Why Your Relationships Change After Awakening

You are not too much. You are not too intense. You are not too sensitive. You are not too spiritual. You are not too deep.

If you have been through any kind of spiritual opening, you have probably heard yourself described with one of those words. Or felt it in the silence between you and someone who used to understand you. Or seen it in the look on a friend's face when you tried to share what was happening inside you.

Something shifted in you. And the people around you did not shift with you.

That is one of the most common and least talked about experiences in awakening. Not the energy. Not the visions. Not the sleepless nights. The loneliness that comes when you change and your world does not change with you.

The bravado suit

I know this pattern from the inside.

I was bullied in school. I was sensitive, I questioned authority, I did not fit in the normal category of kid.

At some point I learned to put on what I now think of as a bravado suit of coolness. A full performance of being someone I was not. I learned how to act cool.

It worked, in the sense that people started noticing me in the way I wanted to be noticed. But it cost me something essential. And it was exhausting to maintain, every single day, for years.

When awakening happened, the suit started falling apart. Not by choice at first. It just stopped holding together. The things that used to feel natural, the small talk, the drinking, the social performance, started feeling hollow. I could not do them anymore, not because I decided to stop, but because something in me had shifted and the suit no longer fit.

"Is Kees asking you these deep questions too?"

The changes were visible to the people around me.

I stopped drinking. I started wearing barefoot shoes. And I started asking my friends real questions. Not about work or the weather. About their childhood. About how they actually felt about things. About what was underneath the surface of the life they were presenting.

Most of them did not know what to do with it.

Two friends, separately, started comparing notes. One of them eventually told me what had happened. They had been asking each other: "Is Kees asking you all these deep questions too?"

It made me laugh but and also a little bit sad. It also made me realize something important. Some of the people I loved most were not the people I could have these conversations with. Not because they were wrong. Because this was my process, not theirs.

The conversion trap

The instinct after awakening is to bring people along. To share what is happening. To recommend the book that opened something up. To explain the experience in a way that makes them understand.

Almost always, this backfires.

Most people are not ready for this conversation. Not because they are less evolved or less intelligent. Because they are on their own path and their path does not require this right now.

Trying to convert your existing friends into spiritual companions is one of the fastest ways to both lose them and exhaust yourself.

What works is simpler and harder. Let them be. Do not try to drag anyone along. You can still love them. You can still see them. But maybe you see them less, and you stop pretending to be the person they expect you to be when you are together.

Some of your existing friends will surprise you. They have a soft nature that you did not notice before. They are already spiritual and might not know it yet. Something in them responds to the openness you are now broadcasting. Those friendships will deepen naturally without you needing to push.

Others will fall away. That is painful. It is also part of the process 🌀

Becoming findable

Here is what I found on the other side of this.

When you stop masking, when you consistently broadcast who you actually are, you become findable. Not to everyone. To the people who match you.

You do not have to go looking for your people. You do not have to join a spiritual community or start dressing differently or signal your awakening in some visible way. You just have to be yourself. Consistently. Even when it feels like being a category of one.

The right people show up. Life brings them. Not always quickly. Sometimes there is a period that feels very alone. But the connections that form on the other side of that period are different from anything you had before. They are real. They start from who you actually are, not from the suit.

That is worth more than a room full of people who only ever knew the performance.

The permission you do not need

You do not need permission to be yourself. You do not need your family to approve of your spiritual journey. You do not need your friends to understand what is happening to you. You do not need anyone to validate that what you are experiencing is real.

It is real. And you are not alone in it, even when it feels that way.

If you are in this transition right now and you want to talk to someone who has been through it and works with people going through it every day, you can schedule a free call with me here: 👉🏻 https://calendly.com/keesblok/gratis-kennismaking