When There's Nowhere to Hide From Yourself
There's this exercise I do with my coaching clients. Simple on paper. Devastating in practice.
One hour. Alone. No screens. No escape hatches. Just you and the thoughts you've been running from. Write down whatever surfaces - especially the stuff that scares you. When the hour ends, burn it all.
One client couldn't make it past twenty minutes. Not just uncomfortable - couldn't physically continue. Because that's how scary it can be to be in your own mind if you're not used to it.
What lives in that silence that's so unbearable we'll do almost anything to avoid it?
Being alone in your head isn't just important - it's where everything real happens. It's the space where change becomes possible. Yet we treat it like a prison sentence. Three hours of scrolling Instagram feels safer than three minutes of genuine self-reflection.
On the third day of my recent white whale expedition to Svalbard, the world disappeared. Complete whiteout. The whole day. No horizon line. No mountains. No distinction between earth and sky. Just absolute white nothing in every direction. The only visible reference points: the person ahead and your own skis below. We had to stop constantly to verify we weren't skiing in circles, because in that featureless void, you drift without realizing it.
That day cracked me open. Not from physical exhaustion. Not from cold. From the unavoidable confrontation with my own mind when every distraction had been stripped away. The overthinking spiraled instantly. Anxiety washed over me in waves. I stressed about things that weren't even happening. Worried about scenarios that didn't exist. Made up conversations and conflicts in my head. There was literally nothing to actually stress about - we were moving forward, one ski in front of the other - but being trapped in my skull with zero distractions was scary and dark as fuck. Nothing to look at. Nothing to engage with. Just me and whatever thoughts had been waiting for this exact moment of nowhere to run.
The whiteout mirrors something we all know: that disorienting space of anxiety, overthinking, depression. You're surrounded by it but can't see its edges. Can't find its source. Can't locate the door marked "exit."
Another exercise I do with some of my clients. Look at your day. Really examine it. Question every action, every habitual reach. Why the phone first thing? Why the coffee ritual? Why the constant email checks? How many tiny behaviors exist solely as escape routes from your own consciousness?
I see friends and colleagues unable to just sit back for even five minutes without reaching for their phones. I've watched it in offices, where the second a meeting ends, everyone's eyes drop to screens. I've seen it on safari with people who miss actual lions twenty feet away because they're checking Instagram. I've witnessed people physically twitching when they realize they've left their phone somewhere, panic flashing across their face. Most don't even realize what they're doing - that they're running from themselves without knowing it.
Recently, I've started purposefully waking up earlier than usual, sitting in darkness before dawn. Coffee in hand. Looking at nothing. At first it felt wrong. Wasteful. Uncomfortable. But that pre - dawn window, before training, before the world starts demanding pieces of me - it's where I find the clearest signal. If you can stay with that discomfort - if you can resist the pull to distract - something shifts. Your mind is like a dog on a leash, straining forward, circling back, until gradually it runs free.
There's this technique in therapy called "mirror time" that is brutal in its simplicity. Take a single thought - something you're struggling with - sit in front of a mirror, and just stare at yourself for three uninterrupted minutes. Not fixing your hair, not checking your teeth. Just looking yourself in the eyes while holding that thought. It forces you to shake hands with yourself, to face whatever's living in the darkest corners. Good shit, bad shit, all of it. This is precisely what most people are desperately avoiding when they reach for distraction - that direct confrontation with whatever's hiding behind all the noise. That moment when your own eyes call your bluff.
Not to escape you. To show you what's been trying to surface.
We've forgotten how to exist without constant stimulation. The middle ground of just being feels empty compared to the artificial peaks and valleys of content designed to hijack our attention. We're addicted to extremes - the dopamine hit of notifications, the rush of outrage, the comforting numbness of endless scrolling.
And just to clear something up. Being alone isn't sitting next to your partner while you both scroll separate phones. It's not driving with music blasting. It's not even reading a book. Those are all just sophisticated distractions - comfortable buffers between you and the raw electrical current of your unfiltered consciousness. Real solitude strips away every single crutch. No soundtrack. No narrative to lose yourself in. No one else's breath to sync with yours. Just the terrifying intimacy of meeting yourself with nowhere to fucking hide. That silence when you can hear your own blood pulse. When your thoughts become so loud they feel physical. When you finally realize you've spent years building elaborate defense systems against the one person you can never escape: you.
When was the last time you were genuinely bored? The kind that makes you squirm. The kind where your mind has to either create something or finally confront what it's been avoiding.
This week, catch yourself. When you reach for distraction, pause. What are you running from in that moment? What's trying to surface that you keep pushing back under?
That's exactly where you need to go.
That's the white nothing where everything that matters is waiting.