New City, New Job, New You? Life Transitions with a Wakefield Therapist
Struggling with a life transition? Consider meeting with a therapist in Wakefield to get through the transition with more ease.
Big life changes can bring a huge range of emotions, from dread up to excitement, and everything in between. Sometimes life changes are expected and you have worked hard to bring them into your life, while other changes feel forced upon you. Even the presumably desired changes can bring up challenging feelings, however, which can dampen the joy of the transition.
If you find yourself not up to celebrating and instead feel like the rug was pulled out from under you or like you simply can’t feel happy about the change, therapy might be helpful to get your enthusiasm back. A Wakefield therapist with experiencing supporting individuals through life transitions can help you identify the unique barriers you are facing and how to navigate them more effectively so you can get back to embracing the change at hand.
Common Life Transitions and Their Challenges
Many common life transitions come with unique challenges, despite them seeming very ordinary and predictable. This can throw a lot of people for an emotional loop because it feels like everyone around them is having a good time but them. It can feel like you are the only one struggling and worry there is something wrong with you that you aren’t as happy as your peers. Sure, some people may find more ease with the transition, and yet others may also be hiding their struggles.
I work with a lot of young adults when they graduate high school and for months they have been counting the days to the last day of school and feeling like they can’t wait to get out of high school. Yet as graduation approaches, there are almost always feelings of deep fear about what is next and sudden feelings of deep mourning. Why does this happen so easily? Well, for a person at this life stage, being in school is truly all they have known their entire life. The annoyances of assignments and practices and social dynamics, while burdensome at times, are utterly familiar. The unknown of the future can be terrifying. The reality alone that things will be different can bring up a lot of anxiety and leave people feeling very stuck, because they know they don’t want to stay in high school and yet graduating feels like a massive lurch into the unknown.
Fortunately, therapy can be really helpful for soothing this anxiety and identifying what still is known and where predictability can be found, even in uncertainty.
These reactions are really common with starting college, graduating college, starting new jobs, relationship changes, retirement and certainly with becoming a parent. It can feel like a tremendous loss to be suffering during the desired changes, yet it is very common and therapy can be tremendously helpful if you are feeling stuck.
Understanding Your Emotional Response to Change
In my experience, most people respond to major life transitions the same way that they respond to smaller changes. This consistency can actually be really helpful for talking yourself through a major transition if you are having a hard time. Often, having this predictability in your responses can reduce a lot of the fear and help provide a path forward that is much more comforting.
I know for myself, my reflex with a big change is to have feelings of doubt show up uninvited. My thoughts will turn to things like, “I don’t know how to do this…I don’t think I’m ready for this…I haven’t had enough training/mentorship/guidance/no one has modelled this for me so how am I supposed to know how to do it” thoughts. They are not fun. Yet knowing that doubt is often my response, I can actually move into working with the doubt and challenge it a bit until it soothes into more curiosity and self-assurance. I can ask myself if I really think I’m that incompetent and usually I realize that while I might not be competent in whatever the new area is, I do have certain skills that generalize well. I will reconnect with my capacity to learn well, to push myself to get comfortable and to trust that I can handle the insecurity for a period of time, even though I don’t like it. When I can make this shift, then I allow curiosity and some self-assuredness to show up, just enough that I feel more capable of moving forward and the noise of doubt will quiet down soon enough. At it’s most simple, I have learned that I’m likely to think “I can’t,” and then realize, “I can it’s just hard because I don’t know how” and then “I guess I’m going to learn how.”
The importance of self-compassion during these transitions can not be understated, as the last thing we need is to disparage ourselves.
Tools to Build Resilience During Transitions
Building your capacity to handle transitions will depend a lot on your personality, your life experiences, your values and your internal and external resources. Nonetheless, below are a few strategies that often help people build their capacity to be flexible during transitions:
1. Physical grounding strategies: keeping your body out of a fight/flight/freeze response is essential to thinking clearly and creatively about how to help yourself. We all need to have our bodies more regulated in order to do this, so if you are prone to having your heart leap in your chest and breathing shallow, grounding can really help you position yourself to think more clearly.
2. Set expectations: Do you need to have it all figured out right away? Thank goodness, no! Yet we can all loathe uncertainty so much that we set ourselves up to think mastery is the only solution. Trying adjusting your expectations to smaller, more manageable bites.
3. Use connection: Most people have a tendency to turn inward when under stress, but this can amplify loneliness and insecurity. Consider who you might feel comfortable to confide in, and open up a bit to that person or persons. Articulating your concerns alone can help them make more sense and feel more manageable and hopefully you will receive some helpful support this way that takes the edge off the distress
4. Spiritual guidance: If you are religiously or spiritually active, this can be a great time to learn on any faith- and spirituality-based practices for guidance. What might your beliefs tell you about the future? About what is in store for you? About your feelings of loneliness?
5. Use routines: Think of a few helpful routines that might serve as helpful anchors to you during a time of transition. Something small that you don’t have to think about and yet provides as sense of comfort. This could be a morning routine, lunchtime routine, bedtime routine or anything else. The purpose is to create a small pocket of time where you don’t have to think about what comes next and you can free up a little mental energy for the other, more emotionally challenging tasks at hand.
Taking small steps to set yourself up for emotional relief during a transition can have a big impact. Consider what might work for you, and if you have trouble identifying anything, this is where therapy can be really helpful to developing a highly personalized plan.
How Therapy Helps You Discover Your “New You”
This is a bit of a trick header, as I don’t believe transitions actually make a “new you.” Anyone who has worked with me for a while knows I work hard to stay out of binary paradigms, and old vs new is a very binary paradigm that can be really trapping when going through life transitions. Why? Because we rarely want to fully discard the “old.” Most people want a more evolved version of themselves or their life, yet to retain many aspects of their identity as it has developed to date. Feeling like one needs to really cast off a past self can be a bit stressful and lead to more anxiety with change.
Instead, I suggest approaching new phases of life as an evolution of your own attitudes, perspectives, values and traits. Do you get to evolve into someone who thrives in a bustling city instead of a small, rural community? Of course! Yet you still get to keep your appreciation for open skies and the quiet of a soft wind in the morning across a field. You don’t have to be a new person, you are simply adding dimensions to your life. Sometimes, this takes time, and allowing that can be really helpful.
To use myself as an example, I moved out to Boston from southern California for college. I absolutely became someone who thrived walking and using public transportation and feeling totally anonymous within the city, after living in the burbs for most of my childhood. Yet I still will never feel at rest anymore than on a beach with the horizon in front of me. I live in the burbs again now and let’s just say it has been a work in progress for almost ten years to find my rhythm, yet I know it’s evolving and I appreciate far more about the burbs now than when I first moved out of Boston. Am I a new person for this? No, I have similar values, a similar sense of humor, look for the same things in friends and enjoy similar hobbies overall, even though other things I enjoy and disdain have evolved.
Allowing yourself to feel like yourself as you change can be one of the most helpful to ways to feel grounded during a transition. If you have recently become a parent, it may help to remember that you still enjoy similar music and listening to your music sometimes can help you feel like yourself. If you are getting ready to move away for college, remembering that you love horror movies might help you feel like you know how to spend your down time and might have a way to connect with new people you meet, even if your surrounding are otherwise totally unfamiliar. Allowing change and stability at the same time can be incredibly helpful.
When to Reach Out to a Therapist in Wakefield
How do you know you could benefit from extra support during a transition? Honestly, most people could use more support! You may want to take your struggle more seriously if you find that your sleep or appetite are disrupted, that you are becoming withdrawn or isolated from others, that you are struggling to concentrate, that your body is acting up and giving you headaches and stomachaches or if you are having crying spells that feel really uncomfortable. If you feel like your thoughts are spinning and spinning without moving forward or giving you any clarity, that it also a sign that you could use more support. Consider connecting with a therapist in Wakefield to get that support in a sensitive, caring and effective manner.
In therapy, you will be able to name where you feel most stuck and also learn to recognize where you are relatively okay and how to expand on what is working. You may be supported through grief associated with the changes you are facing and you will also learn to find hopefulness for any challenges ahead. Overall, you will feel less alone and like you have a better handle on how to support yourself through this transition.
Facing a big life transition? A therapist in Wakefield can guide you through the uncertainty and help you build a fulfilling new chapter. Contact me today for a free consultation. Whether in-person or online, therapy offers a personalized approach to navigating life transitions and improving your overall well-being. Reach out today to schedule a consultation and start your journey toward approaching life transitions with more energy and readiness.