Career & Life Transitions

Transitions have a recognisable structure: something ends, then there is an extended in-between period, then something new consolidates. People generally expect the ending to be the difficult part and are unprepared for the middle.

That middle stretch — after the old structure has gone but before the new one is real — is where most of the distress lives. It has no landmarks, no clear progress markers, and it is where people conclude they have made a terrible mistake. Frequently they have not; they are simply in the part that feels like nothing is happening.

Knowing this in advance changes how you interpret it. Discomfort becomes a stage rather than a verdict on your decision.

People arrive wanting help deciding whether to take the job, leave the field, or start something of their own. That decision is usually not the actual problem — the actual problem is that they cannot tell which parts of their reluctance are genuine and which are fear, obligation, or somebody else's ambition.

For clients in India there is often a specific weight to this: a career chosen at seventeen under family pressure, significant money invested in a particular path, and a strong sense that changing direction would be a betrayal rather than a choice. That deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as something to overcome.

The work is separating the strands — what you want, what you fear, what you owe, and what you have simply never questioned — until the decision becomes yours rather than a reaction.

Marriage, a promotion, a first child, moving abroad. When these are hard, people rarely admit it, because the event is socially coded as fortunate and struggling with it looks like ingratitude.

But every gain carries a loss. A new city costs you your existing support network. A child costs you autonomy and, often, an entire prior identity. A promotion may cost you the work you actually enjoyed. Naming the loss does not diminish the gain, and refusing to name it is what tends to turn ordinary adjustment into something heavier.

Not every transition is chosen. Redundancy, a forced relocation, a relationship ending on someone else's decision, illness that closes off a path — these arrive without consent, and the loss of control is often harder than the change itself.

The work here is different. It is less about deciding and more about grieving what was taken, and then finding where agency still exists. There is almost always some — usually less than you want and considerably more than despair suggests.