Being Home Alone Is My Love Language
Can we turn the volume down, please?
Where are all my highly-sensitive introverts at? When you need not just time alone, but time alone without noise, sensory input or stimulants? How about those of you socialized as female with all of our learned habits of scanning a room, checking-in on people, and playing peacekeeper? What about those of you who need a lot of space or time to process things? Or those who are in the seemingly endless sensory onslaught of parenting small children?
Doesn’t it feel so good to turn down all the noise? To get a break from all the people, screens, talking, sounds, visual input, (uncomfortable) clothing/shoes, having to show up in ways that are not truly you at work or in public?
What about those of you who connect with yourself and your internal world best when alone? That, when alone, you feel most tuned in and connected to yourself? Where you can just be?
It sounds like I am joking, but being home alone is my love language.
When I return from school drop-off, after H leaves for work, I feel a deep sense of spaciousness inside of not just my house, but myself. When I come back sweaty from a bike ride and know I can make food and take a hot shower with zero interruptions, I’m full of joy. When I sit down at my desk on a Sunday morning, geared up for a writing session, and watch A and H leave the house for a daddy/daughter adventure, I am energized and grateful, for them and for me.
When I am home alone, I can tune into myself without the physical presence, emotional auras or any other outside input. I can hear myself think. A whole layer of noise is removed, physically from my ears, emotionally from my body, and mentally from my thinking. I don’t have to worry about anyone else but myself. I don’t have to stop what I am doing because someone needs a snack or feel frustrated that I can’t concentrate deeply enough because someone else is playing guitar.
I get to just be me in my own little world.
Sometimes I think there is something wrong with me, because I so deeply love being home alone, especially when humans are built for connection. But more and more I question the inundation of “connection”, of being social, outgoing, and “on” all the time. Our world is built to keep us plugged in, turned on, constantly engaged. We’re taught that there is something wrong with quiet, with neutral, with staying in.
But there is something in me that loses a connection with ME when I am around other people too much or out in the world too long (though traveling alone is another type of bliss for another post). And when that connection to myself gets fuzzy, my ability to be with and enjoy other people and activities plummets.
If I don’t get enough solo time, my warning signs run from cranky to frustrated to overwhelmed to a lot of crying. And when I am feeling those ways, everything else feels more difficult. I am even less cut out to be around people. Life feels shitty.
I need time and space, probably more than most people.
I need time to reflect. I need to get space from the energy and ideas of other people. There isn’t anything wrong with me; my nervous system just requires more quiet and less arousal than other people’s do. And when I get that independent time, when I am resourced by it, I can bring my fullest self to the world.
After so many months (years!) of pandemic living (everyone home, no consistent childcare), stay-at-home parenting (literally having a small child attached to my body/mind for 4+ yrs), and not having a “room of one’s own” until recently, every opportunity to be home alone brings me such deep pleasure. Even if what I am doing with that time is client work or cleaning up or whatever other mundane to-do list task, it feels easier and I feel wholly more myself when I get to do it in my house alone.
After I am filled up from that time alone, I can return to the world of my family, my community, and producing the things I want to create for this world, while enjoying myself and my time.
Here’s to celebrating our need to be home alone, with ourselves, in as much quiet as we can get. It’s a beautiful thing.
Resources:
I identify as a highly sensitive person. My biggest issue is sound/noise, but I am also very sensitive to other’s vibes (empathetic). For more information, check out hsperson.com.
Interestingly, I have “low sound” determination in my Human Design chart.
I also identify as an introvert. For a Myers-Briggs explanation of the differences between “introvert” and “extrovert”, try here. From what I understand, introverts get energy from being alone, or being “inward”, and extroverts get energy from being with people, or being “outward”. Also, the Myers-Briggs instrument does not measure how introverted or extroverted you are, but just narrows your personality down to one or the other to form your type. I’m a proud INFJ.
The 5 Love Languages is a book by Gary Chapman and I like to apply them to my relationship with myself.
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If you’d like to explore your own introversion/extroversion, possible high sensitivity, how to deepen your relationship with yourself using something like Myers-Briggs or love languages, or just want to delve into your own love of being home alone and practical ways to get more time with yourself, book a free coaching call with me.