Does being alone for a long period of time accelerate...

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Your ability to think/theorize?

After 3 years of going to the same school, my friends abandoned and ostracized me as if they had never met me before. After 3 years! So in grade 10, I decided to do homeschooling. I needed to get away desperately. School had become too stimulating, emotionally exhausting.

Anyways, while at home and not doing any work, I found myself walking back and forth around the house, thinking...Just thinking. I would start to analyze past experiences - mainly social - and realize why somebody had reacted in such a way etc. I would also theorize about things and come to conclusions nobody else would have about the world. I felt as if I was becoming more Intelligent. Or maybe it was already there, but social stimulus was holding it back. Maybe it was just because the lifetime of strain from other people had been removed. I began to realize after a while that I had never used to do this before. This was before I discovered I was an Aspie from a psychologist. Re-reading reports of how I was like as a young child, it made sense.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I think that socializing naturally inhibit's a person's ability to think for themselves.

I don't mean that in a "durrr you're all sheep" way, but in the sense that when you spend a lot of time being forced to act in accordance with a group, you have to limit your personal agency, you often have to accept the beliefs and values of the group as your own, so you will feel less likely to need to think up any new ideas of your own.

When your life is governed by the group, by social norms, you never have to think about what you should be doing with your time or why you should be doing it, because the group's rules have already laid out the guidelines of all of this for you.

If you don't need to think as an individual, your mind will have less excercise, and as it weakens from disuse it will be less capable of independent thought.

It does for me. I need my breaks from the clubhouse and alone time.

Walking, sitting on the couch, lying in bed - all ways I can think up many interesting things, usually ideas for my book. But when around people I'm just blank. It never happens. I usually think about what to say to them or focus more on the environment around me.

I find that socialising in the most part dulls the brain and ones ability to think. At least it does for me. I think best when alone, I work best alone.

It's partly because when I am alone I can concentrate my energy into my thoughts and partly because I don't have to contend with someone rambling on at me about irrelevant information as well.

It's really distracting when you are trying to rearrange equations or tie theories together or create your own theories and someone is rattling on at you about some celebrity who gained 2lbs again this week or is bitching about something someone is wearing or is rattling on about their drunken escapades...Can't think under those conditions!

Hence I prefer to spend time by myself actually doing something productive with my time.