Episode 23: Coping with Change

In this episode,

Lizzie dives into change, how it is an essential part of our lives, how to recognize when we're avoiding it, and how to build a healthier relationship with it.

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Post-pod questions to consider

What's an area of your life where you're putting off a necessary change? What coping mechanism can you use to grow your acceptance and resilience to change?

Episode Transcript

Hey. You're listening to the Midnight Philosopher with Lizzie. Thanks for tuning in. Today, I'm going to talk about coping with change. 

Change is really hard for a lot of people. Predictability, routine, and structure often feel better to some people, and predictability feels safer usually to people because they know what to expect, which alleviates anxiety. Knowing what happens next is a big relief for people, especially people who find change challenging. Because part of the challenging part of change is the unknown. 

Think of routine kind of like oil changes for your car. It's predictable. You need it every six months or so. But, eventually, your car is gonna break down, and you're gonna need a new car. Not because your old car wasn't great, but it had already served its purpose. People need change when their routines and patterns have already served their purpose. And sometimes change is pushed upon us, such as physical changes in puberty, and other times, change is a conscious choice. But either way, it can be extremely hard. I've had to cope with a lot of changes in my life. 

I'll start by talking about a small change I chose to make. Although small, this change did have greater implications and impacts for me than I initially thought it would. During the pandemic, I started wearing hoodies every day, and I love sweatshirts. I love the weight of them and the comfort they provide me. I feel like I'm getting a hug when I need it the most. And before the pandemic, I wore plenty of hoodies, but I always dressed a bit more feminine. And during the pandemic, I started wearing some more unisex hoodies and unisex sneakers. This style just felt more authentic to me and more comfortable and just kind of made more sense to me personally. 

However, when the world opened back up and people came out of their bubbles, I realized people treated me differently for dressing more androgynous or masculine. Straight men pretty much stopped hitting on me and everyone assumed I was gay, which they were half right. But even though this change was what I wanted and had consciously made, I still had to cope with the consequences. And in order to cope with this change, I reminded myself of my values. Living authentically is a value of mine and I had to let go of other people's judgments. Being true to myself was more important. 

Another time I had to cope with change that I definitely did not choose is when my mom died. I felt a terrible grief and loss for one of the people that I felt loved me the most in the entire world. And I'll admit this change, well, it changed me. I was 22 at the time, and I found myself starting to feel pretty bitter and resentful when friends had to worry about getting their first jobs after college and I had to constantly worry about my mental health and my personal safety. 

I took a lot of steps to cope with this change because it was really life altering for me. And some of the steps I took included asking for professional help from a therapist therapist because I knew I needed that help and I could not cope with this on my own. I also tried to allow myself to feel my feelings because if you hold all your feelings inside, you're not gonna work through change. It's gonna keep you stuck because feeling your feelings lets you take those next steps. 

Knowing that you're feeling scared and then working through your fear is going to help you cope with change and face it in a way that you wouldn't be able to face if you kept all your feelings inside. So asking for help and feeling your feelings are paramount to coping with change. Change is really scary and sometimes knowing that you're not alone can make a huge difference. And also, crying literally releases toxins from your body. So feeling your feelings is a way to literally and figuratively release toxins. 

Another change that I had to face was watching as some of my friends "moved on with their lives" and I stayed "stuck." 
Friends got partners and had babies and I felt myself take less of a prominent role in their lives. And I felt sad about this change, but I realized that I needed to practice acceptance. Practicing acceptance doesn't mean that you suddenly feel okay with everything. It just means that you say to yourself, well, this is what it is and it isn't what it isn't. And being mad at my friends for doing age appropriate things was only going to alienate me more. 

So, in order to cope with this change, I took up a hobby which was improv, and I started reading more articles online about psychology and topics that interest me, and I saw my friends when I could. However, I kind of coped with this change in some less than healthy ways. I started over scheduling myself so that I didn't have to face my loneliness or my feelings of inadequacy. I kept my interactions with my friends more superficial because even though I got it, I still felt betrayed on some level. I felt hurt and sad, and I withdrew and isolated. 

Sometimes, people don't always cope with change in healthy ways. Some other ways that people cope with change in less than healthy ways is: eating disorder behavior, such as restricting or binging, abusing substances, doing self harm, or participating in self-sabotaging behaviors. That's just to name a few. There's a whole list of thing other things, like impulsive spending or just think of habits that you do when you know you're stressed that are not necessarily healthy and that can crop up when you're facing a change. 

Self-sabotaging is an interesting one to me. It's when you're so afraid of change that you try to make the change unsuccessful by doing things to get in your own way. Because by doing this, you're creating predictability. You know the outcome. It's not going to be the outcome you want, but it is going to be a predictable outcome based on your behaviors. Whereas, if you let the change occur, you don't know the outcome, and that's why it's so scary. 

In the example of over-scheduling myself in terms of my friends, I with the help of my therapist, I brought self awareness that I was really pushing people away because I felt hurt. And so, I slowly tried to let my friends back into my life and into my inner thoughts because although the quantity of our friendship had diminished, the quality of our interactions could still be there if I allowed it to be and put in the work. 

So, what can you do if you're using unhealthy coping mechanisms for change? Well, with that, I would take a harm reduction standpoint with yourself. For example, withdrawing from my friends was a better choice for me than yelling at my friends or cutting ties entirely. I chose a less harmful choice than what I wanted to do, and I was eventually able to build the self-awareness I needed. So, basically, harm reduction is the idea that you do something less bad than you could. And that's it. And that is a step in the right direction to coping with change in a healthy way. 

And you might be asking yourself, what can you do if you have a change coming up? Well, even if it's a big or a small change, you can get really honest with yourself. You can ask, what am I scared of and what do I value? Is there anyone I could ask for help or build community with? And even if you don't have close friends or family, there is a way to find support. You can research on the internet or join an online support group. You could also seek the help of a professional therapist, or you could use help call lines. 

Whatever you do, change is inevitable, so it helps to start building up your toolbox in times of calm and predictability so that you have the skills to use when things start to change. So, in this episode, I talked about coping with change. I talked about how sometimes changes occur when something has reached its purpose and other times change is out of our control. I talked about that some ways to cope with change are to examine your values, such as with my clothing change, to ask for help and feel your feelings, such as with the death of my mom, and to build community as in the case which eventually happened with my friends. Also in this episode, I talked about how there are some less healthy ways of coping with change and some steps you can take, such as harm reduction, to improve your coping mechanisms. 

Well, that's my episode. Thanks so much for listening. I'm gonna go change into my PJs now. Have a good night.