Help! I Feel Lost, Not Better.
Last week, I wrote about outgrowing the performed version of yourself. Many of you wrote back. The most common response was some variation of the same sentence. “If this is just growth, why does it feel so much like losing my mind?”
That question deserves a real answer.
Because here is the truth most women have never been told: There is a meaningful difference between feeling lost and being in crisis. They can look similar from the outside, and they can even feel similar from the inside. But they are not the same experience, and they do not require the same response. Confusing the two is one of the reasons so many women either spiral unnecessarily or, on the other end, dismiss real distress as “just a phase.”
This is the conversation I want to have with you this week.
Why high-capacity women feel the most disoriented
If you are someone who has spent your adult life being perfectly competent, handling everything and figuring it all out, then disorientation hits you differently. You are not used to not knowing. You are not used to the floor being unsteady. You are not used to needing rather than providing. So when a transition arrives and your usual tools stop working the way they used to, the experience is not just emotional. It is identity-shaking.
High-capacity women often feel the most lost in transition because they have the least practice with not having a plan. Their internal narrative has been organized around effectiveness, and now effectiveness is not the right tool. Presence is.
There is no shame in this. It is not a sign that you are weaker than you thought. It is a sign that you are being asked to develop a different muscle than the one that got you here.
Permission to be in Process
Most women I work with are not in crisis. They are in transition, and they have been treating their transition like a crisis because no one taught them another category for what they’re going through. They have been pathologizing what is, in fact, a season of becoming.
If that is you, I want to give you something explicit. Permission to be in process. Permission to not have it figured out by the end of the month. Permission to not perform stability for anyone. Permission to be a work in progress without that meaning anything is wrong with you.
The emotional stages of an identity transition
Identity transitions tend to move through recognizable stages. They are not always linear, they are rarely tidy, but they are identifiable and most women cycle through them more than once. Here are the 4 stages:
1. Disorientation
The early phase. Things feel off. Sometimes you can name what has changed, other times you cannot articulate why. You are functional, but underneath the surface there is a low-grade static. Sleep is uneven. Concentration drifts. Old enjoyments feel hollow. This is the “something is wrong with me” phase, even though nothing is wrong. Something is shifting.
2. Grief
Once the shift becomes undeniable, grief arrives. Grief for the version of you that worked. Grief for the life you were building. Grief for assumptions that turned out to be unstable. Grief for the future you were certain of. Even when the change is good or chosen, the grief is real, and it is not dramatic. It is the emotional honesty of letting something go.
3. Release
This is the quietest stage and the most overlooked. Release is when you stop fighting the change and stop performing the old self. You are not yet rebuilt. You are simply no longer pretending. Many women describe this stage as feeling “in between,” and it is. That is exactly what it is supposed to feel like.
4. Rediscovery
Things may look different and you may look different, but you’re learning to embrace all that’s new in you and around you. Your curiosity about your new world begins to blossom. Your personal preferences sharpen. The voice underneath the noise becomes clearer. This is not arrival. It is integration. It is the work continuing in a new key.
So how do I know if it’s a crisis?
This is one of the most important questions a woman can ask, and one of the questions I treat with the most care in my office, especially in a month like this one, when mental health is in the cultural conversation in a louder way than usual.
Healthy identity disruption tends to feel uncomfortable but workable. You can still get out of bed, even on hard days. You can still feel moments of warmth, even alongside the sadness. Your distress is responsive to support, rest, honest conversation, and time. There is movement, even when the movement is slow.
A mental health crisis tends to feel different. Persistent hopelessness. An inability to function in daily life. Disconnection from loved ones that does not lift. Thoughts of self-harm or of not being here. A sense that the bottom keeps dropping. If any of this is your experience right now, please do not try to interpret your way through it. Please reach out. To a therapist. To 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. To someone who can be present with you in real time. Mental Health Awareness Month is a fitting backdrop for me to say this clearly: Needing help is not weakness.
A practical strategy
This week, name the stage you are in. Disorientation, grief, release, or rediscovery. Then write down two or three sentences about what it looks like in your day-to-day life right now. Naming a stage will not solve it. But it will keep you from interpreting a normal phase as a personal flaw.
A reflection prompt
What would change in how I’m treating myself this week if I believed I was in transition, not in trouble?
This is what therapy can hold
One of the most clarifying things therapy offers is the ability to tell the difference between disorientation and crisis, in real time, with someone trained to recognize both. Not every season needs an intervention, but every season benefits from real support. A skilled therapist can help you locate where you actually are, what you actually need, and what the data of your own life is trying to tell you.
And in a month dedicated to mental health awareness, this is the quiet point I want to underline. Caring for your mental health is not only for the seasons that frighten you. It can even be for the seasons that confuse you.
Take the next step
Register for the Identity & Transitions Workshop on May 28 at 7 PM
Book a consultation if you want help mapping where you are
If you’re in crisis, please reach out. 988 is available any time
