Being alone is painful, this is not a bug, it's a feature.
pain is the bootstrap. The only truth
Ask HN: How to be alone?
321–330 of 592 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#322I think there are a couple questions you need to ask yourself - the first is why is it hard for you to be alone? You're the one person you're stuck living with for your entire life - it shouldn't be hard to be alone with yourself. That's where it began. That's where it will end. You mentioned you have a therapist - this is something you might wish to explore with them. The second question is related - what are you lo…
I like being alone. I'm good at being alone. I was an only child, often left alone , and I have lived alone (although dated a lot) for 20 years.
But if you put me in OPs situation, it would easily be tough. Working from home, living alone, totally lost your social circle possibly, AND sad over a recent breakup probably. Thats a prime recipe for problems even for people that do enjoy being alone for the most part.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#323There is strong research showing that the discomfort of being alone is largely a skill deficit rather than a permanent trait. Wilson et al. (2014) found people would rather self-administer electric shocks than sit quietly with their thoughts for 15 minutes. The intervention that works best is structured solitude: giving yourself a specific internal task (journaling, reflection on a concrete question, even mental rehearsal of a skill) rather than open-ended "just be alone" time. The people who thrive in solitude tend to treat it as a practice they build incrementally, starting with short deliberate sessions, not something they jump into cold.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#324While I understand you have a professional helping you.. I really recommend the book 'Feeling Good' by Dr. Burns.
The exercises in it, and the explanation of false labeling we do that causes us problems, are very helpful IMO.
I once ruminated over a 4 year relationship, tons of details about it, probably for a year straight.
I did one of the exercises ('... and if that were true, it would mean that....?' over and over to any response you have) til I got to the bottom of every negative thought I had about her, me, or the relationship.
I am not joking when I say I woke up the next day and couldnt even REMEMBER 75% of the negative emotions I wrote down for the exercises. I was genuinely cured of 1 years worth of rumination in 2 hours of writing things down the way the book tells you to.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#325It's not lonliness, it's solitude. Time to find yourself and your creativity again. You were codependant and need to learn how to be independant again. Living for you, just for yourself. You've spent most of your life living for others. Now it's time for you. Try not to drink alcohol. Focus on your physical health. Gym/tennis/saunas/running/golf any physical activities you can.
Yes.
Boredom and solitude go hand in hand and enable growth and the possibility of freedom. Independence of thinking, integrity.
Hell, even modality that depend highly on thinking on your own.
I've got too damn busy life these days and am missing the solitude so much.
But in the beginning the thought of boredom and loneliness can be a monolith.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#326I see a lot of good advice here, and I'm going to be late but approach it from a different angle. If you've spent so much time with your spouse around, and now you're at home alone, and you're working remote, then you are going to need a lot of socialising outside of work, because remote work does not meet the same needs for seeing people in person (I've been there). Humans are social animals, we need some interactio…
Yes, I very much agree. I think it is irresponsible to take antidepressants for something that is clearly an issue of "normal" life scenarios like hearthbreak and loneliness. It is normal, but also very much fixable by gradually putting yourself out there.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#327I'm two years ahead of you in this journey. I got divorced after just over a decade with my partner. Social engagements to me were always ad-hoc. I suck at planning so I often found myself more alone than I'd like. Looking back on the last two years and auditing what worked, I would say routine and lingering were the most important thing. Trying new things is mentally draining and labor intensive, this is a fact of l…
"With repetition, it's very easy to make new friends."*
*Assuming you possess the necessary social skills.
I've trained BJJ consistently for over 4 years now. I think fondly of all the people there and feel accepted, but we barely talk, and I'm unable to participate in the locker room camaraderie.
This is probably not a problem OP has, I just felt the need to complain.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#328Reading makes me feel addicted to life. I was a decent reader as a kid, then for the longest time I couldn’t read. I got psychological help to recover my attention, and gently started reading 10 mins of something easy after waking up. Now I read at a pace of about 1.5 books per week and I can’t get enough of it. There are so my worlds that I want to explore further. Russian literature. The history of ideas. Sci-fi. 1…
It's a really great habit. Here's my personal take: https://blog.gpkb.org/posts/make-reading-habit/
But like many things, you do have to do it for the right reason. If you go into it thinking it's going to "fix" you, then you won't enjoy it, you'll just be wondering how many more pages are required before you're better. I once read Hyperion because a crush has read it. I didn't enjoy a single page because all I was thinking about was her. Almost missed out on one of the greatest pieces of fiction I've ever read, as discovered with a recent re-read.
Whether it's the gym, reading, learning, socialising etc, you've got to make it about you. You need to understand that you are the one and only constant companion you have in life, whether you like it or not. Once you become comfortable with yourself and being happy alone, other companions will join, if you want them to.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#329Just for some perspective, it could be a lot worse.
Some of us:
- don't have a psychiatrist
- don't have medication or healthcare
- work remotely but their client often doesn't check in for days or over a week
- when they do they always mention they are extremely busy and only have a few minutes to talk
- are working overtime for outsourcing wages to just barely scrape by
- client usually fails to read messages and barely reviews work
- when client wants something like Sesame TTS for a big presentation in less than two weeks and you give PersonaPlex as an option and manage to build a whole fine tuning studio in a week and integrate the moshi fine tuning into PersonaPlex and create a LoRA that proves it can be trained for outgoing calls and for his specific use case.. but it is overfit and sounds rough and so instead of letting you do a few more iterations of tuning parameters etc. he instead tells you to start frantically generating more calls to look for good demos, even though the system has already been up and running for months and numerous audio files have been posted and available in the UI.. this making it impossible to complete the PersonaPlex demo on time..
- then when you spend all day going through old calls looking for good ones and create a zip file and he doesn't even see the message and when you remind him and try to manage expectations for call quality, he refuses to even listen to the files because he is too busy.. leading to a fight on the phone where you say the wrong thing and he suggests he might fire you, but in an ambiguous non-committal way so you don't even know if you are fired or if you are supposed to continue to scramble to complete 250 automated calls the next morning (even though the most done in a day has been around 100) or if that is a key task for his operation (supposedly was live data) or if it is completely unnecessary
- despite all of these problems overall has been one of the better clients in recent years
- has unresolved health issues
- does not have a dog
- does not have a cat
- lives in a small apartment where that's not allowed anyway
- does not have an IRC hangout
To be honest, there are a lot of levels of misery. And although it's valid to complain when things have gone downhill, from where I'm standing it looks a little bit like whining.
Although perhaps quite unhealthy, a lot of people cope partly with "parasocial" "relationships". In other words, watching the same Youtuber or whatever whenever they come out with a new video. I believe this profoundly reduces loneliness. Although obviously it's not an actual solution.
I believe that sunlight affects mood and everything quite a lot and so going outside or taking Vitamin D3 can help.
Whenever I hop on my Quest 3 there is always someone there to do Eleven table tennis with.
I think for me, for much of my adult life I've been in a state of poor health and poor financial situation and have actually avoided attempting to socialize because I feel I have to take care of other priorities before I can present to society in any confident way. Because people can tell that you are not quite well and don't have financial security, and they don't want to be around it.
Re: Ask HN: How to be alone?
#330“You merely adopted the loneliness. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't know love until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”
More seriously, ride the loneliness with manly grace: lose the shrink drugs, grind your teeth, clench your butt and lose yourself in body sculpting, disturbing art, brain exercises, etc... and if you want a bit of balm, remember that you're no wizard.