How to cope with disruptive change

Many of us have a natural resistance to change. We take comfort in following our morning rituals, going to the same job and performing tasks we know well, working or socialising with the people we’ve known for years, pursuing the same fulfilling hobby, and so on. In these routines we find predictability, a sense of control, and progress toward cherished goals and aspirations. We find peace and psychological balance. Anything that threatens our routines can feel like an unwanted intrusion, eliciting a surge of distressing uncertainty, a sense of losing control.

Over the years, I’ve treated hundreds of people with anxiety, depression and worry. Invariably, change played a defining role in their difficulties. Whether it was the loss or break-up of a loving relationship, a decline in physical health, a job loss or demotion, financial hardship, childrearing problems, or other unwanted changes, for them, change was a disruptive force that overwhelmed their capacity to cope.

Yet change can be disruptive even when it doesn’t involve a major loss or burden. Examples might include spending time in an unfamiliar place, starting a new relationship, or changing your place of worship. Although experiences like these are an expected part of living, they still involve a level of change that can be unsettling. The experience of change itself is a big part of what feels distressing for so many people. This means that even changes associated with desirable outcomes can be unnerving when they occur. Starting a new job with better pay, introducing physical exercise into your daily routine, getting your child ready for a new school year, or starting house renovations are examples of positive experiences that can feel highly uncomfortable because they increase uncertainty and put pressure on your coping resources.

You can learn to respond differently to change

If you’ve ever experienced change as an unwanted force that threatens your emotional equilibrium – maybe you’re facing such change even now – this Guide will share some ways for you to handle it differently. Change is an unavoidable part of life, whether it involves a major disruption or a steady onslaught of minor ones. Acceptance and adaptation are the answer.

Acceptance is not simply throwing up your hands in the face of change. What it means is knowing which aspects of a change experience are within your control and which are beyond your control. It’s focusing your efforts on the controllable and learning to live with the new reality that has been imposed on you. Learning to live with whatever change you face requires adaptation, whether that involves acquiring new skills or reintroducing a long-forgotten approach to daily living. Acceptance and adaptation are well known to psychologists: both are pillars of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and are repeatedly emphasised in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), especially for the treatment of anxiety. In my work as a clinical psychologist, I have found that acceptance and adaptation ultimately help to minimise the emotional toil of a change, so that one can continue to thrive even in the face of new difficulties and challenges.

Often, a change that begins as a threat to wellbeing can even become a catalyst for growth. I once treated a man who experienced intense anxiety. He had spent much of his adult life building up a thriving business in software development. In his mid-50s, he was able to sell the business and retire early. But shortly after he retired, his anxiety intensified to almost unbearable levels. As part of his therapy journey, my client realised he needed to ‘reinvent’ himself. He became much more focused on building relationships, especially with his family, and embarked on a series of ambitious, community-based charitable projects to help disadvantaged youth. Retirement was a seismic change for him, but it caused him to discover a new meaning in life – to realign his activities with core values that had lain dormant during his years of driving to succeed.

Whatever changes might lie ahead for you, I offer the following recommendations to help you sharpen your coping skills and discover how you, too, can adapt in the face of change.

Evaluate what’s controllable

When confronted with a disruptive change, the first step is to recognise what is under your control and what is not. We do not have complete control over most of the change experiences we encounter, whether they are major or minor in scope. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and feel helpless if you are trying to control that which is beyond your control. So, when you face a stressful change, ask yourself: which aspects of this situation might I have some control over, and which ones are out of my hands?

Consider, for example, some of the typical changes that many of us face as we grow up. Someone who is entering adulthood is required to take dramatic steps toward independence and make decisions about work and relationships that often lead to destabilising changes – such as moving to a new place at a distance from family and old friends, or breaking up with a romantic partner. To handle these changes well, it helps to recognise what is inevitable or out of one’s control. This might include accepting that a change in location is often necessary for a fulfilling career, or that break-ups are an expected part of navigating mature relationships. One must also identify what, in a given change experience, can be controlled: eg, the decision to pursue specific job opportunities or places to live, or to explore new romantic relationships and learn from previous ones. Focusing on elements such as these will go much further toward helping a person meet critical changes.

Likewise, we face life-changing challenges in our senior years. Retirement, declining health, loss of valued relationships, and restricted freedom and independence are just some of the dramatic changes associated with this time of life. Ageing itself is inevitable and uncontrollable, despite any attempts we might make to arrest it. For those dismayed by the changes brought on by ageing, it is much better to turn toward the aspects of daily life over which we have some power, such as how active we are, how well we eat, and how often we communicate with friends, neighbours or other people in our lives. Focusing on the controllable can help us maximise our quality of life as we live through the uncontrollable reality of ageing.

Take a problem-focused approach

We are emotional beings. So, when it comes to unwanted or disruptive change, it’s natural for us to focus on how it makes us feel. Let’s say you are facing some big changes at work: an increased workload, the introduction of new technology, and a downsizing of the workforce. Some of your closest co-workers lost their jobs and there’s a realisation that you could be next. You would probably experience a surge of anxiety and worry. You might have difficulty sleeping and feel on edge. Under these circumstances, it would be all too easy to spend all your time dealing with your distress. Of course, you can’t ignore how you feel – and you’d want to take steps to acknowledge and manage those feelings, such as sharing your burden with a confidante or seeking help from a mental health professional. But focusing on your feelings will only go so far to address the changes at work.

A problem-focused approach to change is about discovering practical adaptations that improve your ability to cope. It involves taking specific steps that are within your sphere of control. In this scenario, you might start by learning about how others have dealt with increased workloads and trying out some strategies that might be relevant to your own work. You could seek out tutorials and online instructions, or ask a knowledgeable co-worker about how to improve your skills with the new technology. Downsizing is a tougher part of the problem because so much of it is outside your control. But you could focus on activities that strengthen your preparedness for a job lay-off, such as revising your resume, engaging in job searches, and seeking out opportunities at related companies. The mantra of the problem-focused approach is: what can I do that is under my control to reduce the negative effects of a change?

Taking a problem-focused approach to change is not always easy. When you’re hurting, frightened or demoralised, it’s especially hard to look beyond the feelings to the disruptive change that has caused your distress. But a problem-focused approach is the best way to accept and adapt to change, no matter how devastating it may feel. And this approach can be helpful for any type of change, from more common ones such as moving to a new neighbourhood, adopting a healthier diet or seeking new friends, to more threatening changes such as being diagnosed with a serious illness or losing a close relationship.

If shifting to a more controlled, practical style of coping feels difficult, you can start by simply sitting with the change and deciding to think it through before reacting. Reflect on the impact of the change for you, being careful to avoid catastrophising, or assuming that the worst-case scenario will happen. Consider what is the most likely outcome associated with the change. Then find out more about how others have coped with similar changes, perhaps by consulting family members or friends who’ve gone through such changes, or by reading what others have shared online or in books.

Finally, list two or three practical, specific responses you could take that might reduce the negative effects of the change. Focusing on these concrete steps will help you grapple with what’s controllable (rather than what isn’t) so that you can adapt accordingly.

Use critical thinking and values to steer your decisions

Change often brings with it the need for some degree of decision-making. If you recently started dating again and posted an online profile, but you’ve been disappointed with the results, you might wonder whether to remove it. Or, if there’s been a change in your financial situation, you might have to make some hard decisions around financial management. If your ageing parent is no longer able to live independently, you may be deciding how best to support their wellbeing. What’s more, the problem-focused approach discussed above might require a series of choices, or might bring you to a point where a major decision is needed.

If you’re indecisive, or if you sometimes make decisions impulsively, you might struggle with this aspect of change. So, it can help to practice efficient and effective decision-making by exercising your critical thinking skills. This begins with realising the negative effects of not deciding. Delaying a decision is a decision in its own right – one that can lead to missed opportunities, prolong distress, and feed into doubts you might have about your ability to choose wisely.

Instead, when you have a decision to make amid the change happening in your life, here’s a general plan to keep you focused:

1. Be clear and specific about what you need to decide.
2. Gather information relevant to the issue at hand, giving higher priority to information that is evidence-based and being more cautious with information that may be more speculative in nature.
3. Generate options and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each, based on the evidence you’ve gathered.
4. Choose a course of action, and sketch out a step-by-step plan that you’ll follow to carry out what you’ve decided.
5. Set a time when you’ll review your decision and make any necessary adjustments to the plan.

Importantly, the best decisions are also guided by values: your freely chosen and deeply held convictions about what is right, important, or worthy of your actions. Deciding based on values stands in contrast to deciding based on, say, what seems most expedient or least effortful.

Imagine that you have moved to an unfamiliar city. Unrooted from friends and family, and feeling lonely, bored and apprehensive, you take a problem-focused approach, part of which is deciding how you will spend your alone time. If two of your core values are ‘spirituality’ and ‘empathy’, you might decide to find a local faith community with opportunities to volunteer in community-based activities, such as staffing a food bank. Or, if ‘respect for others’ and ‘knowledge’ are core values for you, you might seek a way to work with and inform others in your community, perhaps through the local public library. Using your values to guide your decision would provide a meaningful way to cope with a disruptive change.

Now, let’s apply all of this to another common life change. In this example, you’re in a serious romantic relationship and your partner wants to move to a deeper level of commitment, but you have misgivings. In fact, you’re contemplating whether a break-up would be best for you. You feel overwhelmed by the gravity of the decision and fret that you’ll regret whatever decision you make. You feel stuck. So, how would a critical thinker who embraces value-based decision-making approach this situation?

The first step, again, is to define the problem: whether to remain in the relationship or not. You give yourself a deadline, let’s say three months, to gather as much information as possible. You might read about the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships, seek consultation from trusted friends who know you both, have open and honest conversations with your partner about your concerns in the relationship, and/or do a deep dive into compatibility – how you compare in terms of values, interests, goals and priorities. You focus on the information that is most important in making the right decision for you.

You then look at your options – stay in the relationship and devote yourself to making it work, or end the relationship and move on with your life – and you consider the pros and cons of each. You can even give a weight to each advantage and disadvantage (eg, ‘very important’, ‘somewhat important’, ‘not very important’). You keep your core values in mind as you evaluate the pros and cons of each option. For example, if ‘curiosity’ and ‘learning’ are among your core values, you might weight evidence that your partner does or does not share these values as very important to you.

Through this process, you arrive at a decision. Then, you create a step-by-step plan for how you’ll execute it. If the decision is to stay together, what steps will you take to strengthen the relationship? If it’s to break up, how will you carry that out? At some point afterwards, you take some time to evaluate your decision to determine how you might strengthen your future decision-making.

Can you see how decision-making becomes more efficient with this approach, as compared with getting frozen by the fears and doubts of the moment? By taking control of the situation to the extent possible, and then adopting a critical-thinking approach to any decisions you need to make, you can improve the chances of adapting well to even difficult and disruptive changes.

Facing change when you lack self-confidence

At this point, you may be thinking something like:

This advice all sounds well and good, but I tend to have low self-confidence and I’m often plagued with self-doubt about my choices. When I have to face a major change in my life, I don’t trust myself. I feel like a victim of change rather than someone who can handle change.

If you find yourself on the wrong side of the confidence ledger, consider trying the following exercise:

1. Make a list of 3-5 major changes you’ve experienced in your life, and write out how you responded to each change. Were you always helpless in the face of change, or did you, in some cases, exert some control after all? What was the eventual outcome of each change?
2. As you review changes of the past, are you being overly self-critical? Were you more successful than you expected to be, now that you know the outcome? Consider whether you might hold any beliefs about personal weakness or helplessness that are overly harsh – and not actually supported by the evidence.
3. Write down some personal experiences that indicate you can make good decisions and take control of difficult issues.
4. If you are currently facing a disruptive change, write out a plan of action that you think a confident person might adopt. You might base this on a friend, co-worker or family member whom you consider highly confident and resourceful. What would they do that you could possibly imitate in some way? List some small steps you can take toward dealing with the disruptive change.

Low self-confidence and self-doubt can make it more challenging to adapt to a disruptive change. But you don’t have to let perceived inadequacies hold you prisoner. You can work at changing these long-held beliefs by following the previous steps and improving your ability to accept and adapt to change.

Master of Change (2025) by Brad Stulberg is a well-researched book on how to deal with disruptive changes in your life. Although written for the general public with lots of stories and illustrations, it also summarises some of the psychological research on change.

If you are interested in learning more about ACT and a relevant, core concept called psychological flexibility, I recommend the book The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety (3rd ed, 2025) by John Forsyth and Georg Eifert.

I have a new book entitled Overcoming Paralyzing Doubt and Indecision (2026), in which I go deeper on the sorts of decision-making challenges I discussed in this Guide. The workbook teaches decision-making skills grounded in CBT.

A helpful blog post on Psychology Today, written by the licensed counsellor Suzanne Degges-White, offers practical tips for handling big transitions in life.

If you’re curious about when and why people suffer from too little change in their life, check out the Psyche Guide ‘How to channel boredom’ by James Danckert and John Eastwood.