When Growth Feels Like Grief: The Hidden Losses of Healing
The idea for this week’s post came from a quiet conversation during a coaching session. A client sat across from me, hands folded in her lap, and said something I’ve heard too many times to count:
“I know I need to change. But what if that means losing everyone I love?”
Her words echoed something ancient in me. Because I’ve heard it before from friends, from students, and from the small voice inside myself in moments of transformation. This fear isn’t irrational, it’s relational. It’s rooted in how we’ve learned to bond and belong. Our earliest attachment patterns, shaped by caregivers and environments, influence not just how we navigate relationships, but how we face change. If you developed an anxious attachment style, your nervous system may interpret change as abandonment. If you lean avoidant, change might stir fears of vulnerability and dependence. Even a secure attachment doesn’t make grief vanish, it simply helps you move through it with more trust. So, it’s not just about making a change. It’s about untangling the invisible threads that tie your identity, safety, and connection to what you’ve always known.
We talk so much about growth as a good thing but we rarely talk about the grief that tags along. How we process this grief often traces back to our earliest attachment patterns. If you have an anxious attachment style, grief might surface as overwhelming panic or fear of being left behind. If you're more avoidant, you might push the grief aside, convincing yourself it doesn't matter. Those with fearful-avoidant styles may swing between desperately clinging to what's familiar and pushing it away out of fear. Even those with secure attachments will feel the sting of loss, just perhaps with more tools to move through it. Understanding your attachment style can help you meet your grief with greater compassion and self-awareness, rather than shame or judgment. This grief isn't proof that you're failing. It's proof that you're feeling and that’s part of the path forward.
Real growth will cost you. And often, the price isn’t just effort or time. It’s identity. It’s community. It’s roles you once played and people you once trusted. These roles and relationships were often shaped through the lens of attachment, ways you learned to stay connected and safe in your early environment. If your identity was built around meeting the needs of others to avoid conflict or abandonment, changing that identity might feel like betrayal. If your sense of belonging was tied to self-sufficiency and emotional distance, opening up might feel threatening. This is why letting go can feel like standing at the edge of a cliff. You're not just releasing patterns; you're confronting the nervous system’s deeply embedded belief that change equals danger. But it doesn't. It equals possibility.
This is the grief we don’t talk about but we should.
What You May Be Grieving
We tend to associate grief with death or separation. But grief is much more subtle and ever-present during a healing journey. Here are some of the hidden losses that surface:
1. Old Identities:
These are the masks we wore to survive. Often shaped by our attachment styles (The Attachment Project, 2025) and early family dynamics, these identities offered protection, praise, or a sense of stability in an otherwise chaotic world.
The fixer: Always managing the chaos. Maybe you learned that if you solved everyone's problems, you wouldn’t be the source of them. Real-life example: The child who soothed arguments between parents becomes the adult who over functions in every relationship.
The strong one: Never allowed to fall apart. This might have started with praise for being “mature for your age,” which became a cage where vulnerability felt like failure.
The helper: Defined by what you do for others. Often rooted in a fear that love must be earned through sacrifice. This identity may stem from an anxious attachment style, where keeping others happy felt essential to avoid abandonment.
The invisible one: Kept small to stay safe. Perhaps the best way to survive was to disappear into the background. Avoidant attachment can often fuel this role. Better to rely on no one than risk being disappointed.
These identities were never flaws. They were strategies. But healing asks: Can you thank them for what they offered, and then let them rest.
2. Familiar Dynamics:
These are the relationship patterns and emotional blueprints we inherited from our earliest environments. They include the roles we played, the unspoken rules we followed, and the ways we kept ourselves safe. This is often at the cost of our authenticity. For example, maybe you learned to calm everyone down during conflict to avoid being a target. That same instinct might now show up in your adult relationships as people-pleasing or emotional suppression. Maybe you grew up in chaos and felt most alive in intensity so now, calmness feels unsettling. These familiar dynamics can reappear in friendships, romantic partnerships, and even in how we relate to institutions like work or school. When we begin to heal, we start to notice how these dynamics no longer serve us. But releasing them can feel like losing a map we've always used, even if it led us in circles.
Healing invites us to replace these survival strategies with more conscious choices. But first, we must name them. Not to shame ourselves, but to understand them. Because when you can see the pattern, you can choose something new. The chaos you were used to
The trauma bonds you mistook for love
The emotional caretaking that made you feel needed
3. Family Roles (Wegscheider, 1981):
We often adopt specific roles in a dysfunctional family system. These roles are survival strategies, ways to navigate emotional minefields, reduce harm, or secure love and attention. While they helped us cope, they can become barriers to growth in adulthood. Let’s define a few of the most common roles:
The Golden Child: Always praised and held up as the ideal. In adulthood, this role often leads to perfectionism, people-pleasing, and a fragile sense of worth tied to achievement.
The Hero: The overachiever whose success hides family dysfunction. Heroes tend to carry immense pressure, burnout easily, and have difficulty asking for help.
The Mascot: The comedian or entertainer who deflects pain through humor. In adulthood, this can lead to emotional avoidance and a struggle to be taken seriously.
The Identified Patient / Black Sheep: Blamed for the family’s problems and often the truth-teller. This role can lead to shame, isolation, but also deep self-awareness.
The Lost Child: Quiet, withdrawn, and overlooked. Often struggles with self-worth, decision-making, and feeling unseen in adulthood.
The Enabler / Caretaker: Maintains appearances and smooths over dysfunction. Becomes overly responsible and self-sacrificing, often putting others' needs far above their own.
The Parentified Child: Took on adult responsibilities too soon. May struggle with boundaries and feel compelled to rescue or manage others.
These roles can shift over time and overlap, but they all share a common goal: emotional survival. Healing asks us to name these roles, understand their origins, and gently begin to step out of them, without shame. Because these roles were never your whole identity. They were your training wheels. Now it’s time to learn how to ride without them. often adopt specific roles in a dysfunctional family system. These include:
The golden child: Seen as the family’s pride. In adulthood, may struggle with perfectionism and external validation.
The hero: Overachiever who masks dysfunction. Often burned out.
The mascot: Uses humor to deflect pain. Can feel unseen or trivialized.
The identified patient/black sheep: The scapegoat for family issues. Often the truth-teller.
The lost child: Quiet, overlooked. Tends to struggle with identity and direction.
The enabler/caretaker: Holds the family together, often at their own expense.
The parentified child: Took on adult responsibilities too early. Often drawn to dysfunctional relationships later in life.
4. Coping Mechanisms: We all develop coping mechanisms to manage discomfort, navigate trauma, and survive painful or unstable environments. At the time, these patterns likely served an important purpose. They helped you stay connected, avoid punishment, reduce anxiety, or make sense of chaos. But what protects us as children can restrict us as adults.
Common examples include:
Perfectionism: If being flawless was your way to earn love or avoid criticism, you may now hold yourself to impossible standards.
Overworking: A constant hustle might have helped you feel useful or kept you from sitting with emotional pain, but it can lead to burnout and emotional disconnection.
Emotional withdrawal: If showing emotions led to rejection or ridicule, you may have learned to shut down or numb out rather than risk vulnerability.
Self-deprecation as humor: Laughing at yourself before others can was a way to gain control over pain but it can mask deeper wounds and reinforce low self-worth.
These mechanisms don’t disappear just because we want to heal. They feel familiar. They work until they don’t. Healing requires us to gently recognize when these habits no longer serve us. You may feel exposed without them, or unsure how to navigate life without your usual strategies. That’s normal. Letting go of these patterns might feel like losing a part of yourself, but in truth, it's making room for a version of you who doesn't need armor to feel safe. Perfectionism
Overworking
Emotional withdrawal
Self-deprecation passed off as humor
These patterns were adaptive once. They protected you. But now they are in the way. And letting go of them feels like stepping off a cliff without a safety net.
Healing isn't just about what you gain. It's about who you're no longer willing to be.
Loyalty vs. Liberation
Here’s the tricky part: what if the things you need to let go of are tied to the people you love?
There’s a reason we stay stuck. Sometimes it’s not the change we’re afraid of. It’s the disloyalty it might imply.
If I speak up, will I betray my family?
If I stop shrinking, will I outgrow my friends?
If I heal, will I still belong?
These aren’t abstract questions. These are the quiet battles that play out in real life. Every time you feel guilty for choosing rest or doubt your worth because you’re not following the path someone else laid out for you.
This is where metaphor meets reality.
We’ve all heard about the crabs in a barrel, popularized by Booker T. Washington in his 1901 book, “Up From Slavery”. When one crab tries to climb out, the others pull it back, not out of malice, but because that’s what’s familiar. Familiarity often masquerades as love, even when it’s stifling. Now compare that to the capuchin monkeys from a well known study (Barnes et al., 2008). One monkey could reach a food bowl, while the other couldn’t. The first monkey pulled the bowl closer, not for its own benefit, but to help the other. That’s the power of unconditional support. Not “I’ll love you if you stay the same,” but “I’ll love you even as you grow.”
So ask yourself:
Are you surrounded by crabs or capuchins?
Are the people around you pulling you down or pulling for you?
I’ve lived this. My own liberation came when I stopped being loyal to the version of me my family wanted. My father had a clear vision of how I should live, one based on his values, not mine. My mother, my siblings, and everyone seemed to follow a familiar script. I was the one who stepped out of that mold. For a long time, that felt like betrayal. I worried I was selfish, ungrateful, and wrong.
But here’s what I’ve learned:
Living according to someone else’s vision isn’t loyalty. It’s self-abandonment.
Since choosing my own path, I’ve earned degrees, launched a business, found purpose, and am now pursuing a PhD. Things I never could’ve done if I stayed small to keep the peace.
So now it’s your turn.
Look at your life.
What version of you are you being loyal to?
Who are you still trying to please?
What would happen if you released that loyalty and chose liberation?
This isn’t about cutting ties recklessly. It’s about cutting cords consciously with love, truth, and courage. Because loyalty that costs you your authenticity isn't loyalty. It’s bondage dressed as belonging and you deserve more than that.
You’re Not Failing, You’re Feeling
If healing feels hard, that’s not a sign that you’re failing. It’s a sign that you’re feeling. And feeling…is a lot. Especially if you’ve spent years building up emotional scar tissue through numbing, distraction, over-functioning, or hiding parts of yourself to survive. These protective strategies become deeply woven into the nervous system. When we begin to peel them back, even gently, the rawness underneath can be disorienting.
From an Ayurvedic perspective, this disorientation is not weakness. It’s evidence of movement, of internal shifts in the flow of prana (life force) and manas (the mind). Change challenges the mind-body system, especially when it's been locked in compensatory patterns for years.
Different doshic imbalances show up in different ways during times of transition:
Vata (air + space) resists routine but desperately needs grounding. When change accelerates, Vata individuals may feel anxious, scattered, or overwhelmed. Their minds may race with "what-ifs," and their bodies may respond with digestive upset, fatigue, or insomnia.
Pitta (fire + water) craves structure and control. The loss of a role, identity, or plan can spark irritability, anger, or physical inflammation. The Pitta mind resists surrender, it wants to solve the discomfort. But healing is not a problem to be solved. It's a process to be supported.
Kapha (earth + water) clings to familiarity and routine. Letting go of people, coping mechanisms, or patterns, even dysfunctional ones, can trigger depression, stagnation, or numbness. Kapha may say, “I’m fine,” but underneath is a heaviness that feels immovable.
What we call "resistance to change" is often just the nervous system trying to protect you from perceived danger. Not because growth is unsafe but because difference requires energy. Energy your body isn’t used to allocating toward uncertainty. This is where Ayurveda and neuroscience speak the same language: The unfamiliar requires more processing power. And if you’re already tired, overwhelmed, or emotionally threadbare, even beneficial change can feel like a threat. So let’s flip the script.
When you feel the urge to run, shut down, or control every detail…pause.
Ask yourself: What am I suppressing to avoid growing?
Because according to Maharishi AyurVeda, the single greatest cause of imbalance is the suppression of natural urges. This doesn’t just mean holding back a sneeze or skipping a meal. It means:
repressing emotions.
Stifling your voice.
Pretending you're okay when you're not
Forcing yourself to fit where you no longer belong
Each time we deny our natural drive to grow, we distort the flow of prana and increase ama, the toxins that accumulate from unprocessed experiences.
But there’s good news: Your nature is to grow.
As Maharishi taught, “The nature of life is to grow.” Growth is not something you must force. It’s something you must allow.
Healing doesn’t ask you to push harder. It asks you to feel what you’ve been avoiding and trust that what emerges from that space is not a breakdown but a beginning.
So let the grief rise.
Let the feelings come.
Let the system shake a little as it reorganizes around a new truth.
You're not regressing, you're realigning and that is sacred work.
IV. Making Peace with Letting Go
We think healing means being free of pain. But often it means honoring what pain protected us from. It means grieving the parts of our lives that kept us safe, even when they held us back. You are allowed to grieve the old version of you. You are allowed to miss the familiar. You are still allowed to move forward.
You can love what was and still choose what’s next.
This is like the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He’s standing at the edge of a massive chasm, desperate to get to the other side. There is no visible bridge. Just empty air. But the path forward requires a leap of faith. He steps and only then does the hidden bridge appear beneath his feet.
That’s what letting go feels like. You may not see the path but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Reflection Activity: Honoring the Grief of Growth
Name what you’re grieving. Is it a role? A relationship? A coping mechanism?
Ask yourself: What purpose did it serve? How did it help you survive?
Acknowledge your feelings. Sadness? Guilt? Anger? All are welcome.
If your best friend were grieving this, what would you say to her? Write it down.
Now say that to yourself. Out loud.
Finally, place your hand over your heart and say:
Thank you for what you were. I honor your role in my survival. I choose now to grow.
Healing doesn’t mean you don’t look back. It means you learn to keep walking anyway. Whatever you’re leaving behind, you’re allowed to grieve it. You’re allowed to miss it. And you’re still allowed to outgrow it. Even the most beautiful cage is still a cage. You don’t owe your loyalty to anything that asks you to abandon yourself. Healing will always feel like stepping into the unknown. But here’s the secret: you’re not stepping into nothing. You’re stepping into yourself. The path is there even if you can’t see it yet. And with every step, the ground rises up to meet you.
References
Barnes, J. L., Hill, T., Langer, M., Martinez, M., & Santos, L. R. (2008). Helping behaviour and regard for others in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Biology Letters, 4(6), 638–640. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2008.0410
The Attachment Project. (2025, May 26). The Four Attachment Styles: How They Form and How to Recognize Them. https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/four-attachment-styles/
Washington, B. T. (1901). Up from slavery: An autobiography. Doubleday, Page & Co.
Wegscheider, S. (1981). Another Chance: Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books. pp. 85-88.
