How to Deal with Big Life Changes
Two listeners—Karen and Janice—independently wrote in and asked how to deal with life’s big changes. This week, Savvy Psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen offers four ways to handle life’s only constant.
Ellen Hendriksen, PhD
Listen
How to Deal with Big Life Changes
Change is like a home renovation: stressful, messy, and without a guarantee of how things will turn out. But with a lot of work, some help, and some luck, the end result can be breathtaking.
Life’s big changes aren’t limited to the things your HR manager refers to as “life events”: getting married or divorced, losing or adding a family member, changing jobs, or retiring. A life change can be anything that leaves you wishing for an emergency stop button: immigrating, being diagnosed with a chronic or terminal illness, coming out, gender transitioning, deployment. Even getting or losing a pet can change your life.
And around this time of year, for millions of students, change means graduating from high school or college. And for millions of parents, it means the change of an empty nest.
Thankfully, there’s a name for this kind of upheaval—it’s called role transition. In a role transition, you disengage from one role and start again in another. Change is experienced as both loss and gain. Sometimes we feel the loss most acutely; for example, being diagnosed with an illness may mean the loss of functionality, even if it means gaining perspective on what matters most in your life. With other changes we reap mostly gains: in getting married, we may be happy to trade in our single life for a loving partner.
So how to deal with life’s not-so-little changes? Let’s cover four tips on what to do besides hold onto your hat.
Tip #1: Acknowledge mixed feelings. Labeling what you’re feeling sounds basic, but when it comes to change, it’s surprisingly hard. That’s because there’s usually more than one emotion roiling around.
With any big change, you’ll probably feel the emotions that come with loss: grief and sadness. But you may also feel positive emotions like happiness, excitement, satisfaction, or pride. And then there are those that come with not knowing what the future may bring: vulnerability, anxiety, worry, and fear.
The point is that feeling a big messy mix is totally normal. You can even feel totally opposite emotions at the same time. Have you ever laughed through your tears, or felt brave while your hands were shaking? Exactly.
Tip #2: Pinpoint what you’ve lost and gained. Oftentimes, that big messy mix of emotions is all we feel. To gain some clarity, specify what you’re losing and what you’re gaining. For instance, our listener Janice couldn’t figure out why she felt a mix of sad, resentful, and excited whenever talk of her beloved sister’s wedding came up. After some reflection, she realized she was worried her close relationship with her sister would be gone forever—hence feeling sad and resentful. But she also realized she was happy and excited for her sister to gain a partner who adored her, and to gain a good guy as a brother-in-law. Sifting out the loss and the gain helped Janet understand her conflicting feelings, and set her up for Tip #3, which is…
Tip #3: Focus on what you can control. With big changes, we often feel like we’re out of control. Use your body as a cue. When a chill goes down your spine or a pit forms in your stomach, ask yourself what was just going through your head. Likely, it will be a frantic, scrambling thought like, “I’m not ready—I can’t do this!” or “How am I going to get through this?”
But while you can’t control everything about the change (heck, sometimes you can hardly control anything), there is always action you can take.
But while you can’t control everything about the change (heck, sometimes you can hardly control anything), there is always action you can take. So think about what you would do if you were ready. What would you be doing if you could get through this? Think of concrete, specific actions. Then, do them, even if you don’t feel ready quite yet. Your readiness will eventually catch up.
Your action might involve communicating your feelings: for example, Janice can express her worries and her happiness to her sister, and make sure they always have a date to see each other on the calendar.
Or your action might look more like a to-do list. Our listener Karen is about to return to her native Indonesia after six years of grad school in the U.S. She’s feeling overwhelmed but finds solace in the mundane acts of sending out resumes and looking at apartment listings. Indeed, sometimes what’s comforting isn’t traditional self-care like a bubble bath or a good heart-to-heart; sometimes there is solace in just getting stuff done.
Finally, your action might not look like anything to an observer; it might be small and internal, like breathing slowly and calmly for one minute, or reciting a prayer or favorite inspirational quote.
If nothing else, you can control putting one foot in front of the other or taking things one hour at a time. The point is that no matter what, there are things you can do to cope.
Tip #4: Find your certainty anchors. Certainty anchors are the constants in your life, the things you can set your watch by. Oprah would call them things she knows for sure. So when the ground beneath you begins to shift, anchor yourself with some certainty. Your anchors don’t have to be big: make your cup of tea the same way every morning, walk the same route with your dog, or religiously stick to your habit of reading in bed before you go to sleep. In the midst of change, a little certainty can go a long way.
To wrap up, with some planning and support, when life’s changes register on the Richter Scale, you’ll be ready. And that’s no small change.
Please note: for this episode, I’ve changed names and scenarios slightly to protect privacy.
For even more savvy, subscribe to the Savvy Psychologist podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, listen on Spotify, or like on Facebook. Or get the transcript delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for the Savvy Psychologist newsletter.
About the Author
Dr. Ellen Hendriksen was the host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast from 2014 to 2019. She is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. Her scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and many other media outlets. Her debut book, HOW TO BE YOURSELF: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety, was published in March 2018.