Any kind of change, even positive ones, can come with stress. This is true whether you’ve started a new job, ended a relationship, or just feel like you’re in transition.
Stress doesn’t necessarily mean that something’s wrong. It can show up when you’re trying to adjust to new things. A change in your role or identity can result in secondary losses or changes that you might not consider when it comes to stress.
Why change feels stressful
- Losing familiar structure
- Grieving what you lost
- Dealing with conflicting expectations
- Uncertainty about the “new you”
Losing familiar structure
When you change jobs, end a relationship, move to a new city, or enter a new role, you lose your routine. We don’t always realise it but we build up a lot of habits and routines that we rely on to give us structure, and this can help us feel safe. When we lose that, life might feel chaotic and it's natural to feel lost in all the decisions that we have to make.
I think one of the most stressful parts of change is the unknown, not being able to rely on things that you took for granted before. You built a routine and knew it worked. You could rely on it to help you get things done. Suddenly that’s gone and you have to rely on yourself.
So it makes sense that you might feel lost until you develop a new structure or routine. It takes physical and emotional energy to rebuild that structure during times of transition. It’s hard work, and no surprise that it feels stressful.
Grieving what you lost
It’s likely that you're grieving what you lost, including the old version of you, and what your life looked like before. You can acknowledge that you’re growing and be proud of how far you’ve come and still miss the version of you who existed before this.
It might feel destabilizing to experience that grief while you’re still unsure of what's coming next, and still unsure if it will all work out.
While it can be overwhelming, there’s room for all of these feelings to co-exist.
Dealing with conflicting expectations
You’re trying to grow into your new role, but people might still see you as the old version of you, which may be holding you back. You might feel the need to prove yourself as capable while under pressure to meet new expectations. You might have to deal with other people’s discomfort about seeing you grow or try something new.
People might expect you to follow societal norms or reach certain milestones by a certain age. It feels like you’re supposed to care about these things but they don’t always fit with what you want or how you see yourself. It’s another element which can throw you off, confuse you, and become overwhelming.
I find it gets harder to figure out where my head is at when I’m hearing so many voices and opinions about what’s “right” or what I “should” be doing.
Then you’ve got to deal with your own expectations that you set for yourself. You probably have a lot of ideas and hopes for how you want things to go, whether these are realistic or not.
Uncertainty about the “new you”
Changes in role or identity come with uncertainty that can feel really uncomfortable. There’s an awkwardness in trying to understand what it means to be you and navigating who you were and who you’re becoming.
You’re probably questioning yourself, or wishing you were more certain about things. In a way if you get something wrong at this stage, it feels like it defines you.
Dealing with the unknown and the pressure to 'get it right' can have you feeling frozen in place, scared to make the wrong decision, or feeling like an imposter. It’s okay to make mistakes and take your time to figure out who you are.
How to support yourself through transition stress
Some practical things you can do to help yourself include...
- Breathing exercises
- Grounding exercises
- Meditation
- Journaling
- Counselling
Breathing exercises can be useful for ‘in the moment’ stress, when you’re hit by feelings of overwhelm. A popular breathing exercise is box breathing, which involves breathing in for 4 seconds, holding for 4 seconds, breathing out for 4 seconds, holding for 4 seconds, and repeating this sequence as many times as you need. Some people like to imagine a box shape while doing this, to help them visualise it.
Grounding exercises help you connect with your body, your environment, or the present moment, and remind you that you’re safe. If you’re making a big life change, chances are you may have felt some resistance, maybe in the form of questions or doubts about whether you’re making the right decision. There are so many unknowns that come with change that it can feel unsafe. Grounding exercises can help you feel safe and remind you to trust yourself, and know that you’ll figure it out.
An example of a grounding exercise is the 5,4,3,2,1 technique. It involves naming 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. There are many others to experiment with, but this is an easy one to remember.
Meditation helps you to feel your emotions and let them go. It helps you become more aware of your feelings and understand yourself better. It can also be very grounding and calming as it helps you connect with yourself. Meditation can also be used to visualise a desired outcome and connect with it.
Journaling and counselling can help you explore your perceptions of change and understand the feelings that accompany them. The more you understand yourself and process your feelings, the more comfortable you become with who you are, and the more comfortable you become with things changing.
If we were working together and I was your counsellor, we could explore…
- What structure means to you, and how you might start to build it again.
- Whose expectations are you carrying that no longer fit with your new role or the person that you’re becoming? What are you expecting of yourself during this transition and is it realistic?
- What helps you stay grounded through uncertain or chaotic times?
More importantly, the way that you experience change is going to be a little different from how I experience it, and how the next person experiences it.
If we were working together, I’d be interested in how you experience change, what are your unique challenges with it, and what does it all mean to you?
If you’d like to learn more about me and my own experiences of change, start here.
If you’re interested in counselling sessions with me, my home page tells you how to get started.