Throughout narratives, myths, and stories across cultures and across time and space, a common maxim is expressed: what you exile to the dark will return to haunt you. For 300,000 years, we humans have observed what happens in a person’s life when we turn away from pain or discomfort, and we have resoundingly concluded that banishment is unsuccessful.

We’ve witnessed and noticed that what is left untended grows and transforms, sometimes into a monstrous force or detestable creature, choking and suffocating life from its hidden lair. Collectively, we’ve also deduced that the only way not to succumb to emotional, physical, or psychological death by that which one has disavowed is to coax it out of the darkness. Otherwise, whether slowly or all at once, depression, anxiety, mania, dissatisfaction, and exhaustion claw away at what is good and disrupt every path.

For some people, patterns of unwellness persist even when they use their best coping skills, do all the self-care, and process deep trauma. That’s because some brains and bodies are simply built a bit differently. We now understand that mental health is not only shaped by our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but also by factors like genetics, nutrition, systemic inflammation, hormones, sleep, gut health, and chronic stress.

When these systems are out of balance, compassionate, holistic medication support can make a meaningful difference.

Solitude can be defined as the active choice to seek time alone. It is the time we spend with our thoughts and our body outside of the direct influence of others. While we might think about spiritual revelation and deep contemplation when we think about solitude, we don’t have to be seeking enlightenment to engage in this personal practice.

Solitude is useful for anyone who needs time and space to calm from strong negative emotions, like anxiety, stress, and anger, or from an intense emotional experience. This solo time provides space to to process your experience, find your response, reset and restore.