Why Feeling Stuck Is a Good Sign (The In Between Place)

Disclaimer & Intended Use: The ideas in this post reflect my personal experience with life changes, waiting seasons, and life ruts. This material is designed for personal support and structured reflection only. It is not clinical therapy, medical advice, or a treatment plan for clinical depression or mental health conditions.

TLDR for my fellow skimmers 💕

If you're a woman in her 30s that is stuck between your old life and your new one, here's the short version:

• The In Between Place is that dark gray, dreary limbo you land in while changing something, especially while waiting on things outside your control: job interviews, test results, new habits, big pivots.

• It has two common forms: the unlearning phase (your old life is still yours to live while the new one isn't here yet) and the waiting room (you've done everything you can and now it's out of your hands).

• It's not a sign of failure. It's proof you're actively changing something. Standing still never feels like this.

• Knowing what it is doesn't make it less annoying. It just means you know it's a signal you're going the right way.

• What to do when the overthinking that comes from a limbo is doing too much.

• And you're allowed to keep your reset private. You decide when you pop out.

What even is the In Between Place?

I define the In Between Place as that dark gray, dreary spot we end up in when we're changing something in our lives, and especially when we're waiting on things that are out of our control.

It shows up in two main ways:

• When you're trying to jump from where you are to where you want to be. Looking for a new job, interviewing, pivoting careers. (If work burnout is what pushed you toward the jump, I wrote a whole post on how it tries to ruin your reset.)

• When you're building a new habit. You're right here, not doing the habit yet, and you're trying to get to over there, doing it consistently. Except in between, you're unlearning things from your past and learning new things that get you to the goal. That gray stretch in the middle? That's the In Between Place.

Limbo is not a sign of failure

Here's something important to understand: the In Between Place is not a sign that you're failing. It's actually proof that you're trying to change, because if you're just doing the same thing day in and day out, you will never experience limbo. The fact that you're trying to change something means you have to pass through this place. It (unfortunately) comes with the territory.

How long it lasts depends on what you're waiting for: sometimes a few hours, sometimes weeks, sometimes months or beyond. But once I stopped seeing it as a sign that I was failing and started seeing it as "okay, I'm actively changing something, that's why I'm here," it lost its grip on me.

Now, let's be realistic: knowing what it is does not make it less annoying. It's annoying! You're allowed to call it annoying while also knowing it's a really positive sign. Both are true at the same time.

I like to look at it like this: this time sucks, so I'm going to make sure it's worth it.

Why we all want the journey to be a straight line

In my opinion, most of us want our life reset journey to be quick, easy, and seamless. A straight line instead of a jagged, unpredictable one. Because unpredictable journeys suck.

• You don't know what's coming, which makes it scary.

• You don't know how long it'll take.

• And a real life reset requires inner work and healing, which means heavy emotions come up, and sitting with those is mentally and physically exhausting.

Naturally, we don't want any of that.

So what do we do? We want the journey as seamless as possible. And honestly, that's exactly why most people skip the work. They want to jump straight to the glow-up part: oh, I go to the gym now, oh, look at my new wardrobe, look at me! Meanwhile nothing on the inside has changed, and they wonder why their life hasn't truly reset. (The full story of my own reset, inner work first, is right here.)

A linear journey sounds nice because there are no bumps, no detours, and no going back to re-heal the same thing five times. But that's not reality. And it's especially not reality when you're waiting on something outside your control. It might take longer than you wanted. You might hit obstacles you never would've predicted.

Expecting the road to be bumpy helps you more than expecting it to be smooth sailing, because you stop treating every bump like a catastrophe.

The unlearning phase limbo

One common way we get into limbo is when you're actively unlearning something from your past, and your new life isn't here yet. Your old life is still yours to live, day in and day out.

The problem with this space? It's frustrating as hell. It feels like something you want to escape, like you're trapped. Meanwhile, you know what you want and you're making moves toward it, maybe for the first time ever, which is really exciting and really scary at the same time.

So you've got this excitement underneath, and then this disappointment right on top of it. Because the thought in the back of your head is: "I just want to experience the dream life already, I don't want to deal with what's happening in reality. I don't want to deal with what my current version is dealing with. I'm doing the work, so why can't I just have it? Why do I have to wait? Why do I have to be in this in between spot, feeling trapped and frustrated and confused?"

It's confusing, knowing you're meant for better, actually making moves toward it, and expecting to be instantly rewarded with the new life. That's just not how it works. It's discouraging, because you have to keep putting energy into the life you're living while also putting energy into the one you're building. Two lives pulling from one energy source. It's mentally and physically exhausting, and I will never ask us to pretend otherwise.

But here's a softer way to see it: you're not stuck between an old you and a new you. The In Between Place isn't a waiting room for your old self to come back. It's a construction site for your next one!

The waiting room limbo

The second version of limbo is the waiting room kind: major exam results, school applications, job interviews, medical test results, etc. Anything where you've done everything you can and now you're just waiting on something completely outside your control.

Why is the waiting so mentally draining? Because you have zero control. You can't make the results come faster. You can't make them come back the way you want them to. You can't control how long it takes. And when we can't control something we desperately want to control, it makes us frustrated, sad, impatient, and a little helpless. We try to distract ourselves, but we know the thing is still pending. We feel antsy and restless the entire time.

And here's where it goes sideways: when we try to force control over something we can't change. Doing that long enough leads to mental exhaustion, then stress, then burnout. It can drain you until you start losing your spark, which is its own frustrating thing to lose while you're already in a limbo.

It can send you into a downward spiral mentally, emotionally, physically, all of it, and that spiral can land you in a funk. And a funk left sitting long enough can start to feel like something heavier than a funk. If that's where you are, please loop in a professional who can really help.

Trying to control the uncontrollable is the fastest way to drain your energy till you're empty. And from experience, you just don't want to do it.

When limbo starts getting in your head

So what do you do when the in between starts turning into overthinking, or you feel the funk creeping in?

I'll be honest about my own rock bottom moment: before I started my life reset journey, my mental energy was at zero, and I didn't have a game plan for that exact state of mind. I just started wherever made sense in the moment, and while I got a lot of work done, there was so much time, flailing, and energy I didn't have, that felt wasted in those first few months. I could've really used something for when my mind was overthinking, racing, and had nothing left to give.

And that's the state limbo puts you in: a good portion of the In Between Place is waiting on things you can't control, and that's when the spiral starts. You feel hopeless, helpless, completely out of control, and in a way, you kind of are.

That's why, 3 years after my major life reset, I created Stop the Spiral: How to Get Out of a Funk. It's the game plan that would've saved me so much time and effort back then, and still does today anytime I'm feeling off. The 2-step framework inside it is simple enough to use in any kind of funk. (Not sure which one you're in? My free 2-minute Funk Archetype quiz tells you!)

Stop the Spiral is 29 minutes, you can just listen while you do other things, and it's $27 with lifetime access, so it'll be there every time you need a reminder that you can and will get out of any funk life gets you in.

My advice? Keep your reset private

We've all seen the saying online: go private, work on yourself, and pop out six months later with a brand new life. I didn't purposely do it because of the saying, but I did end up doing it, and it benefited me in so many ways.

I didn't have people questioning what I was doing or why I was changing or how dare I change. I wasn't babysitting anybody's emotions about my own life. All my energy went into myself and my journey, and let me tell you, handling people's questions while you're in the messy middle is exhausting. You're asking yourself things like: What do I tell them? How much do I share? Going private removed the possibility of this conversation.

And there's something deeply satisfying about popping out as a person visibly closer to your goal, whenever you decide to. I came out probably 3 to 6 months before my journey felt complete, and that was fine, because I decided when to pop out.

In a season where so much is out of your control, deciding who knows and when is a little piece of control that's entirely yours. I think that's beautiful and super satisfying.

So, my advice for the women nervous about side-eyes and "who do you think you are?" comments: some people will be supportive and the others simply aren't your audience. If someone meets your change with criticism, you don't owe them another update about your journey. You can talk to them about other things, but your journey isn't their business anymore.

And if someone pushes up against your new boundaries, you don't have to explain yourself away. "That's my boundary now" is a complete sentence. If they can't handle it, you've learned something valuable about where to be careful with your energy, because this is a sensitive time and you don't need anything making it harder.

One more truth that helps: nobody will ever be more excited about your journey than you are. So the only people worth sharing it with are the ones who support you, or at minimum stay neutral.

How I handle limbo now

Nowadays, I understand that the In Between Place is just going to happen. It's part of a life lived with purpose, especially for someone insistent on improving herself. I know I'll pass through it over and over, so I enjoy the times when I'm not in limbo even more.

And when I'm about to start something new, something that will probably land me in limbo again? I remind myself ahead of time that this is probably coming. That way it's no surprise or disaster I have to respond to from a drained place.

Because here's the last thing to keep in mind: this too shall pass. I have never had a limbo last forever, and it might feel like it will, but it hasn't yet.

I acknowledge it's annoying. I acknowledge it will end. And I acknowledge that I'll be so much better on the other side of it, because of whatever work I do in the middle.

Now go be patient with yourself, lovely. You're in between because you're going somewhere and that alone is something to celebrate!

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The journey to a life that you truly love doesn't have to stop here!

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