Why life transitions feel so unbearable, what the anthropologists called liminal space, and a practical, ancient way to stand on ground you cannot yet see.
By Abi Beri | Integrative Somatic Therapist & Nervous System Specialist · Dublin & Online
TL;DR. If something in your life has ended — or is ending — and the next thing has not yet arrived, you are not lost. You are in what anthropologists call the liminal phase: the strange, essential middle part of any real transition. Older cultures built ritual containers for it; modern Western culture largely did not. That is why life transitions feel so unbearable: you are doing, alone and unsupported, something human beings were never meant to do alone. The body treats this groundlessness as danger and quietly burns enormous energy metabolising the uncertainty. A somatic therapy approach takes the in-between seriously rather than rushing you out of it — and offers, instead of another protocol, a practical definition of faith: the willingness to take the next honest step on ground you cannot yet see. You are not lost. You are crossing.
Key facts at a glance
- Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep first identified three phases of any major life transition in his 1909 book Rites of Passage: separation, liminality (the in-between), and incorporation.
- Victor Turner expanded this in The Ritual Process (1969), describing people in the liminal phase as “betwixt and between” — belonging fully to neither the old identity nor the new.
- The word “liminal” comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold — the worn stone strip at the bottom of a doorway.
- Older cultures built ritual containers around liminal phases. Modern culture largely lost those containers, leaving people to navigate transitions alone.
- The body reads sustained uncertainty as danger; significant biological energy is spent metabolising the in-between, even when nothing visible is happening.
- Somatic therapy treats the in-between as essential work, not wasted time, and supports the nervous system through it rather than rushing it out of it.
- Working with these transitions in person is available in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and online worldwide.
Why life transitions feel so uncomfortable (and not your fault)
Quick answer: Life transitions feel uniquely hard because you are doing — alone, in a culture without ritual containers — a thing human beings were historically carried through by their communities. The discomfort is real, but it is not a sign you are bad at this.
If you are reading this in the gap, there is a particular shape of suffering I want to name first. From the outside, it may not look as if very much is wrong. There is no single catastrophe to point at. There is just this — a groundlessness, a low constant hum of unease, a sense of moving through your days slightly unanchored, as though the floor has been replaced by something that mostly holds but that you no longer fully trust.
I am not going to do the thing the wellness internet does with this. I am not going to tell you it is all happening for a beautiful reason, or that you are exactly where you are meant to be. Said now, to you, in the gap, those things would be a kind of lie. They are the lies of toxic positivity, which is not really positivity at all — only the refusal to let a hard thing be hard.
The actual reason it feels unbearable is structural. You are doing a thing your ancestors were not asked to do alone. And that is worth understanding properly.
Liminal space: the anthropological insight modern culture forgot
Quick answer: Liminal space is the in-between phase of any major life transition — neither the old identity nor the new. It was first identified by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909 and named after the Latin word for threshold.
There is an old word that is worth knowing. Liminal. It comes from the Latin limen, which simply means a threshold — the worn stone strip at the bottom of a doorway, the bit you step on as you pass from one room to another. A liminal space is a threshold space.
The anthropologists who studied how human societies handle big life changes — van Gennep first, in 1909, then Victor Turner half a century later — noticed that every real transition has three parts, not two. There is the leaving. There is the arriving. And there is a long, strange, essential middle part in between, where you have genuinely left the first thing but have not genuinely arrived at the next. You are, in Turner’s lovely phrase, betwixt and between. You belong fully to neither.
And here is what those anthropologists understood that we have largely forgotten. Older cultures did not treat that middle part as a problem. They did not treat it as dead time to be hurried through. They built rituals around it. They marked it. They gave it a container, and a name, and elders who had been through it before. When a young person was no longer a child but not yet an adult, the culture did not say get on with it. The culture said: yes. This is the threshold. We see that you are on it. We will hold the edges of it for you while you cross.
We do not do that any more. We have, almost entirely, lost the ritual container for the in-between. So when you find yourself there — between jobs, between relationships, between identities, between the person you have stopped being and the one you have not yet become — there is no cultural structure waiting to hold you. There is just you, alone, in the unmarked middle, with a phone in your hand and a quiet voice asking, with rising urgency, why is this taking so long, and what is wrong with me that I have not sorted it out yet.
Why the body treats the in-between as danger
Quick answer: The nervous system is built to seek predictable ground. Sustained uncertainty registers as a low-grade threat, which is why the in-between often feels physically uncomfortable — tight chest, restless sleep, low-level dread — even when nothing visibly bad has happened.
Your nervous system is, at heart, a prediction engine. It is constantly scanning the world for patterns, building a working model of what is safe and what is not, and updating that model as it goes. When the patterns are familiar, the system can settle. When the patterns dissolve — when the role you knew how to be in is gone, when the relationship you organised around is no longer there, when the version of yourself you had built no longer fits — the prediction engine loses its footing. And from the body’s perspective, that is not annoying. That is dangerous.
Significant biological energy is then spent, quietly and invisibly, on metabolising the uncertainty. This is real work, even though nothing shows for it. It is why people in the in-between are so often exhausted by 3pm even though, on paper, they have not done very much. They have been holding the rope of a small ongoing emergency all day.
The “false floors” we reach for in the in-between
Quick answer: Because the in-between feels intolerable, we tend to grab at premature certainties — a rebound, a hasty new job, a sudden conversion, a fresh identity — to give the system something to stand on. These false floors usually do not hold.
When the discomfort of the in-between gets high enough, the temptation is almost overwhelming to grab for any floor at all. We pick a rebound relationship to fill the absence. We take the first job we are offered, not because it fits, but because it ends the not-knowing. We rebrand ourselves overnight, sometimes loudly, to escape the in-between identity we cannot bear to be in. We pick a certainty — any certainty — because uncertainty hurts.
These are the false floors. They are entirely understandable, and they very often do not hold. The next thing was not supposed to arrive yet. By forcing it, we collapse what was actually a real transition into a fresh-start that was never really new. The in-between, sooner or later, comes back.
White-knuckling through vs Standing in the in-between
| White-knuckling through (the cultural default) | Standing in the in-between (a somatic approach) |
| Treats the in-between as wasted time to be hurried through. | Treats the in-between as essential, sometimes sacred work. |
| Demands an answer immediately. | Allows the not-yet-knowing to be present. |
| Reaches for false floors — premature certainties, rebound, snap decisions. | Trusts the next honest step in the dark. |
| Measures success by speed of arrival. | Measures success by integrity of crossing. |
| Reads discomfort as failure. | Reads discomfort as the actual work. |
| Isolates the person in shame. | Seeks elders and witnesses for the threshold. |
| Often ends in a false-start that has to be undone later. | Often ends in a more durable arrival, because it was real. |
Faith as standing on ground you cannot yet see
Quick answer: In this context, faith does not mean certainty or belief in a particular outcome. It is a practical, ancient stance: the willingness to take the next honest step on ground you cannot yet see — and to keep walking before the bridge is visible.
There is a quieter, older offer underneath all the protocols, and it has nothing to do with toxic positivity. It is faith — meant in a very specific and very practical way. Not the faith of certainty. Not the faith of a doctrine. The faith of how a person stands when the ground is invisible.
The bridge appears, in the end, mostly to those who were willing to walk toward where it would be — before they could see that it was there. That is not magical thinking. It is the actual mechanism of human crossings. You will not feel the next step is safe before you take it. You will feel it is safe shortly after. And then you will take another one. And another. And, slowly, the unmarked ground will start to feel like a path.
Signs you are in a real life transition (not just a rough patch)
Not every difficult period is a liminal transition. If several of these are true, you are likely in a real one:
- A role you knew how to be in has ended, or is ending — partner, parent, professional, child of a living parent, athlete, founder.
- The familiar identity does not fit any more, but no new one has settled in its place.
- You feel less anchored in your daily life, even when externally things look the same.
- Decisions that used to be easy feel disproportionately heavy.
- You are unusually tired without having done unusually much.
- You feel a low-level dread or groundlessness that is hard to explain to others.
- Old coping strategies do not work the way they used to.
- You catch yourself reaching for false floors — quick fixes, dramatic changes, premature certainties.
How somatic therapy supports life transitions
Somatic therapy is particularly well-suited to liminal phases for a few reasons. First, it does not try to push you out of the in-between with another protocol or a five-step framework — that approach almost always backfires, because the in-between is not a problem to be solved at speed. Second, it works directly with the nervous system, which is where the groundlessness actually lives. Talking about the transition can help, but the body needs its own kind of support — slow, paced, bottom-up — to metabolise the change.
Third, somatic therapy provides something the modern culture took away: a held container. The therapy room becomes a small ritual space — slow, attended, not rushed — in which the threshold gets to be witnessed. That sounds simple. It is not. For many people, it is the first time the in-between has been allowed to be a real thing, with its own dignity, rather than an embarrassing pause in a life that is supposed to be moving.
Practically, the work uses the same tools that ground other somatic practice: window of tolerance, titration, pendulation, polyvagal-informed pacing. We do not push. We help the body find what footing it can — the next small thing it can trust — and we let the rest unfold at the pace it actually needs.
Practical body-based steps for the in-between
- Stop measuring yourself by speed of arrival.A day in which you stayed reasonably steady, did not reach for a false floor, and were kind to yourself in the discomfort is a fully successful day. Let it count.
- Count the metabolising as real work.Significant biological energy is being spent quietly on holding the uncertainty. You are not “doing nothing.” You are carrying a small ongoing emergency. That is exhausting and it is real.
- Find your elders.Our culture took away the ritual container, but it did not take away the people who have crossed before you. Seek out someone who has stood where you are standing and come through. Let them tell you it is survivable, because they are living proof that it is.
- Take the next honest step, not the whole staircase.You do not need the rest of the route tonight. You only need the next stair — and that one, you can find.
- Refuse to do it entirely alone.The in-between was always meant to be witnessed. A trusted friend, a therapist, a peer group going through the same crossing — any held container counts.
- Watch for the false floors.When you feel the strong pull to grab for sudden certainty, pause. Often that is the in-between asking to be felt, not solved.
Frequently asked questions
What is liminal space? Liminal space is the in-between phase of any major life transition — the part where you have left the old identity, role or chapter but have not yet arrived at the new one. The term was introduced by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909 and developed by Victor Turner in The Ritual Process (1969). It comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold.
Why are life transitions so hard? Because you are doing — alone, in a culture without ritual containers — a thing human beings were historically carried through by their communities. The body also treats sustained uncertainty as low-grade danger and spends significant invisible energy metabolising it. The difficulty is structural, not personal.
How long does a liminal phase last? There is no fixed length. Small transitions can resolve in weeks. Big ones — significant identity shifts, major life changes, deep losses — can take a year or more. Trying to force a faster arrival usually creates a false floor that has to be undone later.
Is what I am feeling a midlife crisis? Possibly, or it may simply be a major liminal phase that happens to occur in midlife. The framing of “crisis” can be unhelpful; “threshold” often serves better. The nervous-system and somatic support is similar either way.
Can somatic therapy help with life transitions? Yes. Liminal phases are particularly well-suited to somatic work because the groundlessness lives in the body, not only in the story. Talking helps; bottom-up nervous-system support reaches what talking alone often cannot.
Should I make big decisions during a life transition? Generally, avoid big irreversible decisions while you are still squarely in the in-between, if you can. The pull to grab a false floor is strongest then. Small honest steps usually serve better than dramatic ones.
Is feeling lost the same as depression? Not necessarily. Liminal groundlessness and clinical depression can look similar from the outside but feel different from the inside, and may need different responses. If low mood is persistent or includes hopelessness, it is worth consulting a clinician.
Can I work on this online? Yes. Online somatic therapy works well for life transitions, particularly because the sessions create a small, reliable container — a kind of weekly ritual — in lives that are otherwise unmoored.
Working with a somatic therapist for life transitions in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge & Online
If you are looking for a somatic therapist for life transitions in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge or anywhere in Kildare and Ireland — or you would like to work online from wherever you are in the world — I see clients in person and online. My approach is integrative: somatic practice rooted in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing, polyvagal-informed nervous system work, inner child work, and Family Constellations (the Hellinger method). I am IPHM-accredited and currently completing an MSc in Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy.
Life transitions — career changes, the ending or beginning of relationships, identity shifts, parental losses, becoming a parent, becoming the parent of an adult, midlife thresholds, geographic relocation, the slow ending of a long chapter — are among the most common reasons people come to this kind of work. The therapy room becomes a small ritual container while the rest of life is unmarked, and the nervous system gets the support it needs to actually cross, rather than white-knuckle through.
If you would like to find out whether we would be a good fit, the easiest next step is to book a short, no-pressure intro at somatictherapyireland.com. And if you would like a long audio companion to this article, the somatic talk — Uncomfortable Life Transitions — is on Insight Timer and wherever you listen. You are not lost. You are crossing.
About the author
Abi Beri is an Integrative Somatic Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. He is IPHM-accredited and currently completing an MSc in Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy. His practice integrates Somatic Experiencing, polyvagal-informed nervous system work, inner child work and Family Constellations (the Hellinger method). He sees clients in person from a practice base across Dublin and Kildare, and online globally. More at somatictherapyireland.com and blissfulevolution.com.
Further reading & references
- van Gennep, A. (1909). Rites of Passage. (Trans. 1960). University of Chicago Press.
- Turner, V. (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Aldine.
- Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Pantheon.
- Bridges, W. (1980). Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes. Da Capo.
- van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
- Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton.
- Companion somatic talk: Uncomfortable Life Transitions (Insight Timer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube).
