Riding The Change

- Anindita Ghosh

There’s nothing that drives home the unpredictability of life like a sudden disturbance that stirs up a storm in your placid, happy little existence. For instance, when Delhi-based illustrator Radhika Sharma’s husband left her for another woman one fine day, she was too baffled by the turn of events to even grieve for a relationship lost. “I must have been blind not to see the signs. So, when he suddenly announced that he was in love with an office colleague and would be moving out to be with her, my first reaction was disbelief followed by shock. By the time I got my wits together, he had already packed and left. The sheer unexpected nature of his announcement left me totally unprepared to deal with it,” she says.

Coping with life-changing events like divorce, unemployment, disability, chronic illness, or, perhaps, the loss of a dear one is so hard because they catch us off-guard. But some people take much longer to come to terms with these upheavals because they are resistant to change.

According to Delhi-based relationships counsellor and wellness expert Dr Gitanjali Sharma, people like this don’t want to get out of a comfort zone, even if the change is a positive one. “Any change in our lives or our routines is taxing for the mind because there are so many fears associated with it: fear of the unknown, of the future, of novelty, of loss… Adjusting to something new with its set of challenges is not easy. It requires us to tune our mind and acquire new tools and resources,” says Dr Sharma.