Sometimes Growth Feels Like Falling Apart

Not all growth feels good. Sometimes, it feels like falling apart.

We like to think of growth as tidy, cumulative, or maybe even satisfying. Clients often ask me for a neat prescription of how I'm going to "make" them change. But deep change doesn't work that way – at least, not for me or the remarkable people I've worked with.

Growth might arrive as insomnia, sharp exchanges with your partner that leave you questioning yourself, or the realisation that the job you loved now leaves you cold. It may not come with clarity, but as a messy process of disorienting experiments as you work out what fits.

After my postdoctoral fellowship, the Chief of Mental Health Services wanted to keep me at Harvard, but following 9/11, visas for foreigners became nearly impossible. Leaving the US meant leaving my relationship, my friends, and the world I had built over 14 years. It was a dark, lonely time of letting go.

Looking back now, I recognise that disorientation and desperation often mark the start of real change. I don't mean this in a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" kind of way, but rather that we need to let go of some inner structures before something truer can take their place. And that’s painful.

When I was in that place, I wished someone had said, "You're not doing it wrong; it's just that deep change often starts with feeling like your world is falling apart."