My promotion changed my friendships with coworkers and I was not ready. Help?

No one warns you about this part. You wanted the promotion, you earned it, and then the friendships you relied on quietly shifted under your feet. The easy closeness got careful. The people who used to vent to you now watch what they say. You were prepared for new responsibilities, not for a change in who you are to the people around you. That grief is real, and it catches almost everyone off guard. What changed is not the worth of those friendships but the ground they stand on. You now hold some power over their work, and that alone reshapes how safe they feel being fully open with you. It is not rejection. It is a natural adjustment to a new reality. Trying to force the old closeness back tends to make it more strained, because it asks them to ignore something that is genuinely different. Give the relationships room to find their new shape instead of mourning the old one. Be honest with the people who matter that you notice the shift and you still care. Let some friendships settle into a warm, respectful working bond, and lean on friends outside of work for the fully unguarded kind of closeness. You are not losing people. You are learning that different roles hold different kinds of trust.