When the Life You Built No Longer Fits

There are seasons of life when the question swirling around in our minds and hearts isn't What should I do?, but Who am I now?.

Most of us are carrying around an internal map made up of everything we've learned about who we are, what the world expects of us, and what it takes to feel safe, successful, loved, or enough. It starts developing when we’re infants, and is shaped by our families, communities, and life experiences. Our brains consult the map when we’re trying to make choices of all kinds and need to remember who we are.

Some folks will go through their whole lives with that map pretty much always working for them. (I cannot relate, but apparently they do exist).

Some of us experience a shift that renders the map unhelpful or even unreadable. Some of us experience that kind of shift more than once! And it is SCARY.

Maybe it's burnout. A loss. Leaving a high-control religion. Coming out. A late ADHD or autism diagnosis. Perimenopause. Maybe it's simply waking up one morning and realizing that the life you've worked so hard to build, no longer feels like it really fits you.

You keep trying to navigate using the same map built by and for you - you’re working harder, analyzing yourself, criticizing yourself… but the landmarks don’t match and the roads don’t go where they’re supposed to. It can make us feel crazy.

In the face of not being able to figure out what happened to the map, we often come up with stories to explain it, like calling themselves lazy or dumb or incompetent or a failure.

The alternative story I like to present, in question form, is this: What if you've arrived (or need to go to) somewhere your old map was never going to take you?

Usually, before any moments of dramatic action, there’s a quiet realization that the map isn’t working for the person you’re becoming and the life you’re building

The Moment the Old Map Stops Working

The maps we carry are adaptations to past experiences; they helped us survive the environments we were in. Surviving in a literal, physiological sense, and in a social, emotional sense, because the nervous system really doesn’t differentiate.

Maybe your map was oriented around being “the dependable one” because what was needed in the family environment was stability. Maybe your map was oriented around being “the impressive achiever” because what you needed was approval or affection. Maybe you became “the caretaker/people-pleaser” because conflict threatened safety. Maybe you learned to be the smallest, most acceptable, most masked version of yourself because authenticity wasn’t an option.

To be clear, the map is what helped you survive. The map was what you needed. But the map will never change on its own, even if your internal landscape has. That’s often how we end up going in spirals or hitting walls in our lives.

Rather than the map being wrong or us being failures, the interpretation can actually be this: the map is no longer sufficient for where we want to go.

Folks who have never had to reach the limits of their map and draw a new one, often struggle to understand. Working with a therapist who has done this work in their own life can be the most transformational step to take when we realize we need an updated (or totally new) map.

Figuring out what the hell has happened to your map, is work I love to do with folks. Schedule a free consult call today if any of this resonates.