"I've Changed and I'm Terrified"
The unsettling experience of breaking old patterns and facing change
Back in November, I wrote a piece about how growth and healing can be unexpectedly lonely. My argument was that when we change—even in ways that make us better—the people around us don’t always follow suit. Some resist. Some pull away. Some disappear. Change comes with a cost, and part of that cost is realising we may no longer fit as neatly into the lives of those who knew an earlier version of us.
But change brings another challenge—one I see often in therapy. It’s about how we come to terms with change ourselves.
Through the therapeutic process, people begin to unlearn old habits and experiment with new ways of being. They start responding to problems differently, forming deeper connections, and making decisions with greater intention. But as they step into this new version of themselves, they also find it unsettling, even terrifying. They worry they’ll slip up, backtrack, or revert to old patterns, as if personal growth came with a hidden return policy no one warned them about.
Take someone who has spent their entire life being excessively agreeable. They’ve mastered the art of accommodating others, suppressing their own opinions to keep the peace. After years of self-work—through therapy or personal effort—they decide to start speaking up, even in small ways. Maybe they share an honest opinion in a meeting. Maybe they express a preference rather than defaulting to whatever others want. It’s a seemingly minor shift. But to them, it feels monumental and terrifying. What if I can’t keep this up?
Or take someone who has spent years externalising blame, convinced that every misfortune in their life is someone else’s fault. Over time, they begin to recognise the role of their own choices. They start taking accountability, acknowledging their agency in shaping their circumstances. But while this shift is empowering, it’s also unsettling. What if I slip back into my old ways?
Both examples highlight a common fear: progress may feel real, but change itself can feel fragile.
And that fear makes sense. We take pride in our growth. We feel lighter, stronger, more in control. The last thing we want is to lose what we’ve gained. Yet deep down, we question whether this is real or sustainable. Our old patterns, no matter how painful, are familiar. And familiarity, even when it harms us, has a strange pull. Feeling differently, behaving differently, can feel almost unnatural.
Maybe you’ve felt this too. Perhaps you spent years following a path that wasn’t really yours—saying yes when you wanted to say no, making choices that were expected rather than desired. And then, through deliberate effort or the guidance of someone, you began to step off that well-worn path. You started tuning in to your own wants and needs, making choices that felt more like you. And for the first time in a long time, you felt alive. But despite all your progress, you wonder, can I really sustain it?
Change, even when it’s good, can be destabilising. And the fear of undoing it all, the fear that progress is temporary, can be just as overwhelming as the discomfort that prompted the change in the first place.
So we tell ourselves: I’ll probably screw it all up soon.
My first question to that is: Who exactly is going to mess it up?
When we imagine backsliding, we’re not thinking about the version of ourselves that has grown. We’re thinking about the person we used to be. The one who didn’t yet have the awareness, perspective, or experience we do now. We haven’t figured everything out (we probably never will), but we’re wiser.
The person we are today knows something our past self didn’t. And we have changed—probably more than we realise, even if those changes seem small. Yet, we often underestimate how much we’ll continue to grow. This is a cognitive bias known as “the end of history illusion”—the tendency to believe that who we are today is pretty much who we will be tomorrow. That is, believing that while we’ve changed a lot in the past, we won’t change much in the future. Research shows that people of all ages fall into this trap, assuming their present self is more or less their final form, despite evidence to the contrary. There isn’t research specifically on whether this bias affects people going through personal growth who fear regressing—but it’s likely a factor.
And the lesson is clear: we need to trust our future selves more. Even though our minds fixate on what might go wrong. Even though that future version of us won’t be Yoda, or some enlightened being incapable of mistakes.
One way to do this is by actively recognising how we’ve already changed. Taking stock of the moments where we handled something with more confidence, courage, creativity, fairness, or integrity than we would have in the past. Letting those moments become part of how we see ourselves, rather than dismissing them as flukes.
And here’s my second question to that voice saying, I’ll screw it all up soon:
Yes, you’ll make mistakes. So what?
It’s a cliché, but change, especially when it comes to our mental health and wellbeing, is never a straight line. There will be moments when we slip into old habits. Times when we act in ways that remind us of who we used to be. But that doesn’t mean we’ve gone back to square one.
What matters most how we respond when we falter. Because real change is about repair, course-correcting, and trusting ourselves enough to try again.
If we see our progress as fragile, every misstep will feel like proof that we were never really changing at all. But if we see it for what it is—an ongoing process, not a pass/fail test—then every time we fall can also be a chance to stand up differently.
I see this fear in therapy not just in behaviours, but in emotions. People who have battled anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem for years begin to experience moments of relief. They feel more in peace, more confident, more alive. There’s an ease in their days that wasn’t there before, a sense of possibility they haven’t felt in a long time. Maybe they wake up without that familiar weight on their chest. Maybe they walk into a social situation without rehearsing every possible way they could embarrass themselves.
And yet, because our minds have a way of inventing new worries—even about not worrying enough—there is a different kind of fear: What if this doesn’t last? What if I wake up tomorrow and feel exactly the way I did before? What if this sense of peace isn’t real—just a temporary illusion?
The fear of slipping back into old emotional states can be so overwhelming that it taints the progress people have made. And again, this fear makes sense. When someone has spent years trapped in emotional distress, when sadness, worry, or self-doubt have been constant companions, feeling good can seem almost unnatural.
But even if the same emotions return, the person experiencing them isn’t the same. Maybe this time, they notice the feeling instead of drowning in it. Maybe they pause before reacting the way they used to. Maybe they’re more accepting of distress rather than fighting against it. Maybe they recover faster.
Growth, change, healing—whatever you call it—demands flexibility: the understanding that happiness doesn’t need to be a constant state, the acceptance that anxiety often accompanies greater freedom and responsibility, and the courage to keep choosing new actions, even in the face of fear and setbacks.
We also need to remember that we don’t need to cling to old patterns simply because they feel familiar, certain, or real. Holding on to them will only keep us stuck in painful cycles, as I’ve extensively discussed here.
And perhaps, in moments of doubt, we could remind ourselves of what Seneca wrote in On the Shortness of Life:
"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn."
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Hello, Good Doctor. Thank you for another fine essay that addresses something that I’ve seldom seen discussed in such an organized and engaging manner. I can see most of the process you’ve described in my own life and many of my family members. I’ve struggled with anxiety ever since grade school and over the years I’ve reacted in various ways, but never really seemed to improve the way I’ve reacted to stressful or unfamiliar situations. I’ve been blessed with a loving, caring partner who has been a real bulwark to me, calming my worries and never judging my feelings or insinuating that it’s less than masculine of me to always be overly cautious or anxious in situations that a lot of others seem to handle with ease. Other points in your post bring to mind close family members who have been struggling with kinds of negative feelings, be it extreme, unfounded jealousy or low self esteem. I feel that anyone who has achieved a certain level of self awareness could benefit from taking the time to study this essay and take your main theme to heart. The pursuit of perfection is something that has held me back personally, and I can’t be the only person who has fallen into the kind of thinking that you address here. Thank you once again for posting some very worthwhile reading and the hard work you’ve put into the craft of writing, being able to get your message out in a compact, clear and unambiguous post. I know that the ability to write that way doesn’t come easily, and has to be developed through hard work and constant employment and refinement of your writing skills. Thank you for your hard work and sharing it with your followers!
Thank you! What a timing! Today I was talking to a friend about a recent dating experience and caught myself noticing how different I was reacting (actually not reacting, just responding) to some projections during the date. Then I caught the thought of how much I have changed and grown and then the fear you are described crawled in. What if that's just a coincidence? What if it will be gone next time and I’ll be back with other patterns I noticed are almost gone? On the other hand single fact of noticing that I’ve grown, and feel proud about the progress, makes me feel great.
Thank you for the reminder that the progress most probably does not end here:)