You’re Not Lost, You’re Between Selves
There is a moment in every transformation that feels like disorientation.
Not because something is wrong, but because something old has stopped working, and something new has not yet taken form.
Most people call this being lost. It isn’t.
It is being between selves.
We rarely talk about this space clearly. We rush to name it as confusion, uncertainty, or failure to “move on.” But in reality, this is the exact moment where identity is renegotiated, when the internal architecture of a life is quietly dismantled and rebuilt.
And it is uncomfortable by design.
When an old identity dissolves whether it was shaped by a relationship, a role, or a survival pattern, the mind looks for familiar structure. Without it, anxiety often rushes in to fill the gap. The nervous system prefers known pain to unknown possibility.
So the question becomes:
Do you rush back into what you recognize, or do you pause long enough to let something new emerge?
This is the crossroads most people never name.
Between selves, there is no clear script. The habits that once defined you no longer fit. The goals you chased feel hollow. Even language becomes slippery, you know what you don’t want, but you can’t yet articulate what you’re moving toward.
This is not failure.
This is identity reorganization.
In design terms, this is the phase where demolition has already happened but construction has not yet begun. And if you try to decorate a structure that hasn’t been rebuilt, nothing will hold.
The instinct to rush is understandable. Productivity feels safer than presence. Decisions feel better than uncertainty. But becoming cannot be forced. It must be designed intentionally, not reactively.
This is where most advice fails.
We are taught to “find ourselves” as if identity were a hidden object. In reality, identity is not discovered, it is constructed, chosen, and reinforced through aligned decisions over time.
Between selves is not a void.
It is a threshold.
A pause where:
-
old narratives loosen
-
survival patterns lose authority
-
new values surface
-
vision begins to take shape
The work here is not clarity yet it is honesty.
Not action yet, but orientation.
The question to ask in this space is not:
“What should I do next?”
But rather:
“What version of myself am I no longer willing to maintain?”
That answer quietly shapes everything that follows.
If you are here feeling unanchored, unmotivated, or strangely alert, resist the urge to label it as regression. You are not going backward.
You are standing at the edge of a redesign.
And the ability to stay present in this space, without rushing to fill it, is not weakness.
It is leadership over your own life.
A quiet note
If this resonates, you may be in the early stage of what I call Vision Design, the phase where healing has opened the door, but identity has not yet been consciously rebuilt.
A gentle starting point is The First 30 Days After the Storm, a structured way to move through this threshold without rushing yourself into another version that doesn’t fit.
Get The First 30 Days After the Storm guide here.