When people talk about change, they often speak about breakthroughs, courage and clarity.
What they don’t talk about is the shift within us, the grief, the quiet ache that arrives when we begin to loosen an old identity, or step out of a familiar pattern.
The first time I understood this was during the biggest tectonic shifts of my life moments when everything I cared about felt at risk. The initial response was adrenaline, but beneath that a firm resolve, or a deep stillness, would arrive. In that stillness I could suddenly see what mattered. I’d hear my own heartbeat. The noise of the world faded. A handful of next steps would appear. And I would take them.
Looking back now, I realise that what came after the adrenaline was a kind of letting go and grieving.
I was letting go of ways of being that had kept me feeling safe and alive emotionally for years. Survival patterns don’t dissolve without a level of risk taking. It does feel risky making a new choice, to get curious and commit to doing life differently. Because even when our survivor patterns, our coping mechanisms, and behaviours ultimately may hurt us, collectively, they are our survival patterns, and they protected us once. That is what makes it hard to let go of them.
I first became interested in understanding what was behind Change in 2020, whilst participating in the Transform Drama to Design Your Dreams program for coaches. It was led by Donna Zajonc MCC, the co-founder of The Center for The Empowerment Dynamic.
Donna and a co-lead, Petra, spoke about how change brings identity loss. When we’ve done something a certain way for a long time even if it’s hard or costly it becomes part of who we think we are. When we start doing it differently, there is a sense of disorientation. Something is shed. Something feels raw. Grief surfaces.
And grief can feel like resistance, but it isn’t. It is simply the nervous system recalibrating.
This is also why coaches who push too quickly can unintentionally cause harm. I’ve had coaches who sensed my distress but didn’t know how to hold it. Because trauma is outside of a coaching contract, it makes it difficult to navigate – a coach wants to hold onto a client, and help them find a breakthrough; the client, who has trauma humming beneath the surface, holds back, watching this in the coach, and wondering what’s going on. ‘Am I broken… can’t this coach help me, because there’s something wrong with me.’ I’ll keep trying! They wanted movement when my body wanted safety. I had to step away, seek therapy and find people who understood trauma, not just behaviour change.
This is one reason the stages of change model matters. It honours that:
- contemplation feels like a seesaw
- ambivalence is normal
- fear sits beside desire
- we can be ready in one part of life and deeply unready in another
- grief is part of the process
Change doesn’t ask us to bulldoze over our past. It asks us to walk with ourselves tenderly as old layers fall away.
During my own shifts, I stayed close to my senses. I walked without headphones. I lifted my gaze. I drank water instead of reaching for stimulation. I let scents from my garden or the sea soften me back into my body. These small practices gave me the steadiness to choose my next steps instead of reacting to old patterns.
When we meet ourselves with compassion through this stage, change becomes less of a battle and more of an unfolding. We stop expecting ourselves to “get over it” and start honouring what is real.
Part 3 will take this understanding into the practical, how beliefs change, how new pathways form, and how the 3VQ and TED* work gives us an easy and gentle way forward.
Thank you,
Susan Dunlop
Founder – Blue Borage