Yesterday I was at an appointment with my naturopath/acupuncturist, who is someone I’ve been seeing twice monthly for three or four years. The primary doctor in the office she’s been working from is retiring at the end of the month, and she’s deep in the transition to a new office — not only finding one and signing the lease, but moving her online records into a new system, figuring out the new scheduling system, painting the new office so it feels the way she wants it to, setting up new accounts with various vendors who sell the supplements and tinctures she uses in her practice. It’s a lot.

As a result, she’s feeling pretty frazzled. Oh, her professional care hasn’t lessened one iota, but we’re friendly enough that she shared the stress she’s under. I said something about oh, yes, transition, it does all of these things to us. She looked at me and said, “I feel so understood right now.”

I’ve had this experience in my workplace as well, helping colleagues understand why other colleagues behave badly when things change physically or systemically.

So I want to share it with you, because the more we know about how we function and react in the face of change, the easier it is for us to surf that change and not compound problems by feeling like we shouldn’t have them.

Stages of transition

There are roughly three stages we go through whenever we encounter transition, and transition here can be small (your desk is moved across the office) or large (marriage, divorce, move, new job, new kid, someone died).

The first is grief. There is always, always grief. If this is a transition you didn’t want and didn’t look for, there’s the grief of losing something you valued. If it’s a transition you wanted, there’s the grief of losing the good, comfortable, familiar parts of the old way.

The second is what I call the dark night of the soul. You aren’t what you were, and you aren’t yet what you will be, and you have NO idea what’s going on and it’s disorienting as fuck.

The third is when you start to get your feet under you in the new version of your life — you start to feel like you know what’s going on, even if there’s more still to figure out/learn.

These stages aren’t necessarily linear — grief can show up all along the way, and there will be all of these little micro-cycles where you’ve figured out one piece (stage 3) but you’ve just recognized some other part of the change and in that way you’re still in stage 1. It’s messy, is what I’m saying.

In my experience, and the experiences of people I’ve talked to and worked with, simply knowing how transition works is helpful because we can spend less time asking if we made the right choice and more time muttering “fucking transition” while we do whatever self-care we need in the moment.

What it looks like on the ground

Physically, we tend to be clumsy during transition. Literally clumsy, like dropping things and running into walls. (The latter is my specialty.) You might need more sleep than usual, or your sleep might be disturbed. Your appetite will probably be different.

Mentally, you’re likely to be exhausted. In the normal course of things, we have systems and pre-decisions for so many things. You know how to get to the grocery store. You know where everything goes in the house. You know what you’re likely to wear. When we’re in the middle of transitions, all of those systems and pre-decisions fly out the window and everything requires us to problem-solve. And problem-solving is exhausting.

That mental exhaustion means we have many fewer resources left for keeping our emotional shit together. That’s why, during transition, you cope, you cope, you cope, and then you absolutely fall apart at something tiny and ridiculous. When my parents moved across the country to be nearer to their grandkids, my mom burst into tears because her cookie sheet wouldn’t fit in the new oven. My naturopath cried because she hated the carpet in her new office. In my own recent move, the cat threw up on the bed while I was in it and it felt like the end of the world.

If you’re partnered, and your partner is also in transition (instead of just supporting you through yours) you’re likely going to fight. About everything and nothing. During the few weeks after we moved, my wife and I bickered constantly, which is not how we usually are. Because she is anxious, she worried that something in our relationship was now broken, but I was able to remind her that we moved, and that’s hard, and we just didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to engage the way we normally did. Nothing was wrong, we were just exhausted. It helped.

What will help

Time, unfortunately, is the biggest thing that will make it all better. Which no one wants to hear, but if you’re in transition, just keep telling yourself that this, too, will pass. Because it will.

But while it’s passing, there are some things that will help.

Plan in LOTS of time and space for rest. Even if you aren’t sleeping, watching tv from bed (or prone on the couch) or reading a book or just lying there talking with your sweetie will help. More rest makes everything else better.

Your routine is probably entirely borked, but make a point of eating regularly. Eat something. If you can eat things you know help you feel better, that’s great, but if you don’t have the energy to make great choices, just eat something.

Outsource whatever you can reasonably outsource. If you have the means, throwing cash at problems is a reasonable thing to do in these circumstances. Pay for movers. Order dinner to be delivered. Have groceries delivered. Send your laundry out. If you don’t have the means, ask for help from friends and loved ones. They’ll have different skills and abilities, and the person who can’t physically help you move might be the person who can cook for you and make individual portions you can heat up. Really, anything you can delegate to someone else is one fewer thing you have to figure out.

Keep reminding yourself that you’re in transition and it’s normal for it to feel shitty. It’s not fun, but it’s normal. Just knowing nothing is fundamentally wrong can help a lot.

Knowing is half the battle

If you’re currently in transition, I hope this helps you feel a little better about what you’re going through and what you’re thinking and feeling as a result.

If you aren’t in transition at the moment, you inevitably will be at some point, because Life just keeps Life-ing along. The more you understand transition before you’re in it, the more you’ll be able to keep things in perspective while you’re in the midst.

The other half of the battle, well, G.I. Joe didn’t specify.