Is this "bolting"?

I change my friendship group every couple of years. It's just easier. Once people start thinking they're close enough to bother me outside of the usual context in which I see them, it's easier to make new friends than to manage that kind of relationship. I make liberal use of blocking on social media. Again, it's easier, and I like that online communication facilitates that kind of cutting off. Work-wise I'm self-employed so there's a natural turnover of platforms and clients. Estranged from family. I've never experienced any negative consequences or regret from bolting. I don't understand why people ever keep contact with people who are causing them difficulties, unless they're physically dependent on them.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply and share your experience. 

"it's linked to a feeling of lack of agency or autonomy, with the sense of others' needs having to be met at all costs whilst mine are overridden. Any kind of potential conflict or demand that is hard for me to meet escalates it too. My fears take over."

This really resonated with me. It is horrible, because at the time I run off (literally or otherwise), it feels like the right thing to do and that everyone else will be happier. Then afterwards, I realise not only was I wrong, but it's actually come across as selfish or manipulative. That's why I want to address this behaviour and prevent it happening again. 

Thank you for sharing the things that helped you. I really appreciate it and will see if I can use that to begin to address this properly. 

This is something I've often experienced and especially in the workplace or any environment where I don't feel as though I'm in control.  I honestly could easily have bolted from various situations (either physically or just by closing something down or making my excuses) and sometimes I even had to feign illness to escape.  I reminded myself of a highly strung thoroughbred horse!  Or one of my cats which, when put in his carrier to go to the vets, had a strange kind of panicky panting attack which being able to actually run might have alleviated. 

From my experience, I'd say it stems from anxiety but then has kind of built upon this over the years, so that it's a specific type of anxiety-driven "outcropping".  And it's linked to a feeling of lack of agency or autonomy, with the sense of others' needs having to be met at all costs whilst mine are overridden.  Any kind of potential conflict or demand that is hard for me to meet escalates it too.  My fears take over.

What I've done is work on the underlying anxiety and, although I've had various rounds of therapy, the things which have helped most of all have involved shifting my focus and increasing the areas in my life in which I have more control.  Switching jobs helped a lot too, especially shifting from working in a large organisation to becoming self employed.  Becoming more aware of my limitations and needs has helped too - I was never going to become a good public speaker, for example, and trying to desensitise myself only got me so far.  In fact it sometimes worsened the situation if I felt the audience was hostile (which in the corporate environment i was in, it actually was!).

Overall I've:

-  Focussed on and developed the areas of life I find calming and soothing (in my case gardening and tai chi, tho' others will be different)   

-  Used mindfulness and visualisation techniques to bring down my general anxiety (kind of reducing the bedrock from which the urge to bolt largely stems)

-  Used a bit of cognitive therapy on myself as there were some anxiety-inducing thoughts which often led to this state, even tho' I had to drill down quite a bit to find and articulate these because it all seems to happen automatically

-  Accepted that there are some things that just don't suit me and that putting more and more effort into trying to fix it just gives the issue a dominance it doesn't warrant for me and makes my life miserable

-  Tried to understand myself a bit better in the light of the new knowledge about being autistic.  I probably need to put together a sensory profile too because I bet that this would also reveal what's going on in some of these situations (e.g. would some kind of stimming be helpful, am I suppressing it in order to appear normal, how safe do i feel, is there anything in the environment that I find uncomfortable or over-stimulating?).  

It's definitely been a process of unlearning and relearning and I'm still finding that I've almost unthinkingly built up a lot of core beliefs and almost hidden rules and assumptions that really aren't helping me.  And I'm still a work in progress, but things are easing and the process of dismantling is well underway.  It may be that a therapist could help with the process, but I'd be leery of choosing one who didn't have any training or personal experience in this area.  

That said, I've not actually come across any papers of resources on "bolting".  Off to have a look.