Let’s be honest, this blog post is a little bit about me. In a month I’ll be relocating to Denmark. After a year of planning, a riot of admin, and a considerable amount of money spent, I’m ready to begin the next chapter. As I write this, everything I own in this world is being jangled about on a massive container ship. I’m on the brink of one of the most considerable changes in my adult life. A good enough time as any to ponder the complexities of transition in life.
The changing spectrum
Certainly, not all changes in life are chosen freely. Some we feel are forced on us, happening because of reality’s demands. These are the changes necessitated by the world and are usually felt to be beyond our control. Some changes take place as a response to the pressure inside us. I see that there are three types of change in response to internal pressure. Firstly, the feeling inside which tells us that we need to live differently, even though it is hard. These are the changes occurring as a result of a subjective pull toward authenticity, and they represent the transition towards expansion in life. These changes flow from our healthy states of mind. The other two types of change resulting from internal pressure relate to our wish to move towards pleasure and away from pain. Firstly, there is the change which takes place in response to loss or despair. Such changes in life usually take place in response to an impulse to fly away from a painful emotional reality. They can lead to positive or negative results for us, depending on how consciously we approach them. (More on consciousness in change motivation in Part 2). Secondly, there are changes which result from an inner sense of not being quite good enough yet. These changes occur in response to our wish to be our ideal self and are on a spectrum – at best a response to being highly motivated people, and at worst a response to intense inner shame. These changes arise from an inner state of non-acceptance and can be healthy or pathological, depending on our states of mind.
Some changes, the third main type, take place freely, in response to our curiosity, our wish for fresh challenges and newness in life. They occur neither in response to external nor internal demands but are a response to a healthy wish. Of course, the philosophers could argue that nothing we do is ever purely free, and the psychoanalysts that we are always to some or other extent unconsciously determined. But naysayers aside, change that is motivated by the freedom to decide is transitional change. In the next blog post I will focus specifically on transitional change; defining it, and considering how to engage with change processes such that they become transitional points in life, rather than just a movement without any genuine maturational consequence. For now, I want to think about change in a general way, considering what it means for us, how it challenges us, and how to respond in a general manner such that we are able to hold ourselves together as our lives throw us off-kilter.
Coping with transitional periods
I want to begin by thinking about change and its impact on coping strategies. When faced with the possibility of change, we can easily feel a sense of confusion, we can feel unanchored because our habits, our linchpins for feeling grounded, are shaken up, and we need to grow accustomed to something new. Even people with the most refined coping strategies will feel discombobulated in times like this. We often come to realise that what we call coping is largely a function of the proverbial lining up of the ducks. We cope well in part because our lives are predictable. With change and the onset of shake-ups we often find that our coping strategies are put under strain. We become more impulsive in our coping, resort to excessive self-soothing, become more cognitively scattered, and withdraw into escapism. Adjustment difficulties often amount to a combined depression and anxiety, which we often don’t take as seriously as we need to. Hence, in times of change, genuine self-care becomes crucial. In part this is about being gentle with ourselves, giving ourselves some latitude and grace.
A toolkit for coping with change
Self-care, which we each define differently, can assist us in dealing with the second primary impact of change; the challenge it poses to our self-esteem. Change confronts us with a world in which we feel inexperienced. We easily feel unprepared, and this can affect our self-perception. In times of change, the self-critical stories we tell ourselves about who we think we are, which we have known from early on, and which often sit somewhere in the realms of our personal shame, echo a bit louder. We are confronted with quite an unsettling discovery at these times. We realize that our self-esteem relies quite heavily on the protective layers which we acquire through living in our usual ways. Change can strip us of these layers. We come to realize that entering a new space, even the most positive of new spaces, can threaten us with an experience of losing the version of ourselves which lives in the current pre-change chapter. There is a kind of mastery that we develop through living our usual lives. This mastery is partly the healthy acquisition of skills, relationships and support structures, and is partly a defensive layering of ourselves in the things we tell ourselves we need in order to be effective in the world.
I mentioned earlier the cognitive impacts of change processes. When we encounter a change in our lives we are required to learn new information. This new information can be basic, like purchasing groceries in a different country, for example, or more complex, like learning a new language (story of my life much?). When change involves encountering new people we are required to learn and integrate new codes of verbal and non-verbal communication. These kinds of challenges can confuse us, making greater demands on our concentration, our memory, and our capacity to plan and coordinate. In these times we need to focus on creating a sense of containment for ourselves. Containment is the capacity to hold ourselves together when our emotions feel potentially overwhelming. It is the capacity to hold on to a feeling of being a reasonable and balanced person, even when we are most vulnerable and emotional. In times of transition, our capacity to draw containment from the inside is challenged, as we feel less able to manage the increased demands of the new world, and more prone to anxiety and confusion. In times like this, containment will need to come from the outside. Firstly, we need to create a sense of containment by establishing as much of a sense of routine as possible. Secondly, we need to rely on rituals. We need to create anchors for ourselves in the new world, and daily rituals assist with this. Whether it’s something complex, like journaling or engaging in a period of mindful meditation, or something simpler, like going to the same coffee at the same time, to order the same decaf latte, creating rituals can anchor us. Rituals give a sense of predictability in daily life, which is a very containing feeling. By providing us with a sense of being anchored, rituals can help us restore some presence of mind.
I think I’ll leave it there for now. Next up I’ll consider ways to make change episodes transitional and maturational, addressing ways in which our thoughts and actions can support the growth potential of change in life.
