change

Hello, again! It’s me, Maddison. Well, me a little different that is.

These past few months have been more than just time passed for me. I’ve grown, I’ve changed, and I’ve become. Almost every aspect of my life is different than it was six months ago. It makes sense that I’d be different too. I didn’t necessarily even want to be different. Life just happens, and people evolve; it’s unpreventable.

In the midst of it all, I’ve learned a lot about change. So much that I could never share everything, and so much that you could never understand it all anyway. I almost wish I’d been taking psychology notes throughout the past few months, but I was too busy with…changes. ha

There’s a few ways of handling change: resisting, numbing, and embracing. Many times people experience all three as they work through major or minor life changes. Usually, based off personality, we’ll have a default way of handling things. None are better than the others, and all are normal.

RESISTING

Resisting can show up in a few different ways. Some highlights of what it looks like are: Pretending the change isn’t happening, experiencing anger when the change is being discussed, acting in denial (continuing to live life the exact way you had before, even if it’s not reasonable given the new circumstances), seeing only the negatives, clinging to what is familiar, and being unyielding to anything different.

NUMBING

Numbing can show up as: neutralizing emotions, stagnant actions (not doing anything to prevent the change or encourage it.), not thinking too hard about the deeper effects of what’s happening, being go-with-the-flow even to a fault, seemingly not caring either way, and just focusing on your day-to-day tasks.

EMBRACING

Embracing can look like this: appearing to forget that life used to be different, full-force chasing all the new and exciting parts and ignoring the negative, surface-level loving it, adapting immediately to the point of being inauthentic, and choosing to not work through the emotions of the change.

Yes, I’m still experiencing waves of each way. I expect to. Yet, I’m able to take a step back and look at everything with clearer vision now. I can see the ways I’m becoming different, good and bad. Some sub-conscience and some very conscience. The sub-conscience ways are all the ways everyone that knew me will notice, though it’s so gradual I don’t. I live in a different part of the country than I was raised in, am around an entirely different group of people, am surrounded by different styles and cultures, and living an all-around completely different life. I’m bound to change, and that’s exactly how God created us. It really is fascinating to me how adaptable humans are.

To anyone experiencing major or minor changes right now, I get it. It’s not fun. But it will make you better and stronger and you absolutely can do this! Don’t be afraid of different, and let yourself heal in your own time. You’ll thank yourself. 🙂