When the Old Routine Is Gone and the New One Hasn't Formed

Situations I see often

• Moving abroad for a job and finding that friendships take far longer than the visa

• Speaking your second language all day and dreaming in your first

• Getting the promotion and missing the team you left

• Finishing university, or a relationship, and having no template for an ordinary Tuesday

• Becoming a parent, changing career, retiring

• Wondering whether to go home, with every option feeling like a loss

Why a good decision can still feel bad

Change removes structure. A routine you barely noticed was holding a lot up. Identity also rests on roles, places and people, so when they shift, it takes time to update who you are.

Small competencies disappear too. You were good at your old routines, and now you are a beginner at buying bread.

Grief applies to endings that were chosen. You can be glad to have left something and still miss it.

Decision doubt adds another layer: replaying the choice, comparing it with the road not taken, and reading every bad day as evidence. Hindsight makes the alternatives look smoother than they were. Adjustment usually takes months and has dips. Many transitions are ordinary hard, and not a disorder. If low mood or anxiety settles in, we can look at that as well.What we'd actually work on

What sessions involve

• Describing what has changed in practical terms, and what has stayed the same

• Naming the losses, including small ones nobody asks about

• Building a working week with anchors: contact with people, movement, work, one thing you enjoy

• Practising decisions with a limit on revisiting them once made

• Working out what you want the next year to hold

• For expats: deciding where, and in which language, you want to build your life, and finding community in both

How I use ACT and CBT here

ACT leads, because much of the work is acting on what matters while things are unsettled. CBT handles the rumination and second-guessing. I moved countries to train, so I know the administrative and emotional side of rebuilding from a low baseline, though your situation is what shapes the work.

Two languages, two versions of you

Many bilingual people describe feeling different in each language: more blunt in one, more playful or formal in the other. Sessions can happen in English or Romanian, and some clients use both. Which language you use for a topic can tell us something useful.

If the change has raised bigger questions about what you want, the identity and direction page covers that. Relationships often shift alongside a move, and the relationship difficulties page looks at it. Decision-related overthinking has its own page on anxiety and overthinking.