Why change can feel worse before it feels better
The space between
There's a moment that catches almost everyone I work with off guard, and it tends to arrive right after they've done the brave thing.
They've made the decision. They've stopped waiting, stopped tolerating the almost-right, finally chosen the truer thing. And they come to a session expecting to feel lighter, because that's what you're promised, isn't it? That once you choose yourself, the relief comes. Instead they sit down and tell me they feel worse. That they're more unsure than before. Like they've stepped off something solid and there's nothing under them yet, and a part of them is wondering whether they've made a terrible mistake.
I always tell them the same thing: You haven't made a mistake. This is what investing time and resources into yourself can actually feel like. This disoriented, untethered feeling isn't a sign you made the wrong decision. It's probably the first real sign of you choosing more of you.
I've written before about the cost of staying, about how "fine" can quietly become the reason nothing changes. This is the part that comes next, the part almost no one talks about honestly. Because here's what's true and what nobody warns you about: the moment after you choose is often the most destabilizing part of the whole thing.
If you step back and really look at it, it makes sense. You've been standing on familiar ground for however long. It didn't feel quite right anymore, but it held you, and you knew exactly where everything was. Then you chose differently, and all of that structure, the routines, the identity, the way you'd organized your days and your sense of yourself, starts to unravel to make room for what's next. And for a while, what's next hasn't arrived yet. You're in the space between the old shape and the new one, and that place is genuinely uncomfortable. It's not a failure place, nor is it regret. It's just what it feels like to be between two solid things, holding the gap open long enough for something true to form. It's the unknown, which can be a really uncomfortable space to be in.
I know this place from the inside, more than once. When I finally let go of the formulas I'd borrowed in my coaching business and started building from my own sense of things, there was a stretch where I had no idea if it would work. I'd left the thing that wasn't right, but the thing that was right wasn't built yet. And in that unknown, every doubt I had spoke up. The familiar discomfort I'd left at least came with some kind of container. This felt like it came with none. Some days the only thing I had to stand on was a deep knowing that I couldn't go back to pretending that fine was enough.
What I want you to understand, if you're somewhere in that unknown gap right now, is that the disorientation is not the problem to solve. It's the process, doing its work. The sense that your ground feels unstable doesn't mean you're slipping or falling. It means the old structure is loosening so a truer, more aligned one can take its place. And the reason this part is so hard to move through alone doesn't mean you're incapable. It's that the protection part of you reads what's "unfamiliar" as "unsafe," and it will do everything it can to pull you back toward the container you just left, the one that didn't fit but at least was familiar.
That's the moment most people turn back. Not because they were wrong to choose, but because the in-between unknown, with its fears and past painful experiences, got loud and they were holding it by themselves.
More than anything, I want you to know that you don't have to hold it by yourself.
If something here is speaking to you and you recognize yourself in it, that's exactly what I help people with. Learn more about how I work here.