What Do You Do When You've Outgrown Yourself?

Who are you when the old version of you no longer fits, but the new version hasn’t formed yet?

That strange liminal space (one foot in the old thing, one foot in the new) is one of the most disorienting places a person can land. And most people just try to sprint through it.

In this episode, we're diving into:

• Why your nervous system reads transition as danger, even when the change is right
• Identity limbo, and why deeply feeling people experience it more intensely
• Why growth can look like inconsistency to people attached to your old self
• The creative and generative layer of the in-between that most people miss
• How to read the signals from your own body before the change fully arrives
• The question that matters more than "how do I get out of this quickly?"

The Energy Xchange is a podcast for highly sensitive people (HSPs), empaths, INFJs, and deep feelers navigating relationships, business, and personal growth.

Links & Resources For This Episode:

• Subscribe to my Weekly Newsletter
• Visit My Website
• Book a Storyboarding Session (for Business Owners)
• Book a Marketing Audit (Website/Messaging/Digital Presence)
• Get the Book: The Empath Detox
• The Get The Empath Detox Oracle Deck

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Energy Exchange, a podcast for deep feelers and quiet leaders. Here, we explore what happens when we start working with our natural energy in both our business and personal lives. I'm Colleen Woolwick. I'm a highly sensitive professional who spent years untangling patterns of overthinking, people pleasing, and playing small just to feel safe. Now, I help others like me step more fully into their power without losing the superpower of their softness. We don't have to be allowed to be seen, and we don't have to push to be powerful. Everything is energy. Let's start this exchange. Welcome into this week's episode of the Energy Exchange. Today we're talking about the in-between seasons of life. Those seasons where the old version of our life no longer fits, but the new version hasn't fully formed yet. So we know something is ending, but we don't fully know what's beginning. Maybe it's a job that you've emotionally outgrown, even though you still show up every day. Maybe it's a relationship, a city, a business. It could be a role that you've played for so long that it became part of your identity. You're detached from the current thing, but not yet rooted in the next thing. And that space can feel really disorienting because we usually know how to orient ourselves when we're fully in something. We know how to talk about ourselves there. We know our role. We know the routine. We know who we are in relation to that structure. But the in-between is different. It's that weird little pocket of time where something has ended emotionally before it has ended logistically. You're still answering the emails, still having the conversations, still living inside of those routines, but internally something has already shifted. And I think one of the hardest parts is that our nervous system often interprets uncertainty as danger. We are wired to crave safety, predictability, familiarity. So when those things start disappearing, even for the right reasons, it can feel chaotic. And it's easy to slip into those thoughts of, oh my gosh, am I making the wrong decision? But that discomfort does not automatically mean the decision was wrong. It's our nervous system realizing that it no longer has the structure that it was used to. And underneath all of this is the deeper question I really want to talk about today. Who are you when the old version of you no longer fits, but the new version hasn't formed yet? Who are you without the thing that used to tell you who to be? The in-between times, they take the script away. And that's when the real work starts. It's where you start noticing what you actually want when there's no old structure deciding that for you. Or when you realize how much of your identity was built around responding to an environment. This is the space where we start to hear ourselves again. And the other layer that makes this so strange is that we can't fully invest in the old thing anymore, even if we're technically still there. You're still at the job, but mentally you're gone. You're not raising your hand for new projects, you're not emotionally investing in the long-term future there because you know deep down that you're out. Or maybe you know that you're moving in six months. You're still in that city, that town, but you've already started grieving it. Like you're not planting roots there in the same way. Or maybe you're still in a relationship, but something has shifted. So while you're still inside the structure of it, you're not available in the same way for that person. So this phase can feel confusing because you're no longer who you were, but you don't really know yet who you're becoming. That's the identity limbo. Your system is trying to understand who you are without the old structure holding you in place. One of the clearest examples of this for me was when I moved to Fort Lauderdale around, I think it was 2010, 2011. I was a completely different person there. But I wasn't, you know, I basically had three lifetimes, three versions of myself in Northern Virginia over the span of about 20 years. So when I moved, I think from the outside looking in, it looked chaotic. It looked jarring. Like, who is this person? But when I was there, how I showed up felt so authentic to me. What I had been in before did not. It had been very much shaped by the environments that I was in. And in those times, that span of, you know, 20 years, I didn't have a strong sense of self. I did not have tools for managing my energy. And I certainly didn't understand how sensitive I was to the spaces and people around me. So I know it looked bizarre from the outside, but internally it felt very authentic and natural. It felt like I was coming back online in this really cool way. And that's what the in-between can do. It can make you look inconsistent to people who only know that old version of you, that version of you that was shaped by the situation you were in. But this version that looks so surprising to other people is probably the version that feels most authentic to you. And a relationship can create that similar kind of in-between when we're navigating, getting out of that. You know, we're in that space where we're still connected to someone, but something inside of you has shifted. And this can be really hard for deep feelers because we don't always detach very cleanly. In fact, we we rarely detach cleanly. If you are a person who understands people, you hold space for nuance, context, you might tell yourself, hey, I'll give it one more time. Maybe if I adjust this, things will change. Maybe there's some potential here that I'm not seeing yet. But then that in between might be where you realize that you're not trying to get back to how things were. You're trying to understand who you are now, who you are without overfunctioning, without shrinking, without keeping a version of the connection alive that no longer feels true. And we have to be careful not to fall into that trap of thinking that we've made the wrong decision because that thing that we were in might have fit our life at the time. It might have been exactly what we needed for that season of life. But when we change, that thing is no longer in alignment. Okay, so that's the chaotic, kind of stressful part of the in-between. But there also is a really cool part of it. When the old structure loosens, our creativity gets a little more space. Our real voice has a chance to come through because it's no longer tethered to external circumstances. We're kind of in a void. We're in that reset, reboot. So we get to ask questions of ourselves like, hey, what do I want my life to look and feel like? Who am I without this role, without these people, without this environment that's shaping me? Being untethered is really freeing in that way. And that's what I kind of love about the in-between times, even when they feel a little scary. If you have felt confined by what you were attached to, this new empty space can now feel really expansive. When I'm moving through an in-between phase, and I feel like I've had so many of them in the last 10 or 15 years, I always notice a shift in the kind of work I'm drawn to, the kind of work I'm able to put out. You know, my brain just feels more expansive. I'm more open to opportunities, new ideas, and new ways of thinking. And I don't know that the in-between feels the same for everyone. I think a lot of it depends on your relationship with yourself. Maybe your relationship with uncertainty, being alone, maybe not having a clean answer yet. But I can usually tell when a big change is coming. I know the feeling. Sometimes it starts as a little bug in my ear, months, maybe even years before the change. But eventually there comes a time when I know, like there really is no turning back. I just know deep down that there are no more seeds to plant where I currently am. And I don't know how to explain exactly what that looks like. I think it's different for everyone, but I know the tells for my own body, my own nervous system, the energy of how I show up in those spaces, how I wake up in the morning, how I feel in those quiet times by myself when I'm in those situations. Something just always feels off in my body. Whatever I'm in at that time is no longer in alignment with what feels good and true for me. And a lot of becoming more aligned in that way is learning how to recognize those signals without immediately overriding them. There are changes in my life I've made that were years in the making. Maybe I got a nudge about it, but didn't do anything until three, four, five years later. Now I'm a little quicker to identify that something's out of alignment so I can make moves with a little more ease. But to understand whether something is in alignment or not, you have to know what alignment feels like for you. And all that that means is, you know, what kind of energy do you want to live in? What do you want your morning to feel like, your days? What kind of people do you want to be around? What kind of work feels fun and exciting for you? Those are things that we can't ignore, but they're exactly what those in-between times can open up for us. This space isn't a detour. It's not a signal that you've made the wrong decision. It's a time to start listening to yourself again. So if you're in one of those seasons right now, if you've got one foot in the old thing, one foot in the new thing, the question isn't how do I get out of this as fast as possible? The question is, who am I when the old version of me no longer fits, but the new version hasn't formed yet? And don't feel pressure to come up with that answer right away. The in-between isn't here to rush you into your next identity. It's the space where we reconnect to ourselves before building again. All of that to say, oh, I'm a super big fan of the in-between times. They can be very scary, but you learn a lot about yourself. You want to get really clear before you start over in a new thing, right? So embrace the in-between times. You're gonna have some down days in it, but it's all for the greater good. Okay, I'm gonna leave it there. If this episode resonated, I would love for you to share it with someone who might be in their own in-between time right now. And as always, I'd really appreciate a review if you're vibing with this podcast. It helps other like minded souls find this space. Thank you for listening, and I will chat with you next week.