Social Isolation

Withdrawal from social life when ordinary connection became difficult

29.4% broadly reported · 223 accounts
12.8% confirmed minimum · 97 accounts
What is this

About a third of accounts describe significant withdrawal from social life — not always by choice. Conversations that previously felt natural become difficult when one's fundamental relationship to reality has changed and most people around you haven't.

Several accounts describe this as one of the loneliest aspects of the process: being changed in a way that was invisible to almost everyone else, unable to share what was happening without seeming strange or unwell.


How common is it
223
Broadly reported
Includes passing mentions, implied references, and clear descriptions — anyone whose account touched on this theme.
97
Confirmed minimum
Explicit first-person descriptions with real specificity. The conservative count — what was clearly and unambiguously described.

From the accounts
I couldn't talk about it with my friends � my TM friends, and I again started to feel isolated and alone, like originally I had felt when I was the only one I knew having the oneness experience.
It took a few months, but I spent a few months alone walking the dog in the morning and eventually new friends accumulated.
And as soon as I went, the very first time I went I got involved, I became a hard-core Buddhist for 5 years - like a lot of meditation, a lot of retreats, and kind of gave up a lot of my social life and friends ...
I tell a lot of details I Had like a good group of friends after my husband and I got married We moved to Oregon which I had never been she before I'd never visited I we didn't know a soul there so I got very very very Depressed I was so depressed and lonely.

Common experience types

Experience types that appear most often alongside this.


Often appears alongside

Other integration challenges that co-occur most frequently in the same accounts.


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