When I've gone through periods of withdrawal, the people in my life have ended up in two major categories:
1) The people who care about me & want me to take care of myself, who miss me & have whatever emotional responses about that & still support me in taking care of myself.
2) The people who are grumpy because they're not getting something from me like they used to. This is very useful information to have (though often painful to receive) - if someone cares more about what they get from me than me being OK, they're not actually a friend (in my unkind moments, I would call them parasites but that's probably too strong of a word in most cases).
The people in group 1 stick around. They may ask for the occasional signal flare while I'm withdrawn to let them know I'm OK, and there may be some readjustment when I re-emerge, but these are the true friendships. The people in group 2 largely peel away. I of course have my emotional process around this & grieve the loss of them in my life (and my illusions that we were better friends), and when this passes, there's more room for new people in my life who will hopefully end up in group 1.
Which is my longwinded way of saying that we your friends support you in taking care of yourself. We miss you while you're withdrawn & we'll be happy to welcome you back when you're ready (and to support you along the way if there's ways we can). The work you're doing is important, and I suspect a piece of it is valuing yourself enough to prioritize it over supporting other people. I cheer you on in doing this.
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Date: 2012-09-05 05:14 am (UTC)1) The people who care about me & want me to take care of myself, who miss me & have whatever emotional responses about that & still support me in taking care of myself.
2) The people who are grumpy because they're not getting something from me like they used to. This is very useful information to have (though often painful to receive) - if someone cares more about what they get from me than me being OK, they're not actually a friend (in my unkind moments, I would call them parasites but that's probably too strong of a word in most cases).
The people in group 1 stick around. They may ask for the occasional signal flare while I'm withdrawn to let them know I'm OK, and there may be some readjustment when I re-emerge, but these are the true friendships. The people in group 2 largely peel away. I of course have my emotional process around this & grieve the loss of them in my life (and my illusions that we were better friends), and when this passes, there's more room for new people in my life who will hopefully end up in group 1.
Which is my longwinded way of saying that we your friends support you in taking care of yourself. We miss you while you're withdrawn & we'll be happy to welcome you back when you're ready (and to support you along the way if there's ways we can). The work you're doing is important, and I suspect a piece of it is valuing yourself enough to prioritize it over supporting other people. I cheer you on in doing this.