Andrew Johnson

About

The pattern I have seen most often is that people underestimate how much a change costs them even when they chose it themselves. Someone accepts something they really wanted, and then finds themselves flattened six weeks later and unable to explain why to anybody, including themselves. Major life changes rearrange far more than the obvious thing. They alter your routines, your sense of competence, who you speak to in an average week, and the version of yourself you had grown used to being. Almost none of that is visible from the outside, which is why the reaction so often feels disproportionate and vaguely shameful. It is neither. I spent my first years in school and university counseling, where I watched people go through enormous upheaval on a schedule set by an institution rather than by them. That left me with a lasting interest in what change actually does to a person. If you chose this and are still struggling, that is entirely ordinary and worth an hour.