4 Supportive Tools for Navigating Life Transitions
The platitude about change being the only constant in life, while meant to offer grounding or perspective, can often feel invalidating to those of us in the thick of life transitions.
Whether a life change is something we actively chose and prepared for, something we felt completely sidelined by, or a decision we came to reluctantly resulting from a gradual period of dissatisfaction, moving through change can be uncomfortable, effortful, or complicated.
It can be this way even when change is wanted, needed, accepted, or understood, and even more so when change involves unresolved anger, powerlessness, grief or loss.
Below are some potential steps and mindfulness tools that may be helpful for stress reduction during life transitions. If you’re experiencing significant distress, overwhelm, or concerned about a mental health crisis developing, consider reaching out to a health care professional for more structured support, or access a crisis line here.
Identify What’s Staying Constant
This may not be easy to do. Perhaps it starts by noticing something small that stays the same amidst all that’s shifting; it may involve showing recognition for an aspect of your routine you might do consistently without thinking about it. This could include feeding or walking a pet or brewing a tea before starting your day.
Identify whether the constants in your life are specific people, places, roles you partake in, or activities you do. You might ask yourself how to create more consistency with what’s already supportive and available for you to lean into. We may find acknowledging what stays constant, while not an antidote for the struggle of change, can help the change process to feel more tolerable or bearable.
Utilize Your Support Systems
Your support systems may include family members, friends, partners, colleagues, peers, teammates, even professionals, such as trainers, teachers, coaches, therapists, or other forms of healers and helpers.
Life transitions are challenging enough to move through without experiencing them in isolation. While it may be vulnerable or difficult to lean into our personal support networks, it can help us feel less alone. It may also help to seek out those who’ve experienced similar trials in their lives to expand access to community.
Recognize Strengths You Showed During Past Life Transitions
This involves tapping into realistic appraisal of our capabilities. Maybe our current challenges are not comparable to anything we experienced in the past, that doesn’t mean we should block our own access to the times we reasonable did make it through strife.
Tapping into our strengths can help to buttress our self esteem; we may feel better resourced when we’re reminded of the resilient, creative and courageous ways we navigated difficulties throughout our lives, offering us more reliable access to optimism for the journey ahead to balance understandable feelings of fear or uncertainty.
Observe and Reframe The Quality of Your Self Talk
Life transitions often take effort, demanding our personal resources and attention. While in a life transition, you may feel like a different version of yourself, like your capacities and priorities are shifting, or like aspects of your identity may be changing. It is hard enough to be in unfamiliar waters without added self-criticism, self-blame, judgement, or undue pressure. Observe if the quality of your self-talk is making the transition easier or whether you could benefit from some self-compassion.
If you’re experiencing a life transition and could use some support from a therapist, you’re welcome to connect with me for a free 20-minutes consultation where we may explore what you’re going through, how my approach could help, and whether it’d be the right fit for your needs. I look forward to hearing from you.