The Liminal Space: When Your Old Identity Is Gone but the New One Doesn’t Feel Safe Yet
Nobody prepares you for the phase between the old self and the new one. Why identity transitions can feel like danger — and why that isn't a step backwards.
Florian Müller on Unsplash
There is a phase in personal growth that nobody really prepares you for.
We hear a lot about the crisis.
We hear about the breakthrough.
We hear about healing, awakening, transformation.
But almost nobody talks about the space in between.
The strange period where the old version of you is no longer believable, but the new one doesn’t feel stable yet. A phase where nothing is clearly wrong, yet everything feels slightly uncertain, as if the ground under your feet has not fully settled.
Recently I realized that this is exactly where I am.
Not in the old life anymore.
Not fully in the new one either.
In psychology, this is sometimes called the liminal space — the transition between identities. Not a collapse, not a breakthrough, but a recalibration. And once I started to look at my experience through that lens, many things that felt confusing suddenly made sense.
The nervous system prefers familiarity over happiness
For most of my adult life, my nervous system learned safety inside patterns that were not actually healthy, but familiar. Worrying, overthinking, trying to control outcomes, chasing external validation — none of that felt good, but it felt normal. And the brain will always prefer normal over unknown, even if normal hurts.
Looking back, a lot of my anxiety came from living too far away from what I actually felt was true for me, while still trying to maintain the image of a life that was supposed to look right from the outside.
At the time I understood this mostly intellectually. Now I feel it much more physically.
Because change is not only a decision.
Change means your nervous system has to learn a new definition of safety.
And the nervous system does not learn through thinking.
It learns through experience.
When you start living differently, even if the new life is better, your system still asks the same primitive question it always has:
Can I survive here?
Until that question is answered, tension stays.
Sleeping in the wilderness
The image that describes this state best came back to me recently from a trip I did years ago.
I was traveling in East Africa at a time when my anxiety was still very present. At the airport in Tanzania I met a Dutch woman and her Colombian boyfriend. We talked for a while, and at some point they asked me if I wanted to join them on a self-organized jeep trip through Kenya.
I had never met them before.
I didn’t know what would happen.
Part of me was terrified.
But another part of me wanted the adventure, so I said yes.
We drove through parts of Kenya that were not exactly tourist areas, especially in the north, closer to the Sudanese border. Some regions felt raw and unpredictable. We often slept outside in a tent, sometimes in places where you could hear animals moving around at night. Hyenas, dogs, sounds you couldn’t really identify. When it felt too uncomfortable, I slept in the car.
One night I remember very clearly.
I was lying in the tent, on the ground, with my knife next to me. Not because I expected something to happen, but because I didn’t know if it could. Every sound outside made me wake up. My body was alert the whole night. I barely slept.
Nothing happened.
But my system didn’t know that yet.
And that memory came back to me recently, because the phase I am in right now feels exactly like that night in the tent.
When you enter new territory, your nervous system does not relax just because you decided that this is the right path. It relaxes only after it has experienced the new reality long enough to believe that it is safe.
At the beginning, you keep the knife in your hand.
Later, you put it next to you.
Eventually, you forget where it is.
Nothing outside has to change for that to happen.
Only the level of familiarity changes.
The liminal space is a test of identity
The liminal space is the phase where the old identity has lost its authority, but the new one has not proven itself yet.
You are not who you used to be, but you also don’t fully trust who you are becoming.
That is why this phase can feel strangely unstable, even when nothing is wrong.
Your system is still checking.
Is this new life really safe?
Can I live like this?
Can I survive like this?
Can I trust myself here?
This is not weakness.
It is how the brain works.
Our mind is built to repeat what it already knows. Habits, beliefs, and emotional patterns become the default because the system wants efficiency and predictability, not happiness. When you try to live differently, the brain interprets that as risk, even if the new direction is healthier.
So the nervous system asks for proof.
Not once.
Many times.
I see the same pattern in people I coach
I see this phase very clearly in people who change their professional identity, especially when someone leaves a safe job to become a freelancer or start a business.
At the beginning there is excitement.
Freedom.
Possibility.
For a while it feels right.
Then, after a few months, the panic comes.
Not because something dramatic happened, but because the new identity is not anchored yet. The nervous system still expects the old signals of safety: a salary at the end of the month, a clear role, a predictable structure.
When those signals are gone, the system gets restless.
And what I often notice is that these people are already living like freelancers on the outside, but still thinking like employees on the inside.
They expect stability to come automatically.
They expect work to appear.
They expect confirmation to come quickly.
But the identity of a freelancer or entrepreneur works differently.
You have to look for clients.
You have to present yourself.
You have to market yourself.
You have to build things without knowing if they will pay off.
Sometimes you spend months creating something before any result comes back.
For someone whose nervous system learned safety through predictable income, that phase feels like danger.
So the mind starts asking:
Maybe I should go back.
Maybe this was a mistake.
Maybe I need something safer.
Not because the new path is wrong.
Because the new identity is not familiar yet.
It is the same moment as lying in the tent at night, holding the knife, not knowing when it is safe to put it down.
Why unpredictable days feel so intense
I notice the same mechanism in my own life right now.
On days with clear structure, meaningful work, movement, and connection, I feel grounded. Not perfect, but stable.
On days without direction, the tension comes back. Not like before, not like anxiety, but like the system becomes alert again.
As if it is asking:
Are we safe here?
Do we know what we are doing?
Is this territory stable yet?
The strange thing is that nothing bad has to happen for that feeling to appear.
The nervous system does not measure safety by logic.
It measures safety by repetition.
The old life had years to become familiar.
The new life is still learning.
The hidden power of this phase
What I am starting to understand is that this in-between phase is not only uncomfortable. It is also where a deeper kind of stability can grow.
When the old patterns fall away, but the new ones are not fixed yet, you have the chance to learn something different from what you learned before.
Not safety through control.
Not safety through routine.
Not safety through external structure.
Safety from inside.
A state where you don’t feel calm because everything is predictable, but because you trust that you can handle what comes.
This is a very different feeling.
Less rigid.
Less certain.
But deeper.
The shift from control to trust
At some point growth stops being about fixing problems and starts being about trusting life.
Not blind trust.
Not naive optimism.
A quiet understanding that every phase, even the confusing ones, belongs to the path.
Looking back, the hardest periods in my life always pushed me closer to what was true for me, even when it felt like everything was falling apart at the time.
The mind wants certainty.
Life asks for trust.
And trust only grows when you stay long enough in the unknown for the system to realize:
I can live here.
When you can finally put the knife down
There is a state I sometimes feel now.
Not all the time, but more often than before.
A state where I don’t feel safe because nothing can happen, but because I know I can handle what happens.
Not because there is no fear.
Not because everything is clear.
But because something inside me trusts the process.
You stop trying to control every step.
You stop needing constant confirmation.
You stop asking if you are allowed to be where you are.
You just stay.
And slowly, the nervous system learns.
The wilderness becomes home.
