When You Stop Being Available, Everything Changes
I’ve been thinking about silence lately. Not the ordinary kind that fills a room when words run out, but the deliberate kind, the kind that shifts the air, unsettles people, and forces them to face themselves. Have you ever noticed how certain people don’t have to raise their voices or defend their boundaries loudly? They simply step back, withdraw their energy, and suddenly the whole dynamic changes. It’s as if their absence is louder than presence.
I’ve always been the opposite, quick to respond, quick to give, quick to explain. Someone calls, I answer. Someone asks, I provide. Someone provokes, I react. But lately, I’ve started to wonder: what if I didn’t? What if, instead of reacting immediately, I let silence stretch? What if I allowed myself to retreat, to not be so available?
And then I tried it.
The first thing I noticed was panic. Not in me, but in others. When you’re no longer predictable, people scramble. They start projecting, over-thinking, even accusing. It’s strange, because in those moments you realize they were never really seeing you. They were just depending on your reactions.
Carl Jung once said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.” When I withdrew, I saw irritation come alive in people who claimed to love me. It wasn’t about me. It was about their dependency on my availability.
The truth is, I’ve been over-giving for years. Saying yes when I wanted to say no. Offering attention even when I was exhausted. Trying to maintain peace at the cost of my own energy. And every time I did, I abandoned myself a little more. That mask is what Jung would call the persona and it became heavier. I was performing acceptance, performing approval, just so I wouldn’t face rejection.
But peace purchased through self-betrayal isn’t peace at all.
I realized that psychic energy, our inner battery, is finite. Every debate, every emotional defense, every forced smile consumes it. By the end of some days, I felt empty, like I had given myself away piece by piece.
That’s when it struck me: over-availability isn’t a virtue, it’s a prison.
So I started building small walls. Not aggressive ones, but quiet ones. Choosing not to reply right away. Saying “not today.” Sitting with discomfort instead of explaining myself. To my surprise, silence became a kind of shield. It revealed who respected me and who simply wanted to use me as their emotional outlet.
And here’s the part that stung: the more unavailable I became, the more some people showed their true colors. Manipulators lose their grip when you stop feeding them reactions. Silence disarms them; it collapses their narrative. Suddenly, they’re left staring at their own emptiness without my energy to fill it.
At first, I felt guilty. They called me cold, distant, arrogant. And for a while, I almost believed it. But then I realized, those accusations were proof of the shift. The people who once thrived on my availability were unsettled by my boundaries. Of course they resisted. Of course they wanted the old me back.
But in solitude, I found something I didn’t expect: clarity.
Silence didn’t mean absence; it meant presence with myself. It meant watching patterns I used to miss, catching manipulations I used to excuse, and finding strength in not always reacting. It was a rebirth of sorts. I wasn’t losing myself. I was finally meeting myself.
Jung wrote about individuation, the process of becoming whole, and I think this is part of it: sacred isolation. Not loneliness, but wholeness. You stop chasing approval, and you start choosing peace. You stop reacting, and you start creating.
It’s not easy. You will lose people. You will be misunderstood. But maybe that’s the price of living in truth.
These days, I remind myself of something simple: I owe no one my constant availability. I owe no one an explanation for my silence. What I owe is to myself to preserve my peace, to protect my energy, to live aligned with who I truly am.
Best Wishes
Cosmos Creatives
