People will do a lot to avoid being seen alone in public. Eat at the bar instead of a table. Stare at their phones through entire meals. Arrange plans with people they’d otherwise cancel on just to avoid being the person sitting there by themselves. As though being seen without company is evidence of being a sad, lonely loser.
According to Psychology Today, therapists hear versions of this all the time—the discomfort of being seen alone, the anxiety of not having someone to share thoughts with in the moment, the low-level dread of what it might mean if nobody reaches out. People will spend time with people they don’t even like, just to sidestep it.
The problem with all of that is the conflation of two things that aren’t the same. Being alone is a physical circumstance. Feeling lonely is an emotional state. They can overlap, but they don’t have to. And research increasingly suggests that voluntary time alone—chosen, not imposed—has measurable benefits that most people are actively avoiding.
Why You Should Spend More Time Alone, According to Psychologists
Thuy-vy Nguyen, a psychologist at Durham University who runs the Solitude Lab and co-authored the 2024 book Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone, has spent years studying exactly this. Her research, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that just 15 minutes of solitude produced a meaningful emotional shift—reducing high-arousal feelings like anxiety and excitement while increasing low-arousal states like calm. The effect didn’t occur when participants were with someone else. It required actual aloneness.
Nguyen’s research does make one important clarification. Solitude you choose is a completely different animal than solitude that happens to you. Choosing to eat alone on a Tuesday is not the same psychological experience as sitting home because nobody called. One does something for you. The other hollows you out. The hours look identical on paper.
Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote about the “capacity to be alone” in 1958, arguing that the ability to sit comfortably with yourself is a mark of psychological development. The idea has held up. People who can tolerate solitude usually have clearer senses of their own values, needs, and limits—things that get convoluted when someone is constantly orienting around other people. Relationships have a way of pulling you away from yourself, especially when accommodating others becomes the default move.
The practical application of this doesn’t require a meditation retreat or a weekend cabin. Nguyen’s research suggests 15 minutes can make a difference. A walk without headphones. Dinner without a phone to scroll through. Sitting somewhere without filling the silence immediately. The goal, according to Psychology Today, isn’t comfort right away; it’s familiarity, built slowly, with your own company.
Fifteen minutes. That’s what the research asks for. Most people spend longer than that refreshing their inbox waiting for someone to text back.
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