Transitions

Place is powerful.

More powerful than we care to admit at times. It’s comical because I am constantly talking about environment. More specifically, how the environment we put ourselves in has a very direct impact on the state of our nervous system. Truly, it is one of the most influential things on our nervous system at any given time.

And here I am, wondering why I am feeling out of sorts again after transitioning from spending my summer in Europe to a short stopover in Ohio before arriving in Colorado. How silly!

I have learned a lot about myself over the past few years. One common pattern for me is that I am very challenged by transitions. I believe we all are, but it physically, mentally and emotionally takes a huge toll on me every time. Transitions are not simple, especially for neurodivergent folks.

I can look back and clearly recall the sensory overwhelm that accompanied so many moments of transition for me. Every move I made when starting my career as a travel physical therapist 13 years ago inevitably resulted in what felt like a panic attack. Tension would build in my chest and throat, tears would blur my vision and any sort of logic would leave me. This happened so quickly, it often blindsided me.

These moments would seemingly come out of nowhere and would leave me absolutely confused. I was actively choosing to make these moves and often they were overall smooth and pleasant experiences. So why did they leave me in tears every time?

I really cannot recall a transition during that time of my life that didn’t end in this state. Leaving a job…meltdown. Going on a trip during my time off…meltdown. Returning to Ohio for a break…meltdown. Beginning a new job…meltdown. They may have looked and felt a bit different every time, but they always happened.

My level of emotional intelligence and connection to my body at that time in my life was quite low. By quite low, I mean non-existent! So these episodes of heightened emotions utterly confused me and filled me with shame. How dare I not be able to handle these situations well. I am choosing this lifestyle. I know what I’m doing. There was no logic in my response.

And at that time, logic was how I operated in the world. Logic and control were my superpowers. So these moments, these lapses in both logic and control, felt like my kryptonite.

I didn’t know what to do or how to ask for help. Why was I incapable of making these transitions without a meltdown? Even when it was planned and expected and most of the time I was quite excited about them. And why did I continue to actively choose a lifestyle that required frequent transitions?

Hindsight is 20/20 right!? It makes me smile when I look back and see how stubborn I was. It is as if the universe knew that I needed a lot of repetition to gain insight and better understand myself. Thankfully, that same stubbornness serves me as much as it challenges me.

Without that season of my life, one filled with constant transitions, it may have taken me twice as long to learn the lesson. One I am continuing to learn. The simple fact that changes in environment impact us on every level of our being. There is no controlling this innate response to change. Only acceptance, self trust and self compassion soften the response.

If you’ve been around long enough, you’ve heard me say this a million times…Life is cyclical. We are constantly spiraling back towards experiences we may feel as if we have been through before. Stuck on a carousel, going round and round, passing by the same view. This is simply how life unfolds. The universe will bring lessons repeatedly into our lives until we mine every ounce of gold from them. This is frustrating at times but often just the nudge we need to truly pay attention.

Right now, life is cycling me back around to the same view. I have returned to the life of a travel physical therapist this year and it has brought back every experience that goes along with it. The constant transitions, the uncertainty and worst of all, the annoying paperwork and bureaucracy of starting and stopping a job.

The view may be the same but the viewer is very different these days. By viewer, I mean myself, of course. This time around, I have slightly better emotional intelligence, more awareness of my own body and a few tools to manage change with less stress. Even when my awareness and understanding of how I respond to transitions is much improved, I still have caught myself spiraling into shame at times.

The irritating part about awareness is that it doesn’t change the reaction, it only allows you to see it for what it is, a temporary reaction. In seeing it as a reaction, it allows you to more consciously choose your response. Sounds simple but that’s not always the case. This brings us back to how impactful environment is on our nervous system.

The autonomic nervous system, the intricate and incredibly intelligent system of threat detection we all contain, is always attuned to our physical environment. It is designed to constantly scan and study where we are to keep us safe. It studies our environment and thrives on familiarity and consistency. It gets hyper vigilant when it cannot find these two things aka when in a novel environment.

Most of this work is below our conscious awareness. If we were conscious to the vast amounts of information our body is receiving at any given moment, we would be far too overloaded to have a conscious thought. But there is one thing that will consistently heighten your awareness of this sensory information; a new environment.

This isn’t a bad thing, it can be incredibly enjoyable at times. But it can also be very disruptive. Do you ever notice how all of the annoying stressors of home melt away when on vacation? Because your mind and body are so focused on the novelty of your environment, it doesn’t have time to ruminate on all the repetitive stressors of your normal day to day life. Traveling forces presence by this shift in our nervous system attunement to our environment. This can be exhilarating and addicting as I’m sure many of you know! (I want to tangent here and talk about how I don’t think long term travel is conducive to a regulated nervous system but that is a chat for another day!)

But have you also noticed that your first night of sleep is often disrupted while traveling? Of course we cannot fully relax if we haven’t decided if this new place is safe or not. Our nervous system is all about safety and a new environment, no matter how safe we consciously know it is, doesn’t feel safe. Until we have found enough cues for safety, our system will stay in this heightened state.

Again, this isn’t good or bad, it just is. This state of hyper vigilance can feel good at times and also feel terrible. It depends on so many other factors. But we cannot out think this response. Even with all the planning and preparation, our nervous system will continue to do what it does best, detect threat and seek safety.

This is a long way of saying, transitions of environments kick our nervous system into a different state. This is helpful and necessary and unavoidable. But when your lived experience is to dissociate from any sensory input from the body, this sudden flood of information is a lot. It can lead to meltdowns and a sensation of overwhelm, just like I used to experience during times of transition.

Thankfully, I am far more aware of my body and nervous system these days. I can sense subtle signs of dysregulation and have learned what feels safe for my system. This alone has helped me to feel more adaptable and resilient during transitions. But even with all the tools and knowledge, I cannot change how I react to transitions of environments.

The tools I have gained do help me to stay more regulated as I travel. I know how to bring more cues of safety into any environment I encounter by keeping consistent habits and routines. But at the end of the day, the biggest lesson I have learned is to allow my body to do what it needs to do.

If I can, I always plan for down days before and after a big transition. Essentially, I schedule time for my body to have any sort of meltdown it wants. I create intentional space to process what is coming up as my body gets to know my new space. Even with doing this, I still occasionally feel shame when it happens. My mind tells me since I know so much, I should be able to avoid this by now.

But fun fact, we cannot out think our nervous system. We cannot control or hack something that is not in our conscious control to begin with. Control over this system in our body is a bit of an illusion. The only control we have is over the awareness we give it and the compassion we treat it with.

It always comes down to figuring out how to trust your self and give yourself compassion. These two things are the most important tools when it comes to working with the nervous system. It’s not breath work, somatic work, cold plunges or any other tool. It is awareness combined with self trust and self compassion.

This is an incredibly long winded way of me reminding myself that there is absolutely no shame around feeling overwhelmed by transitions. Having a hard time with a change in environment is part of being human. Even when it is a place you know, it is still a change. And this is a lesson I’m slightly annoyed that I have to keep repeating but here we are!

As I have transitioned back to Colorado, a place I know well, I have to find self trust and compassion again. How beautiful that I have the opportunity to change my environment so often. What a gift that I get to connect and experience my body in every state of being. It is magic that I can have awareness of this now without feeling completely overwhelmed.

Thankfully, I rarely have full meltdowns these days, but transitions are still tricky for me. I still need down time before and after to make it slightly more bearable. I’m fortunate enough to usually have this level of flexibility available to me. Now, the biggest challenge is still to remind myself that there is no shame in needing all this.

So as I move through this transition from a life of travel back to work life, I will give myself a big dose of compassion. To remind myself that my body is doing exactly what it is designed to do, keep me safe. What an incredible body I have!

At the end of the day, this is a reminder of how important environment is. We cannot keep pretending to ignore how impactful transitions are on our system. The key is to honor these moments as sacred reminders of what it means to be human. Allow time and space to process what comes up and to sit in the discomfort. Because if we avoid the overwhelm in the moment, it will find a way to be expressed eventually.

A life without change and transition of environments is not fully possible. Especially as we live in a world that allows for more access to travel than ever before. But even tiny transitions throughout the day must be respected and honored. When we give ourselves space around these moments, our system learns to approach them with more ease. And learning to be more kind to ourselves is always a lesson worth paying attention to.