Your brain hates change

The science behind transition anxiety—and why all your suspicions about it were right in the first place

She walked into my ER with what should have been the easiest diagnosis ever.

It wasn’t.

She was in her mid-thirties, a retired ballet dancer, and she’d just flown from New York to Boston for a gig. She’d been sick the week before, so that hour-long flight had her writhing from ear pain. Thankfully, the pain subsided enough after she landed that she could dance.

Her visit to the ER was just to make sure she wouldn’t feel the same pain on her way back home.

My colleague wanted to discharge her on nasal steroids and a healthy dose of “you’ll be fine.”

But something didn’t sit right.

I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was a subtle unease, a whisper of intuition. Something about the way she looked, the way she described her symptoms — something I couldn’t quite articulate made me think, no. This isn’t just a run-of-the-mill airplane barotrauma. There was something else going on.

This post isn’t about airplane ear (though we’ll get back to my patient in a second).

It’s about career transitions and big decisions.

Because here’s the thing. Big decisions look remarkably similar to that ER encounter. On paper, everything looks stable, normal, a chip shot. Your job, for example…