Many people assume they’ve changed because social interaction feels more draining than it used to. They conclude they’re less social now, or that something about their personality has shifted.

More often, what’s changed is capacity, not identity.

Time alone can feel necessary when bandwidth is low. Connection can still be regulating, even when it costs more. When we confuse depletion with preference, we quietly reorganize our lives around a temporary state.

I wrote about this tension between needing space and needing people, and why misreading it can narrow lives, in a recent Psychology Today essay.

Read it here:  Psychology Today

And if you are interested in how these ideas connect to broader questions of nervous system regulation, multisystem symptoms, and modern stress, I explore that work more deeply in ongoing writing on CEDclinic.com