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Involuntary Transition
Part 1: Stress Factors
by Norman and Ann Bales
All About Families


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When we were children, we often sang a hymn at church which began with these words:

Some transition is voluntary and some transition is involuntary. We have all participated in both kinds. We made an involuntary transition when we left the warmth our mothers' wombs and entered the world. We all came here kicking and screaming.

Life constantly changes for all of us. The change begins at birth. It's not too long after birth that pushy parents start urging us to crawl, stand and walk. We begin making adjustments to our world and somebody tells us we have to go to school. Just about the time we get a handle on doing school work, they kick us out in a ceremony called graduation and tell us to go take on the world. On and on it goes with one change right after another - entering the work force, changing jobs, forming a marriage, raising children, moving from place to place, health changes, retirement. The changes just keep on occurring. Over the next few weeks we want to look at the way we handle change and its effect on our families. We are primarily interested in how we deal with involuntary change.

Every significant change we make in life generates stress. This is true whether change is voluntary or involuntary.

• A sense of loss. Suppose you are moving from one location to another. You leave familiar people and surroundings. Even when you want the change to happen, you feel a sense of loss. You say "good bye" to old friends. You've got to find a new place to shop, a new doctor, a new bank, and a new school.

• A loss of credibility. We're not suggesting that you lose your sense of integrity when you change, but when everything's different people don't know what to expect of you. Take moving, for example. You may find it hard to cash a check in your new location, but you need money to make the transition.

• A loss of a sense of worth. Suppose you've been working at a job for some period of time and you decide to leave. The firm that employed you either hires a replacement or eliminates your position. It can be disconcerting to know that things will go on quite well without you.

• The Learning Curve. We get in the habit of doing things a certain way. It's like an old pair of shoes, but the new way can be worse than breaking in a new pair of shoes. We are required to deal with circumstances that we can't control. We have to learn new ways of doing things that make us uncomfortable. When we were in math class in our school years the teachers were never satisfied. As soon as we learned to add, they wanted us to learn how to subtract. When we caught onto that, they introduced us to something called the multiplication table. Once we got that down, they wanted us to learn division and that wasn't so bad until they told us about long division. And so it went. Every step of the way seemed hard, sometimes impossible. It's that way with nearly all the major changes we make in our lives.

Successful families learn how to manage change. They learn how to overcome the negative dynamics that change brings to their lives. Instead of being intimidated by the learning curve, they feel a sense of challenge in overcoming the obstacles presented by transition.

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