Why is Change Unnerving?
I can tell you that the feeling is the same nearly every time I learn that something has changed, or is changing, or will change even somewhat down the road. When something changes - a routine, a place, a layout, feelings, plans, a person, a relationship - my very first reaction is essentially to accidentally hold my breath. As if I stay very very still and allow the change to move around me, it won’t affect me in any catastrophic way, per se.
Then come the swirling spiraling thoughts, many starting with “what if?” or “why?” or “how/how come?” but more often the overarching thought leading the charge of angry picketers in my brain is screaming “how will this change x?” ie: the plans I’d already made, the people already involved, the schedule previously put into place. How many of those things now need to be adjusted? It’s not just the mental load of having to do that, but in hoping the new day or time or plan will work for that person too. I feel like I’m inconveniencing others, and I didn’t even instigate said change!
It’s not that a change causes a lack of a convenience, which it does, but that’s not what unnerves me. For me, I’m fairly certain it’s more a lack of control that upends me, increasing my discomfort sometimes to the level of feeling like I need to actually crawl out of my skin.
Now, we’re not talking about big gigantic changes. Sometimes, it’s finding out that my husband has to work late and won’t be able to do dinner with us. Sometimes, it’s finding out a guest has changed their travel plans. Other times, it’s that the project I was working on will no longer be needed, or that my freelance income will be delayed, that a prescription I need is backordered or not even covered by my insurance at all.
You see, when I was little, I built a figurative glass house around myself - and the time I spent in that house was time that I was away from everything that would immediately cause pain or sadness. It was a safe house. It was my safe house. It existed in a world inside of my mind, and it felt real to retreat there.
That glass house has shifted and grown quite a bit as I became a teenager, then a college student, a young adult, a wife, a mother, a loss mom, a graduate school student, a patient advocate, an author, and an ever evolving friend; but it’s structure has been unsteady for a while now. How do I know this? At some point, retreating into the house in my mind stopped feeling warm and fuzzy inside, and I realized that the previous space I’d use metaphorically to make sense of the events and unspoken rules around me, had started to feel like a trap instead of a safe haven. This was the first time in probably two decades that I began to think about it’s creation and functionality.
Today, I can tell you that the glass house needs major renovations - but I don’t think I’m going to make them. I think, er, I’m trying to empower myself to know that glass houses are fragile, and this adult version of me needs the opposite of fragility. Rather, I need strength and stability - a place in my mind that I can draw out those characteristics without losing the softness around the edges, and without feeling powerless about changes that are happening surrounding me.
All my life, change has threatened the foundation of that glass house, the very place I believed to have kept me “safe” for all these years.
The wind or the rain or the structural changes that occurred around me left me paralyzed in one safe spot in the home - my room, and ultimately gave me what was honestly a very short period of time to digest whatever new obstacle had appeared in front of me, requiring that I come to find a solution which would prevent the house from cracking at the corners and ultimately prevent me from toppling out in the middle of the processing, splayed on the sidewalk and unable to regroup. Vulnerability, when used as a weapon against oneself, feels like something painful to avoid at all costs, rather than a tool to reach the innermost parts of myself and consult with my own wizard on how to proceed.
I think I fear that change may always have power over me, that it’ll always make me feel raw and vulnerable and often times exposed. I’m afraid of people that find my being organized and intentional as a flaw rather than a strength, an incorrect judgement which has the intense power and audacity to shift my ability and desire to survive.
Look at that. Look at that place I arrived to on my own. I wrote sitting outside of the metaphorical glass house, but I’m watching it as it rain streaks down the sides of the damp, dark windows. Today I wrote as a reminder to myself that it doesn’t always have to feel this way.
I know that change is necessary. I know that change is inevitable.
I also know that snapback reactions are not helpful, not kind, and not under the umbrella of who I’d like to be, or how I’d like to be perceived.
So as we go into a week thats filled with both longstanding gratitude and deep grief (both aged and brand new) I’d normally be setting out throw pillows and extra blankets in the glass house; ensuring when the hurt became too much to bear, I’d have somewhere to hide where no-one was watching. But this year, I’m going to try… something else.
I’m going to follow the conversation rather than lead it, releasing whatever tiny bit of control I was allowing myself to believe I still had. I will, however, be holding my heart in my hands, tenderly knowing with open conversations and new experiences, anything, at any point could change - including my feelings of safety and grounding.
And this year, at this point in my mental health treatment, the only goal I am choosing to set is to believe that if my heart breaks, if it feels like my insides shatter, I know that with time and space and the tools and groundwork I’ve poured myself into, I can put the pieces back together. I have oh so much practice with that.
Now, the “final” project might look or feel different afterwards, but that’s why I have a fully vetted, unbelievably trustworthy care team. Providers (and medication) to spend the following week(s) debriefing, examining, and talking in depth through things that happened or changes that left me feeling off-kilter, vulnerable, exposed or alone. My ultimate goal? That the walls of the glass house can gently be laid down and cleared away, slowly empowering me to one day no longer need a safe house, but to simply feel or be safe.