Society’s perception of isolation is so negative that solitary confinement is used as a form of punishment in the prison system, and our everyday loneliness is believed to come from a general lack of interaction with other human beings.

But what if I told you that sometimes being alone can bring more peace into our lives than having a plethora of human connection, or that loneliness may be created from too many shallow human interactions? That isolation can be a first step toward healing?

Some of us who become taken over by long bouts of dark emotion and negative energy after being in social situations use isolation as a healthy way to escape and regroup.

It’s in our voids of aloneness that the shadow work and self-discovery necessary for our spiritual growth begins.

There’s immense healing in the breakdown. There’s healing in the stillness and the quiet. There’s healing in being so alone that we’re forced to face our demons and let the darkness come out to play.

Embracing our solitude and loneliness can be terrifying for those who don’t know how to be alone. For so long, I was that girl. I thought I needed constant human connection, and I clung to toxic relationships until I realized that I wasn’t thriving at all. I was starved for legitimate connections.

I had been drained by the toxicity of my relationships, the shallow conversations that lacked any depth or substance, the meaningless sexual encounters, and “friendships” fueled by drugs and alcohol. I had accepted these unhealthy connections because I was scared of being alone. I was scared of rejection and abandonment. I wreaked havoc on my emotional and mental state by giving others exactly what they wanted sexually, emotionally, and mentally. But in order to be that version of myself, I had to fill my body with the things that would first make me numb and then slowly destroy my inhibition.

I let my goals and visions slip through my fingers because familiar misery was more comfortable than the unknown. My life had become this whirlpool of chaos that I was completely addicted to. Without it, I didn’t know how to survive. The chaos gave me the ability to play victim and gain attention from the wrong sources. It gave me an excuse to be emotionally manipulative. I was an expert in self-loathing.

No matter how often I said I wanted out, I knew deep down that I was addicted to this lifestyle. It had become my home.

I realized eventually that I needed to start doing what scared me the most—I needed to isolate myself and find peace in my solitude if I wanted to escape this addiction to an unhealthy lifestyle and toxic relationships—not only with others, but also with myself.

Change is scary. It pulls us out of our comfort zone and into an area of our lives where we start to become more aware of emotions we’ve been trying to avoid for so long. And emotions are painful.

So, in self-preservation, instead of embracing change and living for the thrill of the unknown, we become dangerously content with the painful and stagnant place we’re at in life. We don’t realize that the toxic social bubble we place ourselves in keeps us from moving forward with our lives.

This is why isolation can be necessary.

This is why isolation can be healing.

This is why shadow work can be such a frightening experience to go through, but one of the most important.

Once we find the courage to be alone and be alone well, we start to find solitude refreshing and necessary for our spiritual growth. We begin to discover who we really are, and, soon enough, we become immersed in a massive pool of orgasmic self-love.