An upheaval is quickly decided and slowly lived through. The new job is signed, the relationship ended, the moving van gone, and still nothing feels right. You stand between two shores, the old one left, the new one not yet reached. This in-between time is the part no one likes to endure.
The transition researcher William Bridges described three phases of every change: an ending, a neutral zone, a new beginning. Most underrate the middle one. It feels like standstill, like a glitch in the system. That is exactly where the misunderstanding lies.
The emptiness is not a flaw
The neutral zone seems empty, because the old is already gone and the new has no form yet. Beneath the surface the essential happens. As a field in winter seems to lie fallow and yet works, the coming thing takes shape in this apparent stillness. Whoever bears the emptiness, instead of filling it hectically, gives the new time to grow.
What an upheaval is really about
An upheaval separates. It releases you from a role, a place, a certainty, sometimes from an image you had of yourself. This separation hurts, and it is at the same time an invitation to connect anew, with what truly carries. Often people discover, precisely in the break, what matters to them most deeply.
The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived the very worst, saw the key here: the meaning a person finds in their circumstances carries them further than the circumstances themselves. A time of transition asks quietly: what is my life actually moving toward?
The old texts know a bold sentence for this hour: “See, I am doing a new thing, now it springs up, do you not perceive it?” Perhaps you have nothing to do with faith, you needn’t. Just hear the promise:
In the middle of the desert a path opens before you see it.
That takes nothing from the toil of the in-between time. It gives it a different meaning: you have not come to a standstill, you are on your way, through terrain that cannot be shortcut.
A small experiment for this week
If you’re stuck in an in-between time right now, stop treating it as lost time. Write down a sentence: “Something is ending now …, and something is beginning now …, even if I can’t see it yet.” Read it when the restlessness comes. With it you order what feels like chaos.
No one chooses the neutral zone gladly. And yet most people say, looking back, that something important grew in them precisely there. Perhaps you sense, very quietly, that you don’t only have to get through this time, but are being led through it, toward something you can’t name yet. You needn’t believe it. Just take the next small step and see where the way opens.
General impulses for your own reflection, no substitute for therapy or medical or professional career advice. In crisis: helpline (Germany) 0800 111 0 111.