“Being alone used to feel like a punishment. Now it feels like the one place nobody can reach me unless I let them.”
Real talk: solitude used to scare me. Not “I need background noise” scared — I mean the kind of scared where you fill every empty Saturday with brunch plans and group chats so you never have to sit with yourself for too long.
And then one day the plans fell through, the group chat went quiet, and it was just me and my thoughts. I’m not gonna lie to you — that first weekend was rough. But somewhere in there, solitude stopped feeling like loneliness and started feeling like freedom.
This is how you get there too. Not by forcing yourself to love being alone overnight, but by learning what solitude actually is and how to make it work for you instead of against you.
First, Let’s Separate Solitude From Loneliness
Here’s the thing nobody explains: loneliness is the painful feeling of being disconnected from people. Solitude is the choice to be alone and actually enjoy it. They are not the same thing, even though they get lumped together all the time.
You can feel lonely in a room full of people. You can feel completely at peace by yourself on a Tuesday night with a face mask and a good show. The difference is whether the alone time is something happening TO you or something you’re choosing.
When you start choosing solitude on purpose — even 30 minutes a day — your brain stops treating alone time as a threat. That’s when the magic happens.
💡 Quick Tip
Before you can enjoy solitude, check in with yourself: Am I avoiding people right now, or am I choosing rest? If you’re isolating because you’re overwhelmed or avoiding something, that’s a different conversation. Solitude is intentional. Isolation is a warning sign. Know the difference.
Why Solitude Feels Uncomfortable at First (And Why That’s Normal)
If you’ve ever sat alone in your apartment and felt this weird itch to grab your phone within 90 seconds, you’re not broken. Your brain is literally wired to seek stimulation and connection. When you remove the noise, it panics a little.
But here’s what’s happening underneath that discomfort: you’re finally hearing your own thoughts. The ones you’ve been drowning out with podcasts, group chats, and doom-scrolling. And sometimes those thoughts are uncomfortable because they’re telling you something you’ve been avoiding.
Maybe you’re realizing you hate your job. Maybe you’re realizing you’ve been saying yes to people who drain you. Maybe you’re just realizing you’re exhausted and you haven’t actually rested in months.
Solitude doesn’t create those feelings. It just gives them space to finally surface. And that’s actually a good thing — because you can’t fix what you keep ignoring.
Solitude is not a punishment. It’s a skill. And like any skill, it gets easier the more you practice.
The Solitude Starter Kit (What Actually Works)
You don’t have to jump straight to “spend an entire weekend alone in silence.” That’s like going from zero to running a marathon. Start small and build up.
Step 1: Take yourself on a solo date once a week. Grab coffee. Go to a museum. See a movie by yourself. Sit at a restaurant and eat a full meal without scrolling your phone the whole time. The first time will feel weird. The second time will feel less weird. By the fourth time, you’ll actually look forward to it.
Step 2: Create a “no input” window every day. That means no phone, no podcast, no TV — just you and your thoughts for 15-20 minutes. Take a walk without your AirPods. Sit on your balcony. Make tea and stare out the window like a person in a movie. Let your brain breathe.
Step 3: Get curious about yourself again. What do YOU actually like when nobody’s watching? What music do you want to listen to? What do you want to cook? What show do you want to binge without worrying if anyone else will judge you for it? Solitude is where you get to be fully yourself without editing.
💊 What Works: A simple journal – Writing down your thoughts during solitude helps you process what’s coming up instead of just sitting in it. This one has prompts that make it easy to start even when your mind feels blank.
How to Use Solitude to Actually Improve Your Life
Here’s where it gets good. Solitude isn’t just about learning to tolerate being alone — it’s about using that time to make real moves in your life.
Use it for career clarity. When’s the last time you sat down and actually thought about what you want your career to look like in 2 years? Not what your manager wants. Not what your family expects. What YOU want. Solitude gives you space to hear your own voice on that.
Use it for financial check-ins. Once a month, sit down alone with your numbers. No distractions. Look at what came in, what went out, and what you want to do differently. That 30 minutes of quiet focus will do more for your money than any app.
Use it to rest without guilt. You do not have to be productive every second of your life. Sometimes solitude is just you lying on the couch doing absolutely nothing and that is allowed. Rest is not lazy. Rest is how you stay in the game long-term.
Why This Works:
✅ You stop making decisions based on other people’s expectations
✅ You get clear on what you actually want before you chase it
✅ You build a relationship with yourself that doesn’t depend on anyone else showing up
The Truth Nobody Tells You About Solitude
Here’s the insider tip: the women who seem the most confident, the most grounded, the most unbothered — they all have a solitude practice. They know how to be alone with themselves. That’s not a coincidence.
Because when you’re comfortable in solitude, you stop making desperate choices. You don’t stay in bad relationships because you’re scared to be alone. You don’t take jobs that drain you because you need constant validation. You don’t say yes to everything because silence makes you nervous.
Solitude is where you build your own opinion of yourself. And once you have that? Nobody can take it from you.
“The woman who can sit alone in a room with her own thoughts and not flinch? She’s unstoppable. Because she’s not running from anything anymore.”
One more thing: solitude is where you hear God, your intuition, whatever you want to call it. That gut feeling that told you something was off about that job or that relationship? It’s louder when you’re quiet. Solitude turns up the volume on your own knowing.
So if you’ve been ignoring that voice because you’re too busy, too distracted, too scared of what it might say — solitude is how you finally listen. And trust me, she’s been waiting to talk to you.
This is the kind of stuff women talk about inside TechMae every single day. No judgment, just real ones keeping it real.
Related: This post is a must-read for women on their journey.
Start Here
You don’t need a cabin in the woods or a solo trip to Bali to practice solitude. You need 20 minutes and a little courage.
Your one action step: Tonight, put your phone in another room for 20 minutes. No music. No TV. Just you. Sit on your bed, your couch, your floor — wherever. Let yourself feel whatever comes up. Breathe. And when your brain starts screaming “this is boring, grab your phone,” just notice that and stay a little longer.
Do that every night this week. By day five, something will shift. You’ll start to look forward to that quiet window. That’s solitude starting to feel like home.
Your Solitude Starter Checklist:
✅ 20 minutes of no-input time daily (no phone, no noise)
✅ One solo date per week (coffee, walk, movie, whatever you like)
✅ A journal to process what comes up so you’re not just sitting in it
✅ A monthly check-in with yourself about your goals, money, and energy
You might also love this article – one of our most shared.
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
Women inside TechMae have been exactly where you are — learning to love their own company and build a life that feels like theirs. Come find your people.
