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Change Fatigue

There was a book on sale about your personality’s colour. I didn’t want to purchase it or do the test. It seemed easier to poll everyone in the room on my personality’s colour. We decided on a dark blue.

I asked what number I would be if I were a number. Which element if I were a witch? And finally, which letter of the alphabet would I be if I were a single letter?

“An M,” everyone decided. Not because my name begins with an M but because I’m a little spiky and rigid, but I slot nicely into many words.

A perfect statement of who I am. An M.

I loved Ness Labs’ recent post about change fatigue. It perfectly describes the spikiness that comes out in reaction to change. She explains, “Change fatigue [is] a feeling of resistance or resignation in the face of Change. When things keep on changing, and we don’t feel in control, our adaptive systems start breaking down.”

I haven’t been feeling in control because I’m not in control. The twins are going off to college whether I like it or not. It’s what happens next (life beyond this home), and they’re stepping into it whether I’m ready. But knowing this term helps me get my brain around why I feel like falling apart over buying and getting accustomed to a new vacuum or learning one more new tool.

How do you do with change?

2 comments

1 loribeth { 02.01.23 at 7:52 pm }

Not well, but better than I used to. (I think??) The article is spot-on… change is hard — but I think it’s harder when it all comes at once, or when it’s continuous and there’s no letup, no time to absorb and adjust what’s happened before the next big change comes along.

When I was growing up, we moved every few years because of my dad’s job… the longest we lived in one place was six years (Grade 8 through first year university). I often joke that the reason I’m a packrat is that my surroundings kept changing, so I would cling to the old familiar things around me. Whereas dh, who spent almost his entire life before we got married in the same house in the same city has very little attachment to things. I keep thinking there has to be a PhD thesis there somewhere…!

2 a { 02.07.23 at 7:37 pm }

A little tired of change around here…

I think I’m bearing up fairly well, But maybe I’m just going through the motions. That’s kind of the same thing, in some cases.

(c) 2006 Melissa S. Ford
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