Ever notice how some people can’t sit still for five minutes without reaching for their phone, turning on the TV, or calling someone up for plans? I used to be one of them. After retiring at 62, I’d fill every waking moment with activities, volunteer work, social gatherings – anything to avoid being alone with my thoughts. It wasn’t until I went through a period of depression after retirement that I realized something profound: my constant need for noise and company wasn’t about being social. It was about running from myself.

The difference between loving people and fearing yourself

Here’s what most of us get wrong about extroversion. True extroverts gain energy from social interaction, sure, but they’re also perfectly capable of enjoying their own company. The person who genuinely cannot handle an empty evening isn’t necessarily an extrovert – they might be someone who’s using external stimulation as armor against internal discomfort.

I discovered this truth during a meditation class at the community center. Sitting there in silence for just ten minutes felt like torture. My mind raced, my body fidgeted, and I desperately wanted to bolt for the door. The instructor later told me something that stuck: people who struggle most with stillness often have the most to gain from it.

Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist, puts it beautifully: “A lot of people fear solitude yet the great psychiatrist Winnicott said that the capacity for solitude is one of the greatest markers of psychological health.”

Think about that for a moment. The ability to be alone with yourself isn’t just nice to have – it’s a fundamental indicator of psychological wellbeing.

When silence becomes the enemy

Why does quiet feel so threatening to some of us? Psychepedia explains it perfectly: “The absence of a conversational partner or external activity means that negative emotions—boredom, sadness, anger, or worry—quickly escalate because there is no immediate external outlet or distraction to mitigate their intensity.”

In other words, when we strip away the distractions, we’re left face-to-face with everything we’ve been avoiding. The unresolved grief. The career disappointments. The relationship issues we haven’t addressed. The anxiety we’ve been masking with busyness.

I remember one evening, about a year into retirement, when my wife went to visit her sister for the weekend. The house was empty, quiet. No meetings to attend, no deadlines to meet. Just me and the silence. Within an hour, I’d called three friends, none of whom were available. By hour two, I was at the mall, wandering aimlessly. By evening, I’d signed up for three new volunteer committees. Anything to fill the void.

The paradox of dangerous calm

Have you ever felt anxious when things are going well? Like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop? There’s a psychological basis for this phenomenon. As one person shared in Psychology Today: “When things are quiet, I feel unsafe. I don’t feel like myself.”

This resonates deeply with my own experience. For decades, I’d hidden social anxiety behind a professional persona – always busy, always productive, always surrounded by the structured chaos of office life. When that structure disappeared after retirement, the anxiety I’d been outrunning for years finally caught up.

Recent research backs this up. A study found that individuals with high levels of negative emotionality are more likely to experience loneliness, as they tend to engage in solitary play, which can lead to increased feelings of loneliness over time. It’s a vicious cycle – we avoid solitude because it makes us anxious, but avoiding it only increases our inability to cope with it.

The modern epidemic of constant connection

Our smartphones have become the ultimate enablers of this avoidance. Can’t handle the quiet commute? Podcast. Awkward silence at dinner? Check Instagram. Alone with your thoughts before bed? Scroll until you pass out.

Research indicates that social avoidance is directly and positively associated with nomophobia among college students, with loneliness and self-control functioning as significant parallel mediators in this relationship. In simpler terms: the more we fear being alone, the more addicted we become to our phones, and the lonelier we actually feel.

I see this pattern everywhere now. Friends who schedule back-to-back activities every weekend. Colleagues who work late not because they need to, but because home feels too quiet. People who keep the TV on all day just for background noise, even when they’re not watching.

Learning to befriend the silence

So how do we break this cycle? How do we stop running and start facing whatever we’ve been avoiding?

For me, it started with that meditation class I mentioned. Those first sessions were brutal. But slowly, sitting with discomfort for just ten minutes a day, I began to notice something shifting. The racing thoughts didn’t disappear, but I learned to observe them without immediately needing to escape.

The Vessel captures this transformation beautifully: “Silence can feel like a blank page—unnerving until we realise we hold the pen.”

I started small. Five minutes of morning coffee without checking my phone. A walk around the block without earbuds. An evening journaling session where I actually wrote about what I was feeling instead of just listing what I did that day.

The unexpected gifts of solitude

What surprised me most was what emerged once I stopped running. Yes, there was pain I’d been avoiding – grief over career disappointments, anxiety about aging, regrets about relationships I’d neglected. But there was also clarity. Creativity. A sense of who I actually was beneath all the roles I’d been playing.

The Economic Times notes that “Preferring silence over meaningless conversation can reflect how a person thinks, processes emotions, and manages social energy.” Once I stopped filling every moment with noise, I discovered I actually preferred depth over distraction.

Interestingly, a study suggests that social context is more reliably distinguishable than social phase, group size, or level of social threat in socially anxious individuals, indicating that solitude may be a context where individuals feel more vulnerable to their anxieties. But here’s the thing – vulnerability isn’t weakness. It’s where growth happens.

Final thoughts

If you can’t tolerate an empty evening, if silence makes you squirm, if being alone with your thoughts feels dangerous – you’re not alone in this struggle. But consider this: what you’re running from might be exactly what you need to face.

The ability to sit with yourself, to befriend silence, to actually enjoy solitude – these aren’t just nice-to-have skills. They’re fundamental to psychological health and genuine self-knowledge. Start small. Five minutes. No phone. Just you and whatever comes up. It might be uncomfortable at first, but discomfort, I’ve learned, is often just growth in disguise.