Solitude as Opportunity for Rest in Everyday Life of Adults across the Lifespan

A cross-cultural survey of adults around the world demonstrates the benefit of solitude to daily rest - an essential tool to mental health that modern society continues to ignore. My research during Ph.D. training showed that only 15 minutes of solitude can help us rid of rousing emotions and offer opportunities for quiet reflection. Yet, despite the well-documented benefits of solitude, we cannot seem to shake off the idea that solitude is negative and challenging.

It is intuitive to attribute enjoyment of solitude to a matter of individual preference. This is reflected in the messages that we hear often that introverts enjoy solitude better. Modern society also continues to reinforce salient image of a sad loner. This narrow perspective on solitude creates two problems. First, it paints a negative light around our daily experiences of solitude. Second, it prevents us from considering environmental and social factors that might create barriers to pursue solitude and embrace this time for its regulatory benefits.

Observations across adulthood suggest that the desire for solitude and the ability to benefit from it depend on life situations. For emerging adults, salient struggles around time spent alone emerge during transition into being independent from parental care, such as for those in their first year at university. For this group, new social environment creates pressure to socialise and fear of missing out, making time spent alone more isolating and intolerable. As a result, emerging adults have less desire for solitude despite that they find it beneficial for productivity and emotion regulation. On the other hand, as people grow older and acquire more responsibilities, they have less opportunities for time alone and solitude becomes a craved luxury. This is particularly true for working mothers with young children as women still disproportionally take on more care responsibilities while working full time. Many mothers report not being able to find time for themselves or to enjoy personal hobbies and activities. This struggle of not having enough time for oneself changes drastically at another transition phase when adults leave the workforce and have more time on their own. Not knowing what to do with increase in time alone is frequently reported by those in the earlier years of retirement. For this group, struggles of solitude manifest in the lack of strategies to struggle empty time in solitude meaningfully, risking increase in boredom and loneliness.

Changes during life transitions create unique contexts for an investigation of how attitudes and norms shape ability to cope with solitude across an adult's lifespan. This proposed research will recruit participants at these three transition phases: transition to university, transition to motherhood, and transition to retirement. Identifying barriers around our solitary experiences will shed light on the question of why some people do not like to be alone or are unable to gain regulatory benefits from it, and will inform targeted interventions. Three studies will be conducted using a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Study 1 will use interviews with adults from three transition groups to understand how people often view solitude and whether their social environments or life circumstances allow them to engage meaningfully with solitude. Study 2 will track people's experiences with solitude in their daily life to identify activities that contribute to improved moods and well-being. Finally in , I will design and test an intervention to improve quality of time alone through tackling attitudes and norms and suggesting activities that allow adults at different stages of life enjoy their solitude better.

The research findings will be of interest to mental health professionals, university counsellors, and organisations that work with parents and older adults, to foster positive uses of time alone for emotion regulation and psychological well-being.