Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
All by myself
In the age of information overload and social media, disconnecting and being alone can be good for the soul
The first time he left to be alone, he was afraid.
It was a three-day retreat in a cabin in rural Arkansas, and Tom Elliott wasn’t sure how it would go.
“Will I get bored?”
“Am I going to run out of things to talk to God about?”
“Am I going to be able to do it?”
And he was afraid when the alone-time extended to five days, then eight days; the same questions invaded his thoughts. He started doing the retreats in Logan County as a part of what has been a gradual, lifelong journey to get to know God better, creating time alone to read his Bible, pray and reflect. But now the former Catholic priest looks forward to what has become a highlight in his life — at least one hour of alone-time every day and a retreat about every 18 months. “I was a little fearful at first, but after an experience of [retreats], I clearly knew that this was nothing to be afraid of, and that I actually craved it,” Elliott said.
For Elliott, being alone allows a spiritual experience — one-on-one time with God. He teaches it as a practice to close to 80 people who come to him for guidance
through his company, Deepwardly Spiritual Direction Services LLC in Sherwood.
Elliott, who left the priesthood to begin Deepwardly about three years ago, is one of many people living in a world increasingly focused on connectedness and technology who deliberately seeks solitude, whether the purpose is for rest, communion with God, increased mindfulness or a part of a quest to find oneself.
Many people who work to find solitude also expressed varying levels of fear or discomfort when they went to be alone, but starting small — just five to 10 minutes per day — helps ease the stress.
‘ALMOST ADDICTED’
For decades, spending time alone has been viewed as damaging to the psyche. Sigmund Freud wrote that it was attached to anxiety and that the first fears of children are of solitude and of darkness.
Harry Harlow, a psychologist who worked about half a century after Freud, kept monkeys alone for months at a time and observed that they began to rock and clutch themselves. Some starved themselves to death, and others were unable to socialize with other monkeys.
But, Dent Gitchel, a psychology professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said the thought that people need to be alone is becoming more popular. Gitchel also teaches meditation classes.
“In the wider world there’s a lot more emphasis on kind of stepping back from the hustle and bustle,” Gitchel said. “We are also overworked and overstimulated with information, entertainment, et cetera.”
A portion of that bustle, Gitchel said, comes from the nagging desire for constant contact with others and the outside world. With conversation, news and entertainment just the tap of a button away, it gets difficult for people to take even a few minutes per day to themselves.
In the meditation classes he teaches, Gitchel asks his students to take time during the week to notice not just how often they use their phones, but how often their fingers twitch toward the device.
“With your phone, even when you’re not using it, just notice that desire to reach for it,” Gitchel said. “We don’t necessarily need to use it but that [twitch] I think is increasing.”
And yet “I see people, a lot of people, with the awareness that they need solitude. Some break from … the information onslaught.”
Although estimates vary on the amount of time an average American spends on the phone, a few studies suggest that it’s close to three hours a day. This means that often, even when people aren’t physically around anyone else, they aren’t really alone, said Jay McDaniel, a professor of religious studies at Hendrix College in Conway.
McDaniel has been teaching world religion classes at Hendrix for 39 years and said he mixes some Buddhist traditions into his Christianity. He grew up Methodist, in a home church that was geared toward the social aspects of the faith. He also was a student of the late Japanese Zen master Fukushima Roshi.
“There were things going on in my life, and I said, ‘Man I need some source of inner strength. It’s got to come from a deeper place,’” he said.
He found what he was looking for by adding solitude to his life through meditation. McDaniel suggested that spending just a few minutes a day away from technology and other people is beneficial.
“We’re almost addicted to that, as you know,” he said. “‘I’ve got to check my cellphone, I have to see if I got a text, I’ve got to stay connected.’ That really cuts against that spiritual need for solitude.”
QUESTIONING BELIEFS
Mike Mueller’s phone buzzes, but he doesn’t glance down at the device as it wriggles with messages waiting to be read.
A board member with the Ecumenical Buddhist Society of Little Rock, Mueller meditates from three to five hours per week.
He grew interested in Eastern philosophy and, subsequently, solitude when he was in college. He was raised Catholic, but “as I grew older and started experiencing the world, I started questioning my own beliefs. That led me to explore other people’s beliefs,” he said.
About four years ago, Mueller’s young son got sick, and he had trouble at his job. He responded by meditating and spending regular time alone.
He thinks a lot of people respond to crises in similar ways.
“Life hits them in the face and they start going ‘Wow. Why am I here? What am I doing?’ And I think that’s what I faced three or four years ago, and I really started investing myself in this practice,” he said.
Mueller participates in Kwan Um Zen, as taught by the late Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn; it places an emphasis on solitude.
Meditation was one of the first steps to learning to be alone, Mueller said. The Ecumenical Buddhist Society has meditation classes for beginners and offers other educational resources.
At one class in June, 10 or so students sat in a circle, some on round cushions, others in chairs: a mother who had been running errands all day; a high school graduate about to begin college; a couple who had been coming to the class for several months.
The meditation session started with the sound of a high-pitched gong gently bouncing off the edges of a bowl until it dissolved into nothing and, for about 10 minutes, the participants were silent.
This, the instructor explained, could be the beginning of a journey into the ability to sit alone and undistracted. It can start with 10 minutes once a week of learning to let thoughts pass over you.
“We use the analogy of the sky and the clouds,” Mueller said. “You are the sky, your thoughts are the clouds. A cloud will come by, pass you by. … You just know that those clouds will come across and blow away and there’s the sky again like it’s always been.”
Mueller said he uses meditation as a way of further understanding himself. He examines the way he thinks and why he is thinking that way while he meditates. It helps him react to the world in more grounded ways, he said. Since he started practicing Buddhism, he takes more time to think through his emotions.
Essentially, his time alone informs the way he spends time with others, he said.
But he chooses to be alone.
VOLITION
Participants in a 2014 study at the University of Virginia were given two options: spend 15 minutes alone and undistracted or be jolted by a small burst of electricity. About 67 percent of the men and 25 percent of the women in the study chose the shock.
They’d all felt the shock before; it wasn’t strong enough to harm anyone, but it was painful enough that they said they would pay to not feel it again. But as the minutes ticked by, many changed their minds.
Studies like this pop up every once in a while, said Christopher Long, a senior director with the Office of Community Health and Research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Northwest Arkansas.
In past years, Long has studied the positive and negative outcomes of solitude and what factors make the experiences good or bad: what time of day it is, the feelings people have before they go into the experience and the life circumstances they’re encountering at the time.
The negative experiences, he said, didn’t mean that the participant had permanent damage, just that at the end they felt unhappy or had spent time thinking about something they were trying to avoid.
Long, who is one of few researchers to explore this field, said one determining factor stood out above the rest in his work.
“The one thing that made the difference was volition. ‘Did I choose this?’” he said.
For Tia Williams, being alone was one of the worst experiences of her life. She spent 23 hours a day inside, trying to wait as long as possible to read one page of her prayer book each day.
Williams was serving a 16-year sentence for manslaughter, aggravated assault and terroristic threatening in the McPherson Unit, northeast of Newport, when she got caught taking medication she wasn’t prescribed. She was trying to numb an old pain in her back, she said. It was about 60 days into her time in prison, and she was put in solitary confinement.
“I felt like I was losing a grip on reality,” she said.
Williams, who is Catholic, wasn’t allowed to have her rosary. A mental health professional came around once a week to talk to the women and would give out crossword puzzles, the brightest spot of Williams’ week while she was “in the hole.”
To communicate with one another, Williams said she and the other inmates developed a sort of sign language. If someone was down the line of cells and wanted to “talk,” the women would pass the message along until it got to its intended recipient.
“I realized in there that we are meant to be with other people and communicate,” she said. “That’s part of the thing that makes our minds work right.”
. . .
But when solitude is chosen, and done in the right circumstances, it’s beneficial, Long said.
Since he started his studies, he has made efforts to spend more time alone by doing things such as going to the movies by himself. But his goal isn’t to be alone all the time; the line between solitude and loneliness can get confusing.
“You don’t have to be by yourself to be lonely,” Long said. “It’s more of a subjective experience.”