Dr. Trujillo is a counseling and sport psychologist dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations build awareness of self, others, and the world to reach their full potential in and out of their craft. She owns a private practice where she seeks to educate, consult, and provide mental health and sport psychology services that are evidenced-based and collaborative.
Part of why I chose to specialize in grief and loss is because it is multifaceted and seen in all realms of life, not just when we lose someone to death. Every life event we experience, whether desirable or undesirable, is filled with gains and losses. With these life events come transitions we must sort through. We often mourn what we lost and relish the things we now have that we didn’t before. Both sets of outcomes can complicate how we adjust during times of transition. In other words, life transitions have a strong impact on your mental well-being before, during, and after they take place, sometimes for years or even for life.
What exactly do I mean by life transitions, you may ask? These periods begin quite early in life. Take academics for example. The graduation from pre to elementary school, elementary to middle school, middle to high school, and high school to beyond. Ever changed or lost a job? Ever had relationships end or begin? Ever retired or redefined your career? Ever moved to a new home or city? Ever began or ended a hobby? Were you an athlete at some point? Have you become a partner, parent, caretaker, or empty-nester? Had a serious medical ailment or injury? The list goes on and on. Ask yourself: What have been the most impactful transitions you’ve dealt with so far? Were they wanted or unwanted? How did they impact the varying identities you hold? What did they teach you about yourself, other people, and the world? What worked as you learned to adjust? What hopelessly failed? What would you do differently if given the opportunity?
Part of the power of being able to recognize life transitions through a grief lens is that it allows you to more comprehensively make sense of the changes. It encourages you to use complex and abstract reasoning to understand the varying directions your transition may be pulling you (exhausting, right?!). When you understand more, you can figure out what your needs might be and how you can more effectively strive to get them met or learn to accept that, in some cases, they won’t be met. It can breed compassion and empathy for yourself and others in a similar situation and remind you of your own humanity, which can both hurt and be freeing at the same time. Most importantly, it can allow you to hold the duality that exists in life, supporting the both/and framework that is so helpful for finding and maintaining balance and perspective in life.
Change is one of the only constant things in life. As a result, you won’t be immune to life transitions. It will serve you to equip your toolbox with a variety of options to build the structures to best meet your needs when it happens.
4 ways to strengthen your ability to navigate change
Making the above ideas more concrete, here are four effective ways to expand your aptitude for adjustment.
1. Be more self-aware
It’s hard to know how to cope with a transition if you aren’t aware of how you’re actually doing. Take the time to be introspective. Consider what this change means for you. How does the change impact your needs, desires, relationships, and values? What emotions seem to be the most present and why? How do you talk to yourself about the change? What about others? Is it the same or different? Has it forced you to re-evaluate, change, or confirm any of your identities?
Example: At the beginning of a new season, I often speak with athletes about the changes they have noticed and how that affects them. Who has joined or left the program? How have roles changed? How has the sport changed? How has the culture changed? I also ask them to consider how others seem to be affected and how the team culture supports or complicates their adjustment.
2. See the duality
Odds are, whatever your transition is, it is neither 100% good or bad, wanted or unwanted, helpful or harmful. Look at both sides so that you can better understand how to find balance, identify your needs, and communicate them effectively. How is this opportunity stretching you? How are you learning, growing, and evolving? What doors is it opening for you and do you want to walk through any of them? On the flip side, how is this opportunity shrinking you? How are you being stalled, set back, or falling short? What doors are slamming shut and how much does that hurt?
Example: The athletes may speak to fear and uncertainty about some of the changes, and acknowledge loss in some of the people who have gone and some of the procedures that are changing. They may also be excited, more motivated, and hopeful about incoming teammates and changes to the structure of their schedules. They may be able to see new horizons for themselves not previously seen or have to come to terms with having to shift their goals and expectations.
3. Express yourself
Life transitions can be extremely isolating and lonely at times. With a largely desirable event, sometimes people feel constrained or unable to speak to the hard parts for fear of being seen as ungrateful, invalidated, or not being “positive” enough. With a largely undesirable event, sometimes people feel guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed to admit some of the benefits that have resulted. On both sides, they may be scared of being ridiculed or misunderstood. They may simply not feel safe and/or brave enough to voice the complexity of their experience. I encourage you to find people and spaces where you can challenge these notions. Be creative with it. If you are not a talker or don’t often get much from verbal conversations, consider other ways you can express yourself. Do you like to write, or do you play an instrument or have any hobbies that allow your emotions to seep out in symbolic ways? Embrace them!
Example: The athletes can come together and acknowledge the changing culture. They can process their reactions to it and unite to form refined, cohesive goals, better understand one another’s positions, and build the chemistry they need to be successful by having the courage to address hard things.
4. Embrace a growth mindset
Your transitions, whether big or small, provide you with opportunities to change your own mind. Your ability and intelligence can be developed through problem-solving and learning to roll with the inevitable parts of life. When you experience something new, you are given the chance to reconsider what you know and believe. You may feel or think differently in ways that allow you to embrace learning. The effort you put into your new transition can be seen as a path to mastery. Considering transitions through this lens can lead to greater motivation, resilience and success.
Example: The athletes may learn that they have athletic capabilities that were previously untapped. They may learn new strategies and ways of thinking that serve them in their sport and in life. They can grow to be less afraid of making mistakes, allowing them to take risks in big moments that pay off.
Now you may be asking, what if the transition is nearly entirely negative? Perhaps it’s a career-ending injury for an athlete, a terminal cancer diagnosis, or being fired from a dream job and blackballed from the industry. That’s a fair question. It can be quite hard to embrace a growth mindset when the life transitions bring this much pain, fear, and uncertainty. In these cases, I’d add two extra concepts for your consideration.
1. Know your values
These types of transitions may make you question everything you’ve ever thought, known, or believed. That is okay, go ahead and question. Through your questioning, focus on identifying what is actually important to you. What values are your top priorities? How can you apply them and live alongside them in the face of such despair? Do those values still make sense to be at the top of your priorities, or does some modification or reorganization need to take place?
Example: An athlete has a career-ending injury. They are forced to spend time with other aspects of their identity, redefine their self-worth, and explore other avenues to live out their values, similar to what sports did for them.
2. Live intentionally
Once you have some clarity on which values you’d most like to embody in the depths of this transition, how can you live more intentionally? How can you be more present in your life, control what you can control, and find moments that still provide meaning, satisfaction, and relief from the pain? How can you take the risks that feel worth it, and let go of the smaller things that used to drive you crazy? Work towards acceptance, but remember, acceptance doesn’t mean you have to like or agree with what has taken place, only that you must face it and move through the grief as best as you can.
Example: An athlete has to accept that they will no longer be able to compete in their sport. Through that acceptance, they begin to consider what else there is in life for them. Perhaps they recognize the reach their platform has, and they stay connected to sport while using it to fuel a passion and redirect their efforts to help others.
Life transitions are filled with pros and cons. They are exhausting and challenging. That is reality, but you can use these skills to provide a foundation to hang on through the undoubtedly wild rides.
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and visit my website for more information about my practice. To purchase a copy of And She Was Never the Same Again, visit here for paperback or here for eBook or visit the website. It is now also available as an audiobook through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.
Natasha P. Trujillo, Ph.D., Counseling and Sport Psychologist
Dr. Trujillo is a counseling and sport psychologist dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations build awareness of self, others, and the world to reach their full potential in and out of their craft. She owns a private practice where she seeks to educate, consult, and provide mental health and sport psychology services that are evidenced-based and collaborative. She works primarily with athletes, performers, and high-achievers to help them find balance in their pursuit of success and acceptance of their own humanity. She strives to help people learn how to simply “be”, and get better at what they do. She has specializations in grief/loss, eating disorders, trauma, anxiety, & identity development.
