The Hidden Grief in Change

Why even positive change can involve loss.

People often come to therapy because they want something in life to change. They may want to feel more confident, less anxious, or more able to move forward. We often talk about change as something positive: growth, progress, self-improvement. However, even when we long for things to be different, there are often unconscious patterns and beliefs that can hold us back.

The truth is that our habits, behaviours and ways of relating to the world usually developed for a reason. Even patterns that frustrate us can offer a sense of safety, belonging or identity.

For example, anxiety can sometimes develop as a way of staying alert, avoiding criticism, or protecting ourselves emotionally. Letting go of it is not always as simple as deciding we no longer want to feel anxious. Part of us may still experience those old patterns as protective, even if they are also exhausting.

The same can be true of identity. Sometimes we become so used to seeing ourselves in a particular way that change can feel strangely unsettling. A person who has always thought of themselves as “the quiet one”, “the capable one”, or “the person who keeps going” may find it surprisingly difficult to step outside those roles, even if they no longer fit.

Change can also involve a quieter kind of grief that is less often recognised: the loss of unrealised possibilities. Choosing one path can mean accepting that other futures may never happen. For some people, this creates a painful sense of paralysis — not because they do not want things to change, but because every choice can feel like a form of loss.

Sylvia Plath captured this feeling powerfully in The Bell Jar when she described her future as a fig tree full of different lives and possibilities:

"One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet, and another fig was a brilliant professor… and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out…. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest”

I often think about that image when people talk about change. Sometimes what looks like indecision is also grief. Not grief for something we've lost, but for the many lives we can't live all at once.

We often assume that if we feel ambivalent about change, it means we're making the wrong decision. But perhaps ambivalence isn't evidence that we're doing something wrong. Perhaps it's simply the emotional cost of letting one possible future go - and part of what it means to choose.