What Happens to Old Friends With New Personal Growth?

There’s a saying in the 12-step community about people who want to get clean and sober: “You have to change your playground, your playthings, and your playmates.” This speaks to the need, when doing a 180 with one’s inner world, to make a corresponding clean break with the old lifestyle in the outer world.

Not all of us need to do something as dramatic as changing an entire lifestyle in the way someone getting clean and sober needs to. But people who are getting mentally healthier often wake up to the way choices and friends they once considered normal are no longer tolerable to them. It can seem disorienting and confusing: Why is it suddenly so hard to connect to all my old friends? It’s even more pronounced when it comes to beginning to date after getting out of a bad marriage. I have one client who put it this way when considering re-entering the dating scene: “I can’t tell if I’m more afraid of being left alone or being left with someone I hate.”

What is going on here? Does good therapy turn people into judgmental misanthropes?

I think the most significant difference between people is not based on political parties, ethnicity, socio-economic, or other factors. I think the biggest source of stratification between people stems from their different levels of consciousness. The more you learn about yourself, the more conscious you become, the less you will be interested in living the unconscious life. Being with people who cannot see things as you do, who cannot understand why you are making the choices you are, can feel increasingly intolerable. You may ask yourself: “Is there something wrong with me that I can no longer relate to people who used to be such good friends?”

The short answer is “no, there is nothing wrong with you, there is something right with you.” You are waking up to the ways in which you have been sleepwalking through your life, or the ways you have made decisions based on defensive reasons of protection rather than as an expression of your true nature. This has left you with a life that no longer fits you, like a set of clothes you have grown out of. Do you want to shrink yourself to get into clothes that no longer fit, or would you rather get a new set of clothes that suit you better?

It can take a while to develop a new set of friends or a new community that matches the newer version of you. While waiting for that to unfold, you may feel insecure and doubt the truth of the new reality unfolding. This makes sense, because one of the things community does for us is to provide us with a validation that the way we see the world is shared by others we care about. The period of transition between leaving your old community and finding your new one is a vulnerable time for you. It is for this reason that I’m writing this blog: to reassure you that you are on the right path and to caution you that even if you wanted to, there is no turning back.

The Old Testament tells of the Israelites leaving the slavery of Egypt. In Hebrew, “Egypt” means “narrowness”, so this tale can be taken as an allegory of a movement from a narrower place to one of greater freedom. The Israelites are pursued by the Egyptians and they escape across the Red Sea, which has miraculously opened for them. After making it across, the sea closes back up, drowning the pursuing Egyptians.

Often the focus in this story is about how the Israelites were saved by the drowning of the Egyptians. But what is also true is that the way back has been closed off to the Israelites. There is no choice but to go forward toward the Promised Land. There is no possible return to the place of narrowness. Once you have woken up, you can’t really go back to sleep.

I think this tale holds such power for thousands of years for millions of people because it articulates the stages of growth all of us need to traverse as we move from a narrower place to one of greater freedom. We may need to wander for a period before we can enter our Promised Land, as the Israelites were forced to wander for 40 years. But despite all the trials and tribulations of the path toward freedom, becoming more conscious is like the metal spikes when you leave a parking lot — you can’t go back without incurring great damage.