Change is Scary. Here's Why.

Some of us start questioning who we are early in life, while others embark on that journey decades later. A common refrain from those seeing personal change is, “I am not who I was, and I am not sure whom I am becoming.” This liminal state can be unsettling and even frightening as our ego tries to answer the question “Who am I?” This is not a comfortable place to be.

This is what I lovingly refer to as the goop phase. Let me use a metaphor to explain. The cycle of the butterfly is to start as an egg, then become a caterpillar, before weaving their chrysalis, and eventually becoming a butterfly. We humans have a similar cycle:

Egg:

We are still in a pattern or a way of being that we have always been. Think about an egg. It completely surrounds you and until you hatch, the egg is all you know and experience. So it is entirely real for you to believe that your entire universe is in the egg. And then something happens, or on purpose or accident, that forces you out of the egg.

Caterpillar:

This is an exciting and also frightening phase. Like the very hungry caterpillar, you are searching for and consuming vast quantities of sustenance and knowledge. You’ve changed, you’ve moved past the egg, you’re exploring and learning, but you haven’t yet started the true transformation.

Chrysalis aka Goop:

Once you’ve eaten all you can, you weave your chrysalis and you start to change. For caterpillars, this means dissolving their cells until they are a cellular goop. If you were to break open a chrysalis you wouldn’t find a caterpillar growing wings. You would find a cell soup aka goop. From there, imaginal cells are used to reform into a butterfly. But in order for that process to happen, all that was must be dissolved, and all that is yet to be must grow. Essentially, the caterpillar has to die in order for the butterfly to emerge. This is the goop phase. “I am not what I was, I am not yet in my next iteration.” This can be terribly frightening because you can feel frozen. You are paralyzed because you can’t go back the way you came, you don’t want to do things the way you’ve always done them and you don’t know how to do things differently.

Butterfly:

Before the butterfly can emerge victoriously, it must first struggle to emerge from the cocoon. If a butterfly is aided in its exit the wings will not properly form. The wings will become shriveled and the butterfly will never take flight. Once the struggle is done and the butterfly emerges with its new wings it builds up its strength to migrate and/or lay its eggs.

The Cycle:

This cycle is not one that we do once and then retire with our wings. As Jack Cornfield wrote, “There is no state of enlightened retirement” (After the Ecstasy, the Laundry). This is a cycle that we repeat over and over, emerging from a new “egg” by realizing that what we took for the reality around us is not, in fact, all there is, then learning, growing, dissolving, emerging, again and again for the rest of our lives, if we choose to do so.

A fun fact I learned is that butterflies remember their time as caterpillars. And that seems like a fitting end to this metaphor because we too remember what it was like before we woke up to some truth or another, and chose to grow and change.

The idea of this constant birth, death, rebirth cycle, which for most comes with its fair share of discomfort, is difficult for some people to imagine because we are not designed to want change. Yet, if you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance that something in your life has become painful enough that you might be ready for your next evolution cycle. When I have been in that place I try and remember the immortal words of Anatole France:

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

If you would like to work with me I am accepting clients based in the state of California for telehealth. I’m an associate marriage and family therapist (AMFT #131631) practicing under the supervision of Pam Shaffer (LMFT #91321).