Saturday, June 22, 2013

On Solitude



In a period of only a few months, Kathy Airoldi of West Hartford, Conn., bought a house, got bumped out of her teaching job of 10 years (into a less-desirable job) and separated from her husband.

The 43-year-old teacher and track coach dealt with the stress by being alone.

A sometime marathon runner whose typical daily run of eight miles takes her out of the house for an hour, Airoldi says occasional solitary weekends on Cape Cod and the loneliness of the long-distance run are comforts to her.

"I'm a person who has to have solitary time," she says.

In desiring solitude, Airoldi is not alone.

Many pyschotherapists consider solitude a basic human need. In his 1988 book, "Solitude: A Return to the Self," British psychologist Anthony Storr argued that the definition of mental health must recognize the importance of solitary periods. But professionals are loathe to prescribe techniques: How a person spends time alone--and the amount of time he or she needs--vary widely.

Irving Altman, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, has written on the issue of privacy. His book, "The Environment and Social Behavior," describes people as beings who vacillate between contact with others and separation.

"Most cultures do provide their members with mechanisms or ways in which they can be in or out of contact with other people," says Altman. "An extreme of either type would be deviant or unusual for any society." Altman says people need a social life and a life apart.

For some, moments apart are spent in an absorbing hobby. Others use the time to reflect or to meditate.

The benefits of taking time alone may go far beyond the realm of mental health, says Father James J. Gill, a psychotherapist and Catholic priest who works as a consultant at Hartford's Institute of Living.

Gill, who works in Hartford with over-stressed professionals, also is involved in research in San Francisco that is exploring stress and its effect on physical health.

"Solitude makes it possible for you to keep your well-being optimal by giving you an opportunity to deal with the past and the future, along with the present," says Gill. Recalling the good things from our past helps us develop gratitude.

"Gratitude helps to foster the development of love," says Gill. "Certainly there's evidence--particularly to the people working with the relationship between mind and body--that people who experience tenderness and affection and love and gratitude and peace are able to keep their immune systems functioning optimally, and this works to cut down physical illnesses, such as bacterial and viral infections and even cancer."

Facing the pain and failures of the past, he says, is a good way to start eradicating their causes. Solitude also helps people do some solid planning for the future, Gill says, "so you don't just take the events of life as they come."

As for the present, Gill says, solitude helps you make rational decisions: "You're not as inclined to be impulsive; you're not as inclined to be foolish in doing things that are self-destructive or harmful to other people."

As someone familiar with both the clamor of offices and the quiet of the cloister, he observes that those interested in developing a spiritual life have to do so, in part, in solitude.

Perhaps the first step in the quest for solitude is to want it. For many raised in a culture of boom boxes and television, this isn't easy.

"An individual has to be able to develop a taste for it," says Richard B. Clarke, an Amherst, Mass., psychotherapist who practices in Hartford and Amherst. Clarke also leads weekly Zen Buddhist meditation sessions--and regular weeklong retreats conducted in silence--for Zen students in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

He says that children, growing up with television, rock music and endless activities, often have an underdeveloped taste for solitude.

Without some positive solitary experience, people left to their own devices "may feel something disturbing about the absence of activities. It may drop into boredom or they may feel they're going crazy when they are without the usual distractions."

And the need for solitude can often be misunderstood in marriage and other close relationships. One party wants some; the other interprets this as rejection.

"Americans, in general, are reluctant to get to know themselves in depth," says Gill, who says that many of his therapy clients are hard-driving professionals who claim to have no time for solitary, "unproductive" moments.

Clarke and Gill seem to agree on this point: Those unused to spending time alone should set time apart in a calm setting and try to relax the body and release the mind from its current cares and concerns.

"I would encourage people to take walks in the woods, if they can," says Clarke.

He sometimes suggest that clients project themselves 10 years into the future and look back at what is troubling them now. "A lot of these things would be of little significance. Try to adopt that same attitude now."

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