How to cope with change using Bridges' Transition Model

0:02 A listener production. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Crapya Happy Today, I want to share with you a theory of change or transition, basically an idea that might help you to understand how we manage and cope with change in life. This is particularly relevant to me at the moment, having just gone through a fairly major life change, and I shared this idea on my TikTok and also in a newsletter to my email subscribers, and I have had a huge response, so I know it really resonates with people, and so I wanted to share it with you as well. So this idea, this theory of transition was first developed by a guy called William Bridges who has now passed away. And this was way back in the seventies and he came up with this idea of transition, which was predominantly at the time. I believe he applied it to organizational change, but it's very much a theory of personal transition and how we navigate change. So the idea is that when change happens in your life, that is the circumstance that changes around you, that's the situation that changes, and that can happen very very quickly. So, for example, if you're in a relationship and you choose to end that relationship, or somebody chooses to end a

1:32 relationship with you, then one minute you are together and the next you're not. You can finish your job on a Friday and start a new job on the following Monday. Similarly, you can move house, you can move into state, or like I did, you can hop on a plane and twenty four hours later hop off that plane and another part of the world, living in a new house in a completely different country, completely different time zone, different currency, different everything, And so it happens very very quickly. Transition is the inner process, the inner psychological process that goes along with that change, and that can take a lot longer.

2:19 So Bill Bridges came up with this idea that when they're ever there is a change. The process of transition occurs in three stages. In the first stage, there is obviously an ending that's fairly self explanatory. Something has to end. In the ending stage, we are all about releasing something. We have to let something go. There is a process psychologically of letting go of the role that we played of often a sense of identity, structures and routines, relationships that even are broader than the primary relationship. If it's relationship that ends, there's all of the other extended relationships that go along with that, the routines, the rituals, the habits, the connections. There can be sadness in endings, and often there is sadness in endings, and even if the ending is by your own choice, it's still really important to acknowledge that there can be sadness involved in that. There can also be some process of disengagement from the old way of life, some disenchantment, disidentification, as I said, letting go of old identities. If you are married and then you're not your identity as somebody's wife or husband, the expectations that you know people have of you, that society has a view everything about that. There is this adjustment that has to happen is letting go. Somewhere in the future,

3:51 there is a new beginning, and a new beginning is characterized by often a feeling of hope and optimism, of enthusiasm, new ideas, and there is a new way of life. There are new roles, new identity, new sense of who you are, new structures and routines, new relationships and everything is comfortable and familiar again, like there's this whole new you. Almost in between those two stages, there is this great, big, gaping void called the neutral zone. Bill Bridges called it the neutral zone, and he described it as a no man's land where the old way of life, everything that you knew, is gone. All of that familiarity, all of that routine, it's finished. But the new way of life hasn't really taken shape yet. There's nothing really there that is comfortable and familiar and secure and certain that you can grasp onto. So you're in this kind of emotional wasteland which is incredibly uncomfortable for a lot of people.

5:01 If you've been there, you will know yourself. It is deeply uncomfortable. I described it when I sent an email out to my newsletter subscribers as feeling untethered, like there's nothing solid that I can put my hand on, like there's nothing to grasp. And we're not, as humans, particularly good at tolerating uncertainty. We vary along that spectrum of how comfortable we are with uncertainty, but as a rule, we generally don't cope well with too much uncertainty. We like familiarity. We like routine, we like structure and predictability in our lives. It's what makes us feel safe. And so when we're in this no man's land, it's uncomfortable.

5:45 It's uncertain. We don't really have a clear vision of what that new future is going to look like. It hasn't taken shape yet, so we're in this space of having to surrender and to trust that everything's going to be okay when we don't really know what that's going to look like. So the thing about this neutral zone is that because it does feel so uncomfortable, it can be very tempting to either want to run back to what you knew before, to go back to what was familiar because that gives you that sense of safety and familiarity. Or it can be just as tempting to jump into something new, whether it's to leap into a new job or leap into a new relationship or something to have something to hold on to. And it can be a mistake to do either of those things if that is rushed, or if that is impulsive, or if that is done as a way to simply escape from the discomfort of the neutral zone. The neutral zone can be a really useful time and often is a time for self reflection, for really going inwards and reviewing your life, reviewing and reflecting on where you're at, where you've been, what it is that matters most to you, really considering your values.

7:07 For pulling away. It is often characterized by kind of pulling away and this going inward. It's a great time to do things like journaling or meditation, or just spend time alone with yourself, as opposed to looking outwards and looking to other people for the answers or for somebody to tell you what you should do or that everything's going to be okay. Not that you shouldn't connect with people, but it is very important to go inward and connect with yourself. And what happens is that in time, the new beginning, the new ideas, and the new possibilities, they will begin to emerge fairly organically if you give yourself the time and the space to be in that no man's land, to be willing to tolerate that discomfort, but to trust that on the other side everything actually will be okay. One thing I found kind of interesting and a little amusing when I shared this idea on my TikTok was that somebody commented and asked how long does the neutral zone last? Which is, you know, hilarious because even that question in itself is looking for some certainty, and obviously there is no clear cut answer to that,

8:41 depending on the type of change that you've gone through or are going through, depending on whether this was your choice or this was thrust upon you, depending on these significance, you know, the emotional significance of the change that you're going through, whether it is on the whole a positive or a negative change, All of these factors going to impact on how long that neutral zone kind of lasts, and what it looks like and what it feels like, and how quickly you emerge on the other side. If you find yourself in this neutral zone and you're struggling, there is one thing that I would like to share as a way of coping and as a way of helping you through that. Obviously, as I said, the most important thing, I think is to recognize and to understand where you're at and to realize that this is a normal part of the process. I think we can get very we live in this world where there's this sense of urgency and pressure to just get on with it.

9:40 And that is such a mistake if you don't allow yourself the space, the psychological and the emotional space to accommodate this change, to allow yourself to go through that process. So obviously very important to just give yourself that time and space and to accept that it is normal for this to take some time, and that it does feel uncomfortable and that you will feel not yourself for a while, and that that's okay to give yourself permission to do that. But the other thing I wanted to share with you is this idea of expressive writing or in other words, journaling, And to be honest, I could make a whole separate episode about this, so maybe we will do that. But when it comes to change, particularly and particularly traumatic change or difficult change, then journaling can be a really powerful thing to do to help you to manage your emotions and to come through really emotionally well on the other side of that. So I want to share with you this one study and for all of you who don't consider yourself to be journalist, like I don't know, I'm not into journaling, Like what do I write? This is very clear, it's a very structured protocol where you simply journal for four days or five days, for twenty minutes at a time about the issue, about your thoughts and feelings about the change that you're going through. So this guy, James Pennybaker, came up with this protocol and one of the first studies that he did was back in nineteen

11:12 ninety four, was with a group of men who had been made redundant from their jobs. So these men had been employed long term like this is that have twenty years plus of employment with the same organization. The average age was fifty four. They were all professionals, and through a restructure or whatever happened, they were all made redundant. So what they did was they took these men, they actually took sixty three of them, and they assigned them to a different group. One group, as I said, was instructed to write for twenty minutes a day for five days, specifically about their thoughts and feelings in relation to that job loss, the emotional impact of that job loss. Another group was assigned to write for twenty minutes a day for five days about just their day to day plans, what they had planned for the day, but particularly not to write about their thoughts and feelings about the job loss, and a third group were given no writing instructions at all, and as far as the researchers knew, they did not participate in any writing activity. That was a five day intervention.

12:24 Eight months later, more than half of the expressive writing group had found full time employment, and approximately seventy percent had found some level of employment, whether full time, part time, or casual employment, compared with only twenty seven percent of the non writing group. Of those who found full time employment, as I said, fifty three percent of the expressive writers compared with twenty four percent. So half of the plan your day type writers compared with fourteen percent of the non writers, So this was significant. The other thing that they found when they interviewed these men eight months after they'd been made redundant, those who had participated in the expressive writing group had a much more positive effect. They were able to look back on that experience with a sense of perspective. Just generally, they had let go of a lot of the anger and the resentment and the bitterness that they naturally felt at the time that that had happened, whereas the non writers, the ones who hadn't participated in that journaling exercise, many of them were still very angry, very bitter, very much in blame mode, very much angry at the employer, at the system for putting them in this position, really not taking a lot of responsibility.

13:53 So the emotional processing that had gone on was significant for these groups who had participated in the journaling exercise, and not just the emotional processing, but on a practical level, they had gone on to gain employment again, which is obviously significant. So I share that as just one example of a tool that might be helpful for you if you are navigating the neutral zone right now, that journaling exercise that could be useful for anything that you are going through in your life. And again, as I said, if you have never considered yourself to be one for journaling necessarily, or you never know what to write, or you don't have the time, or you look at the page blankly, then choosing one emotionally significant event and journaling about that for twenty minutes for four days has been proven over and over and over again. That study, that original study has been replicated many many times in many different circumstances. It's also proven to reduce the number of doctors' visits as can actually improve your physical health, improve your immunity has profound benefits physically and psychologically. The process of journaling. So if you are going through a change, and you are finding yourself feeling very lost and very confused and fearful and anxious about what is coming next for you, then could I suggest that maybe journaling could be one way that helps you to navigate that transition.

15:30 Please do let me know if that is helpful for you, and of course email me hello atkastun dot com. Tell me if that resonates, ask me any questions that you have, and we will definitely address them in future episodes. I cannot wait to catch you next week on another episode of Crappy to Happy Listener