisoners in solitary confinement as punishment for misbehaving.
You see the common denominator here, forcing people to spend long periods by themselves can send them to the brink of insanity.
This is why it was used as a tool for punishment.
This alone can explain why being alone for a while is dangerous.
Too much solitude
Prolonged solitude can lead to a breakdown in social skills as we miss out on balanced feedback and communication with others.
Solitude can be a gift and a curse when it is not used correctly.
Solitude is needed for introverts to live their best lives. But like everything else, too much can lead to some toxic habits. It is like a game of chess attempting to find the right balance of solitude and social interaction.
Why is lack of social interaction bad and how do you balance it:
- Social skills are an essential part of life, especially when it comes to transactional networking regarding career advancement. Going through periods of long duration without social interaction will hinder your social skills.
- Too much alone time creates some mental health issues. Everyone needs some form of human connection. The type of human connection is just as important. Random or work relationships are not the same as being around people you feel 100% comfortable with.
- Introverts have vivid imaginations. This can be a gift and a curse. When spending time in solitude, the mind is at an all-time high regarding thinking about thoughts. If these thoughts are negative, they can lead to severe depression. Social connections help introverts remove themselves from their minds.
Elle Hunt of The Guardian – It’s true that too much time alone can focus our attention on how we feel our social connections to be lacking, in quantity or especially quality: a condition for loneliness. There is also the risk of rumination, contributing to the development of depression or anxiety.
Feeling like you are going crazy
There are increased risks of developing mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness when isolated for long periods.
When it comes to having an active mind, it can play cruel tricks on you.
One thing introverts struggle with is the constant cycle of overthinking. This battle with the mind causes some pretty intense feelings. It is just you and your thoughts battling it out to see what is real and what isn’t.
What are some feelings or mental health issues that may pop up when you are alone for a long time:
- Cabin Fever = Cabin fever is being inside in complete isolation like bears do for the winter. The only difference is bears sleep while we overthink during this time. This state of mind isn’t limited to staying inside during the winter, it is the deterioration of the mind for long isolated periods.
- Restlessness = Restlessness is not being able to sit still. Social connection helps introverts stay in the moment. This keeps the mind from wandering and staying present. The complete opposite of this allows the mind to wander. This wandering causes boredom and once boredom sets in, addictions and finding things to eliminate boredom becomes a priority.
- Depression = Depression is caused by many factors. Everyone’s definition of it is going to vary based on life experience. Being alone conjures up feelings of inadequacy. This feeling only intensifies the longer you isolate yourself from the world. We are taught that being alone equates to our self-worth.
You lose what you don’t use
Isolation can lead to a sedentary lifestyle, creating a risk for various physical health problems like obesity, heart disease, etc.
The less you use something, the harder it is to regain control of it.
Isolation is the by-product of spending too much time alone. Not only will isolation harm you mentally but physically as well. Your body eventually adapts to your environment regarding how much or little you move.
What are some issues you can develop from not moving your body enough:
- Lack of mobility = Mobility is something we take for granted when we are younger. There are two factors other than not moving around enough that affect our mobility: age and genetics.
- Blood Circulation = According to Samuel L Fink, a sedentary lifestyle of sitting all day can cause up to a 50% increase in blood pressure.
- Weight Gain = This can be an obvious effect of isolating yourself for too long. Isolation causes you not to move your body. Being a hermit will cause plaque to build up in your arteries.
You start thinking like a caveman
There are restrictions to personal growth and learning from others’ experiences when isolated for too long.
Isolation creates a dangerous state of comfort that will hinder your progress.
Introverts alone can be a gift and a curse because the solitude they feel comes with an addicting euphoric feeling. Introverts have to force themselves to remove themselves from their comfortable space to not succumb to mental health factors such as lack of personal development. Comfort will slowly kill your cognitive skills.
How does too much alone time hinder your personal development:
- We hold up a mirror to ourselves from how we relate to the world. Too much isolation severs our connection to relate to others.
- You lose any momentum that you had facing any challenges or obstacles that you were overcoming.
- You start to develop laziness and bad habits. These habits are easier to develop and hard to break.
Michael Bond of BBC – We’ve known for a while that isolation is physically bad for us. Chronically lonely people have higher blood pressure, are more vulnerable to infection, and are also more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Loneliness also interferes with a whole range of everyday functioning, such as sleep patterns, attention and logical and verbal reasoning. The mechanisms behind these effects are still unclear, though what is known is that social isolation unleashes an extreme immune response – a cascade of stress hormones and inflammation. This may have been appropriate in our early ancestors, when being isolated from the group carried big physical risks, but for us the outcome is mostly harmful.
Letting in the silent killer of bad habits
Solitude can lead to the development of self-destructive habits such as overeating, alcoholism, etc due to loneliness and lack of supervision.
There is a reason fitness trainers will always have a job.
People pay trainers to motivate them. It is far easier to get someone to motivate you than it is to motivate yourself. This is why self-motivation is challenging.
Spending too much alone time kills any motivation or momentum you may have had because there isn’t anyone or anything to push you.
Even if you have the strongest reason for being inspired, lazy habits will eventually get the best of you as you sit alone with your thoughts.
How to stay motivated when you have to spend long periods by yourself:
- Create an inner world in your mind because this can be your mental sanctuary or your mental prison.
- Create a daily routine and stick to it no matter the conditions. When you continue your routine daily, you are building mental resilience and this will lessen the chances of you building bad habits.
- It is important to create balance when it comes to building good habits but do not take too many days off. The chances of creating terrible habits increase along with being alone. It is harder to build a good habit than it is to stop a bad one.
The best way to optimize anything is to find the right balance. This isn’t everyone else’s version of balance, but your definition of balance.
Solitude and spending time alone isn’t any different. Spending time alone can bring you peace and clarity or it can bring you mental pain and overthinking.