y Vanessa Nguyen, Staff Writer
Change can be terrifying, driving your adrenal glands into overdrive, flooding your body with cortisol, inducing stress and inflammation. But change doesn’t have to be so terrifying and stressful. If we learn how to approach new challenges differently, change can be a catalyst for personal growth and enrichment.
Last year, I dropped the news to my parents that I wanted to move back to California. We had moved to Texas the year before. They couldn’t understand why I wanted to go back again in just a year. I had just started making new friends; we were all going to go to high school together. Seeing the look on their faces dropped my heavy heart to my stomach.
The day of the flight, I walked through the airport with loving goodbyes blowing up my phone. The thought of my dad not being with me anymore was terrifying. I had just started making new friends and settled into my life in my new home. There was both a feeling of excitement and fear rushing through me during the flight back home.
It’s difficult when you’ve gotten used to something and suddenly life shifts. Most people see it as a terrible thing, and sometimes, change can be awful or terrifying; similar to when you’re living your life freely and a global pandemic hits. But, after the storm comes a rainbow, and good things can come from change. There are times where you could be using unhealthy coping mechanisms to handle the change in your life. The mentality and positivity you have going into something can really change the outcome, but it is understandable when you’re not used to a new life or not used to change at all.
There’s no wrong way to feel. When life is changing, you feel anger, sadness, frustration or even excitement. It’s important to feel your feelings and acknowledge how you handle things before you get better. Being able to know how you’re feeling completely can keep you from blowing up at people who don’t deserve it. It’s a process, but once you can open up to people again you’ll be able to let out all your feelings and it’ll feel like such a release. There are different coping mechanisms to handle the pain or happiness you’re feeling; some better than others. I myself, am not great with change and have used many different types of coping mechanisms to help and, I must admit that some of them were not the best options. I didn’t take the right amount of time to heal and lashed out at people: my friends, my loved ones. Although there’s no exact “right time”, everyone moves at their own pace and some might take longer than others and we should be able to feel our emotions and take the time we need.
There may be times where you aren’t the one who needs to handle change. If your friend is going through a hard time, sometimes all they need is for someone to be there for them. If they’re not ready to talk, a simple “I’ll be here for you” is all they need to feel secure and cared for. Oftentimes all you need is someone to listen, and that’s what you could be for your friends. Even an “I really don’t know what to say” could help them and venting to you could be as much help as you can give, which is completely okay!
The idea that some people don’t grasp is that change is a constant thing. There are many ways to cope with change, but everyone adjusts with change in different ways. The hard truth is that nothing stays the same. Things are constantly moving and that could lead to great or awful things. The best thing you can do for yourself is having a support system: a friend or family member to talk to. Try to differentiate the things you can control and things that are out of your control, as it’ll give you a sense of stability.
Great lessons can be learned from change. It can seem like an awful thing in the moment but truly, if you give it time, things will look up. Just let yourself feel and experience everything and you could learn from mistakes or move on from the past. But to achieve the feeling of getting better, you need to experience the journey to success so you understand what it’s like to make mistakes and learn from the past.
When I embraced the idea of moving back to California, I saw it as a way to grow, meet new people, and try different things. When I was able to wrap my mind about all the new possibilities that lay ahead of me, I saw it as a chance to expand my horizons and learn more about myself. And as I sit here writing this article, I see myself doing things that I would not have imagined back in Texas. I have embraced the change and because of this I have grown and see all sorts of new possibilities that make me feel like my life has taken on a new direction. In some ways, I’m glad I went through some of those extreme changes because they taught me to look at the world in a different perspective and I learned many things about gratitude and how to adapt to different places. Change is constant. It can be painful and you could lose yourself along the way. But in the end, the lessons that could be learned will stick with you and guide you along the journey.
