The Liminal Zone: Why feeling lost between an old identity and who you’re becoming is exactly where you need to be

If you're reading this, chances are you're somewhere between worlds. Feeling Lost. Feeling Stuck. Not quite who you used to be, but not yet clear on who you're becoming. You might have left a corporate role without a clear plan, started questioning the success formula you've been following, or simply woken up one day realizing the life you've built doesn't feel like yours anymore.

If you're like most high-achievers, this in-between space feels deeply uncomfortable … maybe even terrifying.

Here's what nobody tells you .. this discomfort isn't a sign you've made a mistake. It's a sign you're doing something profoundly important. Welcome to the liminal zone!

What Is the Liminal Zone?

The term "liminal" comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. Anthropologist Victor Turner used it to describe the transitional phase in rites of passage; that uncertain middle ground between leaving one identity and fully stepping into another.

In traditional cultures, this phase was understood, honoured, and guided. Young people undergoing initiation rites knew they were supposed to feel disoriented. The tribe held space for this transformation.

In modern society? We've lost the container for transition. We're expected to pivot seamlessly from one role to another, one career to the next, one version of ourselves to the upgraded model... preferably over a weekend, definitely without disrupting productivity.

But here's the reality: meaningful transformation doesn't work that way.

When you leave a long-held identity (corporate professional, industry expert, the reliable one, the high-achiever) you enter a liminal space. You've separated from the familiar, but you haven't yet integrated into the new. You're in “the in-between, some might say “the upside-down”. To throw-in a gaming metaphor, you’re about to up-level or change characters mid-game.

And in 2025, with AI fundamentally reshaping the workforce and rewriting the rules of value creation, more people are being thrust into this liminal zone whether they chose it or not… and this is set to continue at a fast pace in the first few months of 2026 and subsequent years.

Why You Can't Just "Talk Yourself" Into a New Identity

Here's where most transformation approaches get it wrong: they treat identity like a costume you can simply change.

Update your LinkedIn headline. Print new business cards. Adopt the morning routine of successful entrepreneurs. Repeat affirmations about being confident and capable. Dress the part. etc. etc.

These things aren't wrong; they're just incomplete.

Identity isn't a label you apply. It's a complex architecture of subconscious and unconscious beliefs built over decades.

 

Your current identity includes deeply embedded programming about:

• What's safe and what's dangerous
• What you're capable of and what's beyond you
• What you deserve and what's reserved for "other people"
• How to earn love, respect, and belonging
• What success looks like and what failure means
• Who you can trust and where threats exist

These beliefs weren't formed through logical or rational decision-making. They were installed during moments of emotional intensity: childhood experiences, formative relationships, pivotal successes and failures, cultural conditioning, family dynamics. Your subconscious absorbed them as survival instructions.

So when you try to step into a new identity (entrepreneur instead of employee, visible leader instead of behind-the-scenes contributor, premium service provider instead of hourly worker) you're not just changing a title.

You're asking your nervous system to operate in ways that contradict its core programming about what keeps you safe.

 

This is why positive thinking alone doesn't work. You can consciously tell yourself "I'm a successful business owner" while your subconscious is screaming "Visibility is dangerous, failure means rejection, asking for money makes you selfish, success will isolate you from the people you love."

The conscious mind might be ready for the new identity. But until the subconscious rewiring happens, you'll find yourself repeating self-sabotaging patterns you can't quite explain: procrastinating on the important work, undercharging, over-delivering to prove your worth, staying small to stay safe.

The liminal zone is where this conflict becomes impossible to ignore.

The AI Catalyst: Why the Liminal Zone Is Becoming Unavoidable

Let's address the elephant in the algorithm: AI is forcing a collective rite of passage, a revolutionary level transition phase if you will. For decades, professional identity was largely stable. You trained for a role, built expertise, established your value, climbed the ladder. The formula was predictable, even if it didn't always feel fulfilling. AI has shattered that predictability.

Tasks that once required years of training can now be automated. Entire job categories are being reimagined. The skills that made you valuable five years ago might be commoditized by next quarter. And while AI creates extraordinary opportunities, it also triggers a very human crisis: Who am I if my expertise can be replicated by a machine?

This isn't just about job security. It's about identity security.

The professionals I’ve spoken to over the past few years are of course concerned about being unemployed; but more so they're worried about becoming irrelevant. There’s a quiet realisation that the external markers of success (title, salary, recognition) were propping up an identity that never quite fit in the first place.

AI isn't just disrupting industries. It's disrupting the collective agreements about what makes someone valuable, successful, and worthy. And that disruption is pushing people into the liminal zone en-masse.

The question isn't whether you'll face this transition. The question is: How will you navigate it?

The Liminal Zone Exists at Every Scale

Here's something most people don't realize: the liminal zone isn't just about major life transitions.

Yes, it shows up dramatically during divorce, job loss, relocation, illness, starting a business, or any significant identity shift. These are the big thresholds that demand conscious navigation.

But liminal zones exist everywhere:

Daily transitions:

• The shift from work mode to home mode (ever snap at your partner because you brought work stress home?)
• Moving from focused work to collaborative meetings (notice how it takes time to recalibrate?)
• The transition from waking to fully present (how many people reach for their phone to avoid the discomfort of emerging into consciousness?)

Seasonal transitions:

• The end of summer holidays returning to work routines
• The shift from busy season to downtime (ever feel guilty or lost when you finally have space to rest?)
• Moving between project intensity and recovery phases

Relational transitions:

• Switching between family dynamics, colleague relationships, friendships, romantic partnership
• The different versions of "You" that show up in different contexts
• The version of yourself with your parents vs. your peers vs. your team

Most people navigate these micro-transitions unconsciously, experiencing them as stress, fragmentation, or exhaustion without understanding what's actually happening.

You're constantly crossing thresholds between different aspects of identity... and how you navigate these smaller liminal zones directly impacts your capacity for the bigger ones. Some call it adaptability, others resilience or grit… no matter the label it’s about the ‘self’ you bring to the fore at the time.

The professional who struggles to shift from work mode to present parent isn't just "bad at work-life balance." They're experiencing a micro-liminal zone and choosing (often unconsciously) to stay in the familiar work identity because stepping fully into the parent identity feels disorienting.

The entrepreneur who can't relax during downtime isn't just a workaholic. They're avoiding the liminal space between "productive" and "at rest" because their identity is so deeply tied to ‘doing the things’, that ‘being present’ becomes destabilizing.

The patterns you run in daily transitions is a glimpse of how you'll show up in major ones.

The Architecture of Fragmentation

This brings us to something critical: how most people manage multiple identities.

Early in life and career, compartmentalization is often a necessary survival strategy. You learn to be one person at work, another at home, another with friends, another with family. You develop different personas for different contexts.

This isn't wrong; it's adaptive.

When you don't yet know who you truly are, when you're still figuring out what's safe to reveal where, when the cost of authenticity feels too high, compartmentalization protects you. It allows you to function in systems that might not accept the full version of you.

The ambitious corporate employee learns not to bring their creative, questioning side to rigid structures. The entrepreneur with traditional family learns not to mention their unconventional path at holiday dinners. The sensitive leader learns to armour up in professional settings.

These separations serve a purpose... until they don't.

What starts as protection becomes prison.

The cost of maintaining separate identities compounds over time:

Energetic drain: Managing multiple personas is exhausting. You're constantly monitoring which version to deploy, what's safe to reveal, what needs to stay hidden.

Internal confusion: When you're a different person in different contexts, which one is real? The disorientation isn't just philosophical; it creates genuine uncertainty about your own preferences, values, and desires.

Stress accumulation: Your nervous system registers the constant shifting as low-grade threat. You can't fully relax because you're always calibrating to context.

Decision paralysis: When different identities want different things, how do you choose? The internal conflict becomes debilitating.

Relationship superficiality: When people only know fragments of you, genuine connection can become impossible. You're surrounded by people but feel fundamentally alone.

Some people consciously choose to maintain separation long-term, and that's a valid choice. But it's important to understand the trade-offs: sustained compartmentalization requires ongoing energy management, limits the depth of relationships, and can create an underlying sense of fragmentation that shows up as chronic stress, anxiety, or a persistent feeling of "something's missing."

The liminal zone often arrives when this strategy stops working.

You've spent years managing separate identities, and suddenly the effort becomes unbearable. Or you achieve the external success in one identity but realize it feels hollow. Or a major life event forces integration whether you're ready or not.

This is when the deeper work of integration becomes unavoidable.

Integration doesn't mean being identical in every context; you'll naturally emphasize different aspects of yourself depending on the situation. But it means those aspects are coherent expressions of a consistent core rather than fragmented personas protecting against perceived threats.

The integrated person doesn't bring the same energy to a client call and their child's bedtime, but both expressions come from the same authentic self. There's no jarring shift, no recovery time needed, no sense of performing ‘a role’ for others benefit.

This integration is the deeper work to move through the liminal zone... and it's what most people are actually longing for when they talk about "finding themselves." … Eat, Pray, Love comes to mind as an exaggerated version, which is probably why it resonated with so many.

Two Primary Paths Through the Liminal Zone

When faced with the discomfort of transition (whether a major life change or the daily threshold between identities) humans typically respond somewhere on the continuum between these two ways…

Path One: The Reactivity Response

This is what most busy, high-achieving professionals default to; because it's what we've been conditioned to do.

The markers of this path:

• Immediately filling the space with action, courses, certifications, or new projects
• Jumping into the next opportunity before fully processing why the last one didn't work
• Staying frantically busy to avoid feeling the uncertainty
• Seeking external validation constantly (What should I do? What would you do?)
• Consuming endless content without implementing anything
• Experiencing physical symptoms: insomnia, anxiety, digestive issues, tension
• Relationship strain as you become irritable, withdrawn, or controlling
• Feeling perpetually behind, like everyone else has it figured out except you
• Rushing through daily transitions without presence (phone scrolling, mental checklists, irritability)

This path creates what I call "liminal limbo"; you're in transition, but you're not transforming. You're just spinning faster in the same patterns that brought you here in the first place.

The reactivity response is driven by a nervous system in survival mode. Your subconscious interprets the unknown as dangerous, so it activates stress responses designed to get you back to familiar ground as quickly as possible.

The problem? The familiar ground is no longer an option or exactly what you're trying to leave.

Path Two: The Conscious Navigation Response

This path requires something countercultural: choosing how you respond rather than defaulting to automated reactions.

The markers of this path:

• Creating intentional space to observe what's actually happening internally
• Getting curious about the discomfort instead of trying to eliminate it immediately
• Questioning the beliefs driving your choices (not just the choices themselves)
• Allowing conflicting feelings to coexist without needing resolution right away
• Noticing patterns without judgment
• Seeking support that helps you access your own wisdom rather than outsourcing decisions
• Experiencing moments of clarity, even if brief
• Feeling more grounded even while the external situation remains uncertain
• Bringing awareness to daily transitions instead of rushing through them

This path doesn't eliminate discomfort, but it transforms your relationship with it. Instead of treating uncertainty as a problem to fix, you recognize it as the space where transformation actually occurs.

Notice I'm not saying some people "can navigate" and others "can't." Everyone has the capacity. The difference is in how you choose to meet the threshold; reactively or consciously, automatically or with awareness.

This is where disconnecting from the collective becomes essential.

Why You Must Disconnect from the Collective

The collective will be deeply uncomfortable with your transformation.

I don't mean this conspiratorially. I mean it systemically.

The collective (societal norms, family expectations, professional standards, social media echo chambers, the algorithms showing you what everyone else is doing) has a vested interest in you staying predictable. When you deviate from the script, it creates discomfort for everyone who's still following it.

Your career change threatens your former colleagues' certainty about their own choices.

Your business launch challenges your family's belief that security comes from a pay-check.

Your refusal to hustle triggers your entrepreneur friends who've built their identity around grinding.

Your decision to address the subconscious blocks (not just learn more tactics) confronts an entire industry built on surface-level solutions.

The collective wants you to make a decision quickly so the discomfort of uncertainty can end.

But rushing through the liminal zone means you'll likely recreate the same patterns in a new container.

You'll leave corporate to build a business that replicates corporate stress. You'll pivot careers but bring the same perfectionism. You'll embrace AI tools but apply them to an outdated model of success. You'll integrate some parts of yourself while still keeping others carefully hidden or repressed.

Disconnecting from the collective doesn't mean becoming a hermit or rejecting all external input.

It means: Creating enough space to hear your own signal through the noise.

This is where most people get stuck; not because they don't know what to do, but because they can't hear their own knowing over the volume of everyone else's opinions, expectations, and fears.

The Subconscious Architecture of Your Identity

Your resistance to change isn't about willpower, motivation, or discipline. It's about survival programming.

Every behaviour, belief, and pattern you have (even the ones that no longer serve you) was created by your subconscious to keep you safe. At some point in your life, that perfectionism protected you. That people-pleasing earned you love. That overworking proved your worth... then set the bar higher in the process. That fear of visibility saved you from criticism. That compartmentalization allowed you to function in incompatible contexts.

Your subconscious doesn't care if you're happy. It cares if you're alive.

So when you try to make a significant change (leave a career, start a business, step into visibility, charge what you're worth, show up authentically across all contexts) your subconscious scans for danger. And if the new path triggers any of the old survival programming, it will sabotage your efforts.

Not because you're broken. Because it's doing its job.

The liminal zone brings all of this programming to the surface.

That's why it's so uncomfortable. You're not just choosing a new career; you're confronting every belief you've ever had about safety, worthiness, success, and belonging. You're not just trying to "be yourself"; you're questioning which parts of yourself are actually you and which are protective adaptations you've outgrown.

This is actually the gift. Your body doesn’t lie, if you’re paying attention there will have been clues.

What Noticing Your Patterns Actually Looks Like

So what does conscious navigation actually involve?

It starts with observation without immediate action.

In the liminal zone, your most important work isn't doing; it's noticing. And not just noticing the big things. Noticing the small, repeated patterns that reveal your subconscious programming:

In major transitions, notice:

• What thoughts arise when you consider the change you want? (Not just surface thoughts... the automatic assumptions underneath)
• What physical sensations show up in your body when you think about taking action? (Tightness, nausea, excitement, numbness)
• What stories do you immediately tell yourself about what's possible for you? (And whose voice is actually speaking those stories?)
• Which identity feels most threatened by this change? (The professional? The reliable one? The successful person? The good daughter/son?)

In daily transitions, notice:

• How do you move from one context to another? (Abruptly? With transition rituals? Carrying the previous energy forward?)
• What happens in your body when you cross a threshold? (Home to work, focused to collaborative, awake to engaged)
• Which identities feel in conflict with each other? (The ambitious professional vs. the present parent? The creative vs. the pragmatist?)
• What do you do to manage the discomfort of shifting? (Stay busy? Scroll? Create drama? Seek reassurance?)

When you notice patterns without immediately trying to fix them, something shifts.

You begin to see that these aren't random behaviours; they're systematic responses your subconscious developed to keep you safe according to old programming. And once you see the pattern clearly, it loses some of its automatic power over you.

This is fundamentally different from trying to "think positive" or "change your mindset." You're not overriding the programming; you're becoming aware of it. And awareness is the first step toward rewiring.

When Support Accelerates Everything

You can absolutely navigate the liminal zone on your own with awareness and intention. Many people do.

But here's what I've observed after working with professionals and business owners in transition phases... DIY works until it hits the layers your conscious mind can't access alone.

You can journal your way to insights. You can meditate... which alleviates some of the discomfort and stress responses. You can read books and take courses. You can practice presence in daily transitions.

And then you hit programming that's buried so deep, protected so carefully, rationalised so thoroughly, that you can't see it from inside your own perspective.

This is where coaching and hypnotherapy can create exponential results.

Coaching can helps you:

• See the patterns you can't see from inside them
• Challenge the beliefs you didn't know you believed
• Distinguish between your actual desires and inherited expectations
• Understand which aspects of compartmentalization serve you and which drain you
• Create strategies that account for your actual wiring, not just generic formulas
• Stay accountable to your own knowing when the collective gets loud
• Navigate the integration of fragmented identities with practical support

Hypnotherapy (RTT and QHHT) helps you:

• Access the subconscious programming running beneath your conscious awareness
• Identify the root cause of patterns, not just manage symptoms
• Understand when and why your survival strategies were created
• Rewrite beliefs at the level where they were formed
• Release emotional blocks that logic alone can't touch
• Integrate fragmented identities at the subconscious level where the splits originated

Think of it this way: you can remodel a house with hand tools. Or you can bring in power tools and structural engineers who can see what's behind the walls.

Both work. One is significantly faster and addresses foundational issues you might not even know exist.

The liminal zone will transform you regardless of whether you engage consciously, or seek professional guidance. The question is whether you'll navigate it with awareness (extracting the lessons, rewiring the programming, and integrating the fragments) or whether you'll white-knuckle through it and hope you end up somewhere better.

AI as a Tool, Not a Threat

Here's the paradox of our current moment: the same AI disrupting traditional work is also your greatest ally in navigating this transition.

AI doesn't replace human wisdom; it amplifies it. It handles the repetitive, the technical, the time-consuming, freeing you to focus on what only humans can do: synthesize meaning, create connection, provide context, hold space for transformation, show up as integrated beings rather than performing fragmented roles.

The professionals who will thrive aren't those who resist AI or those who blindly adopt it.

They're the ones who use AI strategically while doing the deeper internal work to show up as their most aligned, authentic selves.

AI can help you build a business. It can't tell you what business is aligned with the authentic version of YOU.

AI can optimize your marketing. It can't find your unique voice.

AI can process information. It can't access your subconscious wisdom.

AI can execute tasks across contexts. It can't integrate your fragmented identities into coherent wholeness.

The liminal zone is where you discover what AI can't replicate: your specific genius, your irreplaceable perspective, your authentic way of creating value, your integrated presence.

What's Waiting on the Other Side

I won't pretend the liminal zone is comfortable or easy. It demands something most busy professionals have trained themselves to avoid; sitting with not knowing, feeling the discomfort of transition, questioning everything they've built their identity on.

But here's what I've witnessed again and again:

The people who consciously navigate this threshold don't just find a new job or launch a business. They fundamentally shift their relationship with themselves.

They stop looking outside for permission and validation.

They build lives and businesses from the inside out, aligned with who they actually are rather than who they think they should be.

They make more money because they're no longer operating from scarcity and proving.

They create offerings that are uniquely theirs because they've stopped copying other people's blueprints.

They show up with confidence that's grounded in self-knowledge, not external achievement.

They move between contexts without fragmentation; present and authentic whether they're with clients, family, or alone.

They experience less stress because they're not managing multiple personas or fighting their own subconscious programming.

They become irreplicable ... not despite AI, but because they've done the work AI can't do for them.

Your Invitation

If you're in the liminal zone right now (questioning your path, feeling the discomfort of transition, noticing the fragmentation of managing different identities, wondering if you've made a terrible mistake) let me offer you a different perspective:

You're exactly where you need to be.

This isn't a detour. It's not a waste of time. It's not evidence that something's wrong with you.

It's the threshold. And the threshold is where transformation happens; where the subconscious programming surfaces, where fragmented identities can finally integrate, where you discover who you are beneath all the protective adaptations.

You can rush through it, grinding your way to the next familiar structure. Or you can slow down, get curious, and do the deep work that ensures whatever you create, design or build next is actually, authentically yours.

If you're ready to navigate this consciously (to understand what's driving your patterns, access your subconscious programming, and move toward integration rather than continued fragmentation) I'd love to support you.

Join my email list for insights on navigating transition, integrating AI strategically, understanding your subconscious patterns, and building businesses from the inside out. You'll also get access to resources designed specifically for professionals … including for those who find themselves in a liminal zone.

Or if you're ready for a conversation about how coaching and hypnotherapy can accelerate your transformation, book a clarity call. We'll map out exactly where you are, what's keeping you stuck, and what becomes possible when you address the root programming rather than managing symptoms.

The liminal zone doesn't last forever. But what you do while you're in it (and how consciously you navigate both the major transitions and the daily thresholds) determines everything about where you land.

Choose consciously.