I’m less interested in helping you become a better version of yourself.

I know that sounds strange coming from someone who has spent years talking about growth, transformation, deconditioning, self-awareness, and becoming more fully yourself.

But I think we need to have a more nuanced conversation about growth.

Because, what if you’re not another project to fix?  Self-development is important, sure but at the expense of what?

Growth Isn’t the Problem

Because growth is important. As human beings, we are literally wired for change. We are curious, adaptive beings. We learn, evolve, shed identities, develop new capacities, and move through different seasons of our lives.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting more.

But after coaching hundreds of clients over the past few years, the question I keep coming back to is: At the expense of what?

At what point does growth become another way of abandoning ourselves?

When Self-Improvement Becomes Another Project

We live in a culture that is exceptionally good at convincing us that there is always something to work on. Your sleep could be better. Your nervous system could be more regulated. Your hormones could be more balanced. Your morning routine could be more optimized. You could be eating differently, exercising differently, thinking differently, working differently.

There is always another podcast, book, protocol, supplement, or framework. Another thing you could learn about yourself. Another way you could improve.

And some of these things can genuinely be helpful. I actually love how accessible information has become over the past twenty years. Does anyone else remember having to go to the library and pull out encyclopedias for research? (Google was not a thing yet!)

I have incorporated so many useful things into my own life because of the information that is available to us now. There are habits I know support me. There are things I know help my body, my energy, and my capacity.

But I’m becoming much more interested in why I’m doing them.

There is a very different quality of energy between, “I’m doing this because I care about myself,” and, “I’m doing this because I need to fix myself.”

The behaviour/action might look exactly the same from the outside, but internally, they are completely different experiences.

One comes from cultivating a deeper relationship with ourselves. The other comes from rejection, and perhaps even shame.

The Difference Between Care and Fixing

I’ve experienced this in my own relationship with my body.

For a long time, whenever I gained weight, my approach could feel almost military. I would cut back on food, push myself harder, exercise more, and try to exert enough discipline that my body would eventually do what I wanted it to do🙈.

And I could convince myself that this was simply what it meant to be committed.

But underneath it, there was often something much harsher happening. I was, in many ways, treating my body like a problem to solve or that gaining weight was a problem or lack of care from my part (I know, women’s image have also been deeply conditioned)

It took me time to recognize how much of that approach was rooted in punishment rather than care.

I still have things I want to understand about my body. I still have habits that support me, and I still care about feeling strong, energized, and well in my body.

But the questions I’m asking now are different.

How can I love and support this body?

What does this body actually need?

What weight have I become attached to, and why?

And perhaps most importantly, how do I actually feel?

Those questions create an entirely different relationship with my body and sense of self.

This kind of shift is what makes growth sustainable because after all, growth itself isn’t the problem.

The question is whether our desire for change is coming from a deeper relationship with ourselves, or from the belief that who we are right now is somehow unacceptable.

What Happens When We Enter a Transition?

This difference, in being able to discern becomes even more important when we enter periods of transition.

Transitions have a way of shaking us. They show us whether the foundations we’ve built are strong enough to hold us or whether they are asking to be updated.

They can make us deeply uncomfortable with ourselves because the old systems and ways of being aren’t quite working anymore, but the new thing hasn’t fully taken shape.

You don’t know what the next chapter looks like.

You can feel something changing, but you can’t necessarily name it yet.

And when we’re uncomfortable with that uncertainty, our instinct can be to do something. Anything, in order to take some sort of control and manage that out-of-control feeling.

Make the plan. Figure out the next five steps. Find the answer. Consume more information. Ask someone else what they think. Turn the uncertainty into a problem that needs to be solved.

Trust me, I understand this instinct so deeply.

But sometimes that urgency can disconnect us from ourselves.

When the Search for Clarity Takes Us Further Away

When every decision is being made from the fear of what might happen if we don’t figure it out, we’re no longer really listening.

We’re managing. We’re controlling. We’re trying to make ourselves safe by predicting the future.

It actually reminds me of one of my favourite quotes by Glennon Doyle:

“I quit spending my life trying to control myself and began to trust myself. We only control what we don’t trust. We can either control our selves or love our selves, but we can’t do both. Love is the opposite of control. Love demands trust.”

I share this quote all the time because I think it speaks to something much deeper than control but our relationship to ourselves. I used to think that if I could intellectualize my feelings enough, if I could understand exactly why I was feeling something, then I would be able to solve it.

I could analyze it, find the pattern, understand where it came from and why. And then, surely, I wouldn’t have to feel it anymore!

What I’ve learned (thanks to my therapist) is that sometimes what our emotions need from us is much simpler, and also much harder depending on your capacity.

Feelings need to be felt.
They need space.

They need to move through us without immediately being turned into a problem that requires an explanation.

And I think this is true of so much of our lives. When we’re going through a deep period of untangling, the harder we push for clarity, the further away from ourselves we can actually get.

Entering the Void

This is one of the reasons I’ve become so interested in the space I call the Void.

The Void is the in-between. It’s the space where something old is falling away, but something new hasn’t fully arrived yet.

And culturally, we don’t tend to love this space. At least, not in Western culture.

We want to know what’s next. We want a plan along with a measurable outcome. We want to turn uncertainty into action as quickly as possible.

But what if there are seasons where the most powerful thing you can do is not immediately turn yourself into a project?

What if you let yourself be where you are long enough to actually hear what is underneath?

What If You Stopped Asking What You Should Do?

What if you stopped asking, “What should I do?” and started asking, “What is here?”

What keeps returning? What do I actually want?
What am I afraid will happen if I stop pushing?

What would I choose if I trusted myself to meet whatever comes next?

These questions create a very different kind of movement, it’s not passive nor is it about giving up. And it certainly isn’t about abandoning growth. But this is growth that isn’t rooted in self-rejection or shame.

Because the goal isn’t to stop changing. It’s to be able to change without abandoning ourselves in the process.

To be able to grow from wholeness rather than constantly trying to earn our way into it.

To be able to care for ourselves without making ourselves wrong.

To be able to want more without deciding that what already exists is insufficient.

A Different Kind of Growth

And perhaps that is one of the deeper invitations of deconditioning: not to become a better or a different version of yourself, but to become less afraid of being yourself.

To peel back enough of what you’ve inherited, absorbed, and learned to perform that you can begin to recognize the difference between what is actually yours and what you were simply taught to want.

That’s the kind of growth I’m obsessed with.

And perhaps, sometimes, growth looks less like becoming more, and more like finally having enough space to come home to what was already there.

If You’re in This Kind of Season

If these words resonated and you’re looking for support as you move through a season of transition, uncertainty, or deeper untangling, maybe Into the Void is for you.