Between Two Rooms

Change can feel strange even when you choose it.

There is the part you are moving toward, and the part you are leaving behind. Your mind may understand why the change matters, but your body is still learning what feels safe now. Today's edition is about standing in that doorway with patience, support, and respect for what is ending.

Today’s Quick Overview:

🔬 Science Spotlight: Belonging during major life changes…
🗣 Therapist Corner: Why change feels unsettling…
📰 Mental Health News: Screening and early support…
🫂Community Voices: When honesty changes everything…

Reaching out doesn't always have to mean having a heavy or deep conversation. Most of the time, it's the small, ordinary ways we stay in touch that keep us feeling connected.

Take stock of the small touchpoints you made this week. Showing up in quiet, ordinary ways is how we build lasting relationships.

Major transitions are hard partly because they disrupt the communities where you feel known and connected. What makes finding that again most difficult during a transition?

My Change Kit

Major changes often mean managing a lot of moving parts at once. To help you navigate a current or upcoming transition, we put together a simple 6-prompt kit. It gives you a quick, structured way to identify what you need so you can build a stable foundation before diving in.

When Change Feels Harder Than You Think It Should

Jacqui Parkin, MBACP (Accred)

Change Affects Us More Than We Expect

Change can be exciting. It can also be unsettling, tiring, and surprisingly emotional.

Sometimes we understand why. A relationship ends, we move house, or lose a job, and life suddenly looks very different. But even changes we have chosen, worked towards, or genuinely wanted can knock us off balance.

A new job might be a brilliant opportunity, while still making you long for the comfort of knowing where everything is and what everybody expects from you. A much-needed holiday can involve so much planning, packing, and disruption that staying at home briefly starts to look quite appealing.

Part of the difficulty is that change asks us to leave behind what is familiar before the new situation feels secure.

Why Our Nervous System Struggles

From an attachment perspective, familiarity can create a sense of safety. We know our role, understand the people around us, and can predict what is likely to happen next. When those reference points shift, our nervous system may respond as though something is wrong, even when our thinking brain knows the change is positive.

Past experiences can also shape how we respond. If earlier changes happened suddenly, involved loss, or left us without enough support, present-day transitions may stir up some of those old feelings. We may notice that we feel more watchful, anxious, or driven to control every detail.

What Can Help

Make the Unknown a Little More Known

You don't need to plan every detail within an inch of its life, but gathering some information can reduce the mental load.

Find out what you can about what is coming. What will happen? When? Who will be involved? What will be expected of you?

Breaking a larger change into smaller parts can also help. "Starting a new job" is enormous. "Working out the journey, arriving on the first morning and meeting my manager" gives your brain something more manageable to process.

Keep Some Familiar Anchors

When one part of life is changing, preserve a few of the things that help you feel steady.

Your usual morning coffee, walking the dog, a familiar playlist, or the same bedtime routine can provide small points of continuity. These ordinary rituals send gentle signals of safety to the nervous system: some things are different, but not everything has changed.

Comfort is allowed too. Take the favourite jumper, use the good mug, or pack your own pillow. There are no prizes for making a transition unnecessarily uncomfortable.

Allow Time for Adjustment

Change takes energy, even when it appears to be going well. Your nervous system is taking in new information, assessing what feels safe, and gradually building familiarity.

You may need more rest, quiet, or time alone. You might feel more emotional, forgetful, or easily overwhelmed. This doesn't mean you are failing to cope. It may be part of the adjustment process.

Try naming what is happening: "There's a lot changing at the moment. It makes sense that I feel unsettled."

Let Yourself Be Supported

We regulate through relationships as well as through the things we do alone. Talking to someone trustworthy, asking for clearer information, or letting others know you need more time can make a transition feel less lonely.

Change rarely happens in one clean, decisive moment. It is a gradual process of letting go, adjusting, and finding your bearings.

You're allowed to take your time while the unfamiliar becomes familiar.

Jacqui Parkin is an accredited online Psychotherapist/Counsellor and Therapeutic Coach with nineteen years' experience supporting women through change and growth. She has a specialism in working with women who over-commit, feel overwhelmed, and risk burnout, and is the creator of The Over-Responsibility Pattern Audit, a free, powerful self-awareness assessment designed to help you identify why you are taking on more responsibility than you should. Known for her warmth, humour, and grounding presence, she writes about emotional wellbeing with compassion, honesty, and a deep understanding of the messy realities of being human. Take The Over-Responsibility Pattern Audit, visit her website, connect on Psychology Today, or join her Facebook community Sisters Evolving.

The Part of Yourself You Lose When Your Community Changes

Read the Study

The Research: A 2017 study in Psychiatry Research found that when people face major life stressors, having individual social support mattered less than whether they retained their group memberships.

Across two studies, including one that followed international students through their first semester at a new university, the loss of communities where people felt they belonged predicted depression more reliably than a lack of one-on-one support.

A friend offering encouragement helped, but it didn't replace the sense of identity and belonging that comes from being part of a group.

Why It Matters: Major transitions, moving, changing jobs, managing an illness, are often hard because they disrupt the communities where you feel known and connected. Those groups aren't just social conveniences.

They're part of how you understand who you are. Losing them, even temporarily, can contribute to depression in ways that individual support alone can't fully buffer.

Try It Today: If you're heading into a major life change, list the groups and communities where you currently feel connected.

Identify which ones might be disrupted, and think about one or two low-pressure ways to establish a similar sense of belonging in your new environment.

It doesn't have to be an exact replacement. It just needs to give you somewhere to belong while everything else is shifting.

Choosing a positive new path doesn't mean I have to pretend the old one wasn't important to me.

Think of one ending you moved through that turned out to be the necessary first step of something that mattered, and what it means that the loss and the beginning were part of the same transition rather than separate events.

It's completely normal to feel mixed emotions about a change you wanted. You don't need to feel 100% confident or resolved before taking your next step.

Pick one transition you're currently navigating. Write down 1 or 2 specific routines or daily comforts you're leaving behind (e.g., a commute, a team dynamic, a familiar weekly schedule). Acknowledge that missing them makes sense, then let yourself focus on today's tasks.

"How I Learned to Live Alongside My Anxiety Instead of Fighting It"

Shared by Parker

I kept asking my partner if they were truly happy in our relationship. Even when they said yes, I felt this nagging sense that something was off, so I assumed they were just trying to protect my feelings.

One night, I pressed the issue and asked them to be completely honest with me, no sugar-coating. After a long silence, they admitted they loved me, but weren't in love with me anymore, and hadn't been for about a year.

Now I know exactly how they feel. Or don't feel. And we're still living together. Still going through the motions. And I can't un-know what they told me.

They said they didn't want to break up necessarily, they just don't know if they want to stay. We're kind of in this holding pattern where we're figuring it out, but I'm always aware of the fact that they're not sure about me.

Sometimes I wish I'd just let them keep lying. Or that I'd never pushed for the truth. Because at least then I could've stayed in denial instead of sitting with this knowledge that my partner doesn't feel the same way I do.

Looking back, I realized I asked for complete honesty before I was actually prepared to handle the answer. I don't know if we'll work things out or end up separating, but there's definitely no going back to how things were before.

Share Your Story

Have a mental health journey you'd like to share with our community? Reply back to this email. All submissions are anonymized and edited for length with your approval before publication. Each published story receives a $10 donation to the mental health charity of your choice.

Evening Reset: Notice, Write, Settle

Picture someone standing in a doorway, one foot in the room they're leaving, one in the room they're entering. The room behind is familiar, holding the shape of who they've been. The room ahead is uncertain, not yet theirs. Standing there isn't failure or indecision, it's just where you are when something is ending and something else hasn't fully begun. Tonight, let yourself stand in the doorway without rushing through. The room ahead will become familiar. The room behind deserves a moment of honest acknowledgment first.

What is one small part of your routine or life that is shifting right now? Write down one feeling you've had about this change, without trying to fix or solve it tonight.

Close your notebook and ask yourself:

You can't fully begin until you've honestly acknowledged what's ending. That's not slowness. That's how transitions actually work.

"Every transition begins with an ending." — William Bridges

Podcast: "The Moments that Change Us" with Laurie Paul (Hidden Brain)

Listen: "The Moments that Change Us" with L.A. Paul (Hidden Brain)

We often make big decisions by trying to imagine how we'll feel once we get there. But some experiences change us in ways we cannot fully predict beforehand. This episode explores why major transitions can feel so psychologically complicated, even when they are ones we chose. Philosopher L.A. Paul traces the lives of John Newton and Malcolm X, people who underwent profound transformations they never could have anticipated, and explains why our future selves are strangers to us in ways we rarely account for.

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Coming Monday: Your body has a sleep sweet spot around 6.4 to 7.8 hours, but both sleeping too little and too much are linked to faster biological aging. What matters more is asking what your sleep is trying to tell you.

Researched and edited by Natasha. Designed with love by Kaye.

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*The Daily Wellness shares educational content only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a licensed provider for personalized care.