The Psychology of Transition: Why the Middle Phase Feels So Lonely

Hi friend,

There's a part of personal development nobody puts in the highlight reel.

It's not the morning routine. It's not the cold plunge. It's not the transformation photo.

It's the middle bit. The part where you've left the old version of yourself behind but the new version hasn't arrived yet. Where your old friends don't quite recognise you and your new life hasn't fully formed.

That space is lonely. And nobody warns you about it.

Maybe you started taking your health seriously and the Friday night drinks lost their appeal. Maybe you got serious about your career and the group chat went quiet. Maybe you just started thinking differently, about your time or your goals, and realised the people around you were still having conversations you outgrew six months ago.

It feels like something is wrong with you. It isn't. It's called growth. And it comes with a cost nobody talks about.

Anthropologist Victor Turner called this in-between phase ‘liminality,’ from the Latin word for threshold. It describes the state of being neither here nor there. No longer who you were, but not yet who you're becoming.

Turner studied tribal rites of passage, but his insight applies to every transition you'll ever face. Changing careers. Getting sober. Starting a business. Deciding to take your life seriously for the first time. Each one follows the same arc: separation from your old identity, a disorienting middle phase, and eventually, reintegration as someone new.

The middle phase is where the loneliness lives. Turner described it as a space where your old social status is stripped away and your new one hasn't been granted yet. You don't belong to the world you left, and you haven't been welcomed into the one you're headed toward.

That uneasy feeling three months into a new habit when nobody around you cares? That's liminality. The creeping sense that you've outgrown your environment? Liminality. It's not a failure. It's the cost of the crossing.

When our ancestors first set sail across open oceans, they didn't know what was on the other side. The boat was small, the water was vast, and the old land had disappeared long before new land appeared ahead. That gap, between the known shore and the unknown one, is the loneliest stretch of any journey.

Ernest Shackleton understood this better than anyone. In 1914, he sailed for Antarctica with 27 men aboard the Endurance, aiming to cross the continent on foot. The ship became trapped in pack ice, was crushed, and sank. His crew spent 15 months stranded on floating ice, a thousand miles from civilisation, with no means of contact.

The original mission died. And in that void, Shackleton had to become someone else entirely - not an explorer, but a survival leader. He wrote something that captures every transition you'll ever face,

That's the bit nobody romanticises. The reshaping. The becoming. The long stretch where the old plan is dead and the new one hasn't fully formed.

Every one of his 27 men survived. But the mission that brought them home looked nothing like the one they set out on.

The spoils of new land are always worth the voyage. But the voyage is lonely. That's not a flaw in the plan. It's the plan.

Here's something that might take the edge off: losing friends during growth isn't unusual. It's statistically normal.

Research from Aalto University and the University of Oxford analysed three million mobile phone users and found that social circles begin shrinking rapidly after age 25. Both men and women expand their connections until their mid-twenties, then the numbers drop and keep dropping.

Professor Robin Dunbar, who co-authored the study, explained it simply: as people enter their late twenties, they become more selective. New priorities reduce bandwidth for casual connections. The friendships that survive are built on genuine emotional alignment, not proximity or habit.

This isn't pathological. It's developmental. Socioemotional selectivity theory shows that as people mature, they invest more in emotionally meaningful ties and less in surface-level connections. Values become the primary predictor of which relationships last.

So if you've been working on yourself and noticed friendships fading, know this: those relationships were markers of who you used to be. Losing them isn't a sign you've done something wrong. It's a sign you've moved.

Research on self-expansion by Aron and colleagues found that personal growth fosters meaning but temporarily increases isolation. When you change, you disrupt ‘identity coherence’ - the consistency people depend on. You're not just changing habits. You're disturbing the ecosystem built around your former self.

That's why it stings. And that's why it's temporary.

You’ve read the books. You’ve bought the manuals.

Maybe you're not stuck because you lack information. Maybe you're in the middle. The liminal space. The open water between the shore you left and the one you haven't reached.

If that's where you are: you're not lost. You're in transit. The loneliness isn't a sign you've taken a wrong turn. It's a sign you've left the harbour.

Keep moving. The new land is ahead. You just can't see it yet.

If this resonated, share it with someone going through their own transition. And if you haven't already, subscribe to Working Things Out. Every week I share research from things I’m reading, mix it with real life experience and turn it into something you can actually use. Let’s continue Working Things Out together.

Consistent input is more important than output. I've been running every day without tracking distance, speed, or time. Just a simple question: did I run, or didn't I?

Removing metrics won't make me a marathon runner, but it's building consistency. And consistency is building a more resilient mind. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your progress is stop measuring it.

Endurance by Alfred Lansing. The full Shackleton story, and one of the greatest survival accounts ever written. Nothing makes me more proud to be British than looking at our adventurers of old. A reminder to keep moving forward even when the goals of your journey change completely.