Honoring Life's Transitions: Understanding Why Inner Change Takes Time

Transitions are a natural part of life, but they rarely unfold as quickly or neatly as we might hope. So often, we believe that once something shifts on the outside, our inner world will immediately follow. But the truth is, change takes time to integrate.

In therapy, I see this again and again: people expecting transformation to be instant, only to discover that the psyche has its own rhythm. This mismatch between expectation and reality can leave us confused, frustrated, or tempted to put our inner work on hold.

In my work, I notice two common patterns:

• A client goes through a major change—starting a new job, joining a new team, or beginning a new relationship—and feels they no longer need to continue therapy. “Everything will be different now,” they say. And for a while, they step away. But often, they come back, realizing that inner growth or wounds still asks for attention, even after external circumstances shift.

  
  

• Another client reaches a long-awaited milestone, only to feel frustrated. “Why am I not feeling better yet? Why haven’t my symptoms disappeared?” They expect change outside to instantly transform how they feel inside—but the psyche doesn’t work that way. It needs more time to catch up.

Life Transitions Are Journeys, Not Just Events

We like to mark transitions as single moments: landing the job, saying “I do,” or welcoming a baby. These are important milestones worth celebrating—but they’re only the doorway, not the destination.

What follows after the milestone is often much more complex. The deeper process of adjusting, integrating, and reshaping our sense of self unfolds over weeks, months, or even years.

Think about the experience of moving to a new city: the first day you unpack feels significant, but true belonging and comfort come slowly through routines, relationships, and small daily adjustments. Or consider parenthood: the baby’s birth marks a beginning, but the identity of becoming a parent evolves through countless moments of learning, trial, and reflection.

Carl Jung described these times as thresholds, or liminal spaces. Liminal comes from the Latin word for threshold—standing between two rooms, no longer in one but not yet fully in the other. This is exactly how transitions feel: the old self doesn’t quite fit anymore, but the new self hasn’t fully formed yet. These liminal spaces can feel uncertain or unsettling, but they are also where transformation quietly begins.

Transitions ask us to recalibrate not just our schedules, but our emotions, expectations, and even our sense of who we are. This work can feel invisible, yet it is where growth truly happens. When change comes, our emotions, habits, and identity need gentle time to realign.

That’s not failure—it’s the natural rhythm of being human. In fact, giving ourselves this time is what allows the external event to become an internal transformation.

The Value of the Waiting Period

Another concept Jung introduced is the transcendent function. This describes the psyche’s ability to hold the tension between opposites—old and new, familiar and unknown—without rushing to resolve it too quickly. By sitting with this tension, a new solution or way of being can gradually emerge, one that is more integrated than either side alone. This is why the waiting period, the not-yet-clear stage, is so important. It allows something deeper to take shape that could not be forced into existence.

From this view, the discomfort of transition is not a mistake—it is the very material of growth. When we can recognize transitions as part of individuation and honor the liminal space they create, we can approach them with more curiosity, patience, and trust in the process.

Protecting Time and Space for Change

Here’s what often gets overlooked: it’s not just about giving time—it’s about protecting that time and space. Nothing is wrong if you don’t feel instantly better after a transition. What matters is creating room to process. Rushing through only makes it harder.

This is why staying with therapy during transitions can be so powerful. Even when it feels tempting to pause, therapy offers stability and perspective right when things are shifting most. That support not only helps in the moment, but also creates lasting results by helping the changes take root more deeply.

It’s also important to intentionally protect your energy—before, during, and after transitions. These periods can be emotionally and physically draining.

 Rest, boundaries, and reflection aren’t luxuries; they’re ways of giving your psyche the space it needs to reorganize and grow.

Closing Reflection

Every major transition is both an ending and a beginning.

The space between the two—the liminal space—is where real inner work unfolds. Instead of measuring yourself against outside timelines or expectations, try asking:

What pace feels right for me?

How can I protect my energy and create the space I need to grow into this new chapter?

Learning how to view transitions in this way changes everything. It allows us to meet ourselves with patience instead of pressure, compassion instead of criticism.

When we learn to respond to transitions with care, we not only navigate them more smoothly—we give ourselves the chance to grow into the fuller, more authentic life waiting on the other side.

Standing between what was and what is yet to come, we honor the time it takes for inner growth to unfold.