The Uneasy Space: Caught in the In-Between

Transitions We Don't Talk About

We are remarkably good at celebrating transitions once they are complete. We congratulate the promotion, applaud the business launch, acknowledge the retirement and admire the courage it took to leave one chapter in pursuit of another. These are the milestones people see. They provide a clear narrative, complete with a beginning, an ending and a story that makes sense in hindsight.

What receives far less attention is the season between those moments.

The period where you've begun to outgrow the person, role or environment you've known for years, yet haven't fully stepped into whatever comes next. A season where life continues much as it always has, but your relationship with it has quietly changed. You still turn up. You still meet your responsibilities. From the outside, very little appears different. Internally, however, something has shifted.

It can feel as though you've already left, despite the fact that you're still here.

Perhaps that's why these seasons can feel so isolating. Without the language to explain what we're experiencing, we often conclude that something must be wrong with us. We question our motivation, wonder why our enthusiasm has faded and search for ways to regain the certainty we once had.

Interestingly, this experience is neither unusual nor unique. In fact, it has been recognised and studied across anthropology, psychology and organisational research for decades. There is a name for it: liminality.

Derived from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold, liminality was originally used by anthropologists to describe the transitional space between one stage of life and another. It is the period where an old identity has been relinquished, but a new one has yet to fully emerge. More recently, psychologists and organisational scholars have adopted the concept to better understand the uncertainty that accompanies periods of significant personal and professional transition.

Put simply, liminality is the in-between.

The Psychology of Transition

What makes these periods particularly uncomfortable is that they challenge something we naturally seek: certainty. Human beings are remarkably adept at creating stability through routines, roles and identities. We derive meaning from knowing who we are, where we belong and what comes next. Liminal periods interrupt that certainty. The familiar no longer feels quite right, yet the future remains indistinct. It is little wonder that these seasons are often accompanied by frustration, self-doubt and a persistent sense of restlessness.

Yet the research offers an interesting perspective. Rather than viewing liminal spaces as periods of stagnation, many scholars suggest they are periods of reconstruction. As existing assumptions begin to loosen, there is space for new ways of thinking, new priorities and, ultimately, a new sense of identity to emerge. What feels like standing still is often the quiet work of becoming.

We tend to approach the in-between as something to escape. We search for the next opportunity, the next answer or the next decision that will restore a sense of certainty. We assume that progress should always feel purposeful and that if we cannot clearly see the destination, we must somehow be lost.

Yet this discomfort is not something to be avoided, but understood.

Where Growth Really Begins

We often speak about growth as though it were an inspiring process. We encourage people to step outside their comfort zone, embrace change and pursue new possibilities. What we rarely acknowledge is that growth almost always begins with uncertainty. Before confidence comes curiosity. Before clarity comes questioning. Before we become someone new, we inevitably spend time no longer feeling like the person we once were.

Throughout my career, I have often said that growth does not happen inside our comfort zone. If we want to grow in character, capability or confidence, we have to be willing to step beyond what feels familiar. Discomfort is not the enemy of growth; it is often the environment in which growth begins.

More often than not, the moment we become uncomfortable is also the moment we become curious.

When certainty begins to dissolve, we ask better questions. We challenge assumptions that have quietly shaped our thinking for years. We become more open to perspectives we may once have dismissed. We start examining not only what we do, but why we do it. In many respects, curiosity is the mind's response to uncertainty.

The hidden value of liminal spaces lies in their ability to interrupt certainty. In doing so, they create the conditions in which curiosity becomes possible.

Had we remained comfortable, we may never have questioned the role that no longer fulfilled us, the relationship that no longer reflected who we were becoming, or the beliefs that had quietly shaped our decisions for years. Comfort has a remarkable way of preserving the status quo. Discomfort, on the other hand, invites us to reconsider it.

Maybe that is why the in-between feels so uncomfortable. It is not simply because we don't know what comes next. It is because our existing identity no longer provides the certainty it once did, while our future identity has not yet fully formed. We find ourselves standing between two versions of ourselves, belonging entirely to neither.

That is not failure, but rather, transition.

We live in a culture that celebrates certainty. We admire people who appear to know exactly where they are going, who make confident decisions and who move purposefully from one achievement to the next. Yet certainty has never been the prerequisite for growth.

Growth asks something far less comfortable of us. It asks us to tolerate ambiguity long enough for new perspectives to emerge. It asks us to loosen our grip on identities that no longer fit before another has fully taken shape. Above all, it asks us to remain curious when every instinct is telling us to seek certainty instead.

That is the real invitation of the in-between.

Not to rush towards clarity, but to recognise that some of life's most significant transformations begin long before they become visible.

That uncomfortable feeling you've been trying to escape may not be a sign that you're lost.

It may simply be what growth feels like before it has a name.