Annie Wright, LMFT
Licensed Psychotherapist | Trauma-Informed Executive Coach
There’s a difference between needing quiet and actively hiding from connection — but when you come from a relational trauma background, that line can blur. Self-isolation can feel like self-protection, preference, even wisdom. This post is about what’s actually driving the pull toward aloneness, and what it costs when isolation becomes the default answer to the discomfort of being around people.
Since COVID began, many people have suffered the impacts that sudden and ongoing social isolation and social distancing have brought.
Thanks to limited or no contact with family and friends, not to mention highly altered ways of being together and moving about the world, many people have felt more isolated, lonely, and hungry for contact than at any other point in their lives.
But still, for some, the experience of being isolated is not unfamiliar.
In fact, for some, this – social isolation, social distancing, restricting engagement with the world and with others – is the norm rather than the exception.
These people are those who cope and manage their daily experience through self-isolation. This is an experience and way of being that predates COVID.
These people are those who find it easier to be alone than to be with others.
These are people who may be looking around, wondering why everyone is having such a hard time with limited contact as it feels so intuitive and normal to them.
People who don’t find the COVID-induced isolation that different or that intolerable.
And no, these people are not just introverts as glib social posts might poke fun at.
Today’s essay explores why this is – why it may feel easier for some to feel safer and better alone than to be with others – and what the causes and impacts of it are, and what can be done about it.
If this topic resonates with you, please read on.
Relational trauma refers to psychological injury that occurs within the context of important relationships, particularly those with primary caregivers during childhood. Unlike single-incident trauma, relational trauma involves repeated experiences of emotional neglect, inconsistency, manipulation, or abuse within bonds where safety and trust should have been foundational.
“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” ― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
As I mentioned in the introduction, those who are experiencing this aspect of COVID and finding it tolerable, normal, and perhaps preferable, are not just introverts as social media humor likes to poke fun at.
Sure, some introverts may be having an easier time coping with the forced lack of togetherness. But there’s another group who may prefer isolation for far different reasons. Those who come from relational trauma backgrounds.
For those that come from relational trauma backgrounds, self-isolation may be a very familiar experience. They have backgrounds in which they experienced neglect, chaos, dysfunction or outright abuse from their caregivers over an extended period of time.
Indeed, it is both a psychosocial repercussion and aggravating influence of coming from a trauma history.
The impacts of coming from a relational trauma background are as wide and varied. The individuals who move through those experiences and symptoms can range from the innocuous, to the severe in impact, for each person.
The invisible patterns you can’t outwork…
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. If vacation makes you anxious, if praise feels hollow, if you’re planning your next move before finishing the current one—you’re not alone. And you’re not broken.
This quiz reveals the invisible patterns from childhood that keep you running. Why enough is never enough. Why success doesn’t equal satisfaction. Why rest feels like risk.
Five minutes to understand what’s really underneath that exhausting, constant drive.
Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, unresolved eating disorders. Or substance use disorders, feeling blind with rage. All of these are vivid and perhaps more obvious symptoms that say, “There’s a problem here.”
These are the uncomfortable, inconvenient, and downright detrimental symptoms that will often lead people to call me. To finally realize that they need help, that they need therapy.
But there are subtle, less visible signs that the past is present, too, and having equally painful impacts on someone’s life.
And one of these symptoms is, in my clinical experience, the tendency to self-isolate.
Self-isolation is different than taking time for yourself, time to be alone.
It is different from a tendency towards introversion and the preference to create and be in low-stimulus environments.
It is more compulsive, less choiceful, more reaction than response.
It is rooted, I believe, in a conscious or unconscious attempt to limit contact with others because, at some level, contact with others doesn’t feel safe or okay.
It’s a way of being to cope with the overwhelmingness of relationships, versus a temperamental or sensory input preference for solitude.
It’s about protection more than preference.
Self-isolation is the difference between a nice and occasional night in versus a veritable fleeing back to the four walls of your house after the workday ends, so you can lock the door, disappear into your safe space, and limit the outside world from coming in.
It isn’t just “being a homebody.”
It’s being afraid to leave your home because the effort it takes to make small talk with your neighbors feels too draining.
It’s praying you don’t run into any dorm mates in the hallway as you make your way to the bathroom in the morning.
Or pretending not to be home when your neighbor knocks on the door because you feel panicky.
Does this sound familiar? Are you silently nodding your head as you scroll this page?
Or are you reading these words thinking, “Why would anyone do that? What is there to flee from? What’s so hard about talking to neighbors? Why do people self-isolate?”
Read on.
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” ― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
FREE QUIZ
The invisible patterns you can’t outwork…
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. This quiz reveals the childhood patterns keeping you running — and why enough is never enough.
TAKE THE QUIZ →We as humans are hardwired to connect.
To be in relationship with one another. To be with each other.
Study after study reinforces how connection with others is a biological and psychological imperative for each of us.
So why isolate?
Why would anyone feel like they need to flee and withdraw and limit their contact with others in order to be okay?
It is a way that folks who come from relational trauma backgrounds cope with their overwhelming reality.
And while their present reality may not include abusers, bullies, or harmful forces, if they come from a relational trauma history, the chances are high that, at some point, they did have abusers, bullies, and harmful forces in their life.
And because we form in relationship to our relationships, it then makes sense that the tendency to self-isolate would happen.
After all, if you grow up in a dysfunctional or abusive family, you may have learned, at some level, that relationships were not healthy, safe, or nourishing to be in.
You may have, at one extreme, been egregiously physically abused.
The danger of human relationship is made obvious in these harmful cases.
And on a less severe end of the spectrum, you may have grown up with people who repeatedly crossed your boundaries or expected you to parent them versus the other way around.
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You may have learned that conflict means the end of the relationship.
Or you may never have learned how to express your needs and wants because that wasn’t allowed.
You may have learned to equate being in relationship with being taken advantage of.
Whatever and however you grew up, if you come from a relational trauma history, at some level you may have learned that relationships were a source of struggle and strain versus nourishment and safety.
And so, with this kind of lived experience, self-isolation may have become a wonderful and wise thing to do to protect yourself.
Remove yourself from the people that cause you pain – makes sense, right?
Very possibly, this helped you get through childhood and adolescence, making it through those years when you had less personal power and choice about your environment and the people in it.
So again, the tendency to self-isolate, like with any other coping mechanism we develop in response to our early trauma histories, likely served you well at some point in your life.
And, yet, someday and at some level, what was once appropriately adaptive and smart and wise to do, may no longer be so effective and helpful anymore.
Especially and particularly when there aren’t, in fact, abusers and bullies in your life anymore but you’re still braced for that kind of experience.
Indeed, when it becomes a lived-out default versus an early protective mechanism can be downright harmful and detrimental to your well-being.
“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?” ― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
There’s a multitude of downsides.
On a biological and physiological level, multiple clinical studies have reinforced the suspicion that isolation and loneliness can have profound impacts on the biology and psychology of those who experience it.
Social isolation can contribute to a shortened life span, increased risk for dementia, poor sleep quality, and increase your risk for a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression, and suicide.
And, beyond the black and white data that highlights the health risks, there’s the more ephemeral but deeply important fact: self-isolate may inhibit your enjoyment and fulfillment with your one short and precious life.
Maybe you long to have a stable, happy marriage. But you spend weekend after weekend, locked in your apartment, feeling unable. Unwilling to take the steps to make those wishes a reality.
Maybe you watch, on repeat, shows like The Office or Friends. You dream about having a gang of buddies like that that you can turn to. But you feel stymied at the thought of how to meet people and keep and make friendships like that.
Maybe you hunger to advance in your career, but advancing would mean managing people and the thought terrifies you. So you keep yourself small and don’t advocate for that next raise and prized project.
It can be a symptom of feeling overwhelmed, frightened, and overly challenged by other human relationships (despite the fact that those relationships are healthy) and it can greatly interfere with the dreams in our hearts for our lives if left unaddressed and unattended.
So what can we do about it?
“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” ― Mother Teresa
If, as you read this essay, you found yourself nodding your head, resonating, and feeling overwhelmed at the thought of addressing any social isolation habits you may have, please take hope.
The brain is plastic and can change right up until the day we die. Which means that we and our patterns can change.
I truly believe that if self-isolation formed in response to unsafe and unhealthy relationship experiences, then a large part of the proverbial antidote, the healing agent of change, is the experience of having healthy, functional, and safe relationships to help rewire our brain.
And, along with this reparative relational experience that can help soothe our nervous system and heal our attachment styles, there’s a psychoeducation and re-learning process that can and must include key lessons that may have been missed early in life.
Lessons such as what constitutes a healthy versus unhealthy relationship, what a boundary actually is and how to hold it so that you don’t always feel taken advantage of and overwhelmed by relationships, emotional regulation skills to support you staying present when you feel flooded by relationship interaction and so much more.
When you tell your therapist you haven’t answered texts in weeks, that you pretend not to be home when neighbors knock, or that the thought of small talk makes you physically ill, you’re not describing introversion but the profound impact of learning early that self-isolation is easier than being with others—a survival strategy that once protected you but now imprisons you in loneliness you simultaneously crave and fear escaping.
Your trauma-informed therapist recognizes that it isn’t antisocial behavior but brilliant adaptation to genuinely unsafe relationships. When childhood meant having boundaries violated, being parentified, getting punished for saying no, or experiencing outright abuse, your nervous system correctly identified relationships as dangerous. Fleeing to solitude wasn’t preference but protection—the only way to avoid being hurt, used, or overwhelmed by others’ needs.
The therapeutic relationship becomes your laboratory for learning that connection can be safe. Your therapist maintains consistent boundaries (so you’re not responsible for their emotions), respects your no (so you learn it won’t destroy connection), and remains stable through your anxiety (so you experience non-overwhelming relating). Each session where you show up despite wanting to cancel, where you share despite wanting to hide, where connection doesn’t result in harm, updates your nervous system’s threat assessment.
Together, you identify the specific relational dangers you’re still braced for: the parent who turned every interaction into drama, the sibling who violated boundaries, the caregiver whose needs swallowed yours. Through gradual exposure, you practice tiny connections—a two-minute chat with a safe neighbor, a text to an old friend, attending a structured class where interaction has limits. You’re learning what you missed: that relationships can have boundaries, that conflict doesn’t mean abandonment, that you can be yourself without being consumed.
Most importantly, therapy teaches you that the isolation protecting you in childhood now prevents the very healing you need. Relational wounds require relational medicine. Your therapist helps you titrate exposure to connection like a careful pharmacist, ensuring each dose is tolerable, building your capacity to receive what humans are designed to need: safe, boundaried, nourishing connection with others who see you without consuming you.
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Many driven, ambitious women find solace in solitude, especially if past relationships have been painful or disappointing. This preference often stems from a protective mechanism developed in response to relational trauma or emotional neglect, making it feel safer to avoid potential hurt. While understandable, sustained isolation can hinder personal growth and genuine connection.
Yes, it’s quite common for individuals, particularly those who are highly sensitive or have experienced relational challenges, to feel drained by social interactions. This isn’t a sign of weakness, but often indicates that your nervous system is working overtime to manage social cues and potential emotional triggers. Prioritizing self-care and setting healthy boundaries can help manage this exhaustion.
This feeling of constantly performing in relationships often links back to attachment wounds or childhood emotional neglect, where you might have learned that love and acceptance are conditional. To shift this pattern, begin by practicing self-compassion and recognizing your inherent worth, independent of your achievements or how well you "perform." Gradually, experiment with vulnerability in safe relationships, allowing others to see and accept your authentic self.
Healthy alone time is a conscious choice for rest, reflection, and rejuvenation, leaving you feeling refreshed and more connected to yourself. Unhealthy self-isolation, however, is often driven by fear, anxiety, or a desire to avoid discomfort, leading to feelings of loneliness, stagnation, and a deeper sense of disconnection. The key distinction lies in the intention and the emotional outcome: does it replenish you or deplete you?
The fear of vulnerability often stems from past experiences where opening up led to pain or rejection, especially for those with relational trauma. Overcoming this involves starting small, sharing gradually with trusted individuals who have earned your confidence. Remember, true connection flourishes in authenticity, and allowing yourself to be seen is a courageous step towards deeper, more fulfilling relationships.
Helping ambitious women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
As a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
Work With AnnieThe following statistics provide important context for understanding this topic:
The invisible patterns you can’t outwork…
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. If vacation makes you anxious, if praise feels hollow, if you’re planning your next move before finishing the current one—you’re not alone. And you’re *not* broken.
This quiz reveals the invisible patterns from childhood that keep you running. Why enough is never enough. Why success doesn’t equal satisfaction. Why rest feels like risk.
Five minutes to understand what’s really underneath that exhausting, constant drive.
