Fear of Change: Learning to Accept Growing Pains
Change is both universal and unsettling. Like the caterpillar dissolving into its chrysalis before becoming a butterfly, we resist transitions, even when they are gateways into freedom.
Why do endings feel so threatening, when they are also beginnings in disguise?
Why We Fear Change
The caterpillar clings to the realm of leaves. For a time, the leaves are all it knows, nibbling, crawling, reaching for the next. Though biologically wired to transform, it only understands life through limited perspective.
Then, inside the cocoon, its world collapses further into dissolution before re-emerging with wings.
To let go means stepping into the unknown. Sometimes that unknown feels contractive, and to the nervous system, it can even feel like death.
In much the same way, we resist change because:
Biology & psychology → safety feels tied to the familiar; uncertainty feels like danger.
Identity attachment → we confuse who I am with what I know.
Loss of control → uncertainty triggers anxiety.
Conditioning → culture tells us endings equal failure, not transformation.
But just as the caterpillar cannot imagine wings, we too cannot always imagine what waits on the other side of surrender.
Endings as Thresholds
When the caterpillar spins its cocoon, its old form literally dissolves. This stage is a threshold, a sacred passage where one form breaks down so another may emerge.
So it is with our own lives:
Leaving a job can open the path to a more aligned vocation.
The end of a relationship can return us to our own essence.
The shedding of old habits creates space for vitality to flow in.
Endings need not be equated with failure. They are initiations into the next shape of our becoming.
The Pain of Growth
Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar’s body turns to liquid before reorganising as a butterfly. This is what is for the caterpillar. In our ways, we might not imagine that to be comfortable — the dissolving of self — it is dismantling and remaking at the deepest level.
Our own transitions work the same way. Expansion hurts because it stretches us beyond what we know. Resistance to this pain often creates more suffering than the change itself.
In tantra, we are invited to discern:
Fear as danger → a true boundary that protects.
Fear as transformation → the discomfort of dissolving so something greater can be born.
When we meet the pain of growth with awareness, it becomes less terrifying, no longer an ending, but a passage.
Finding Safety in Transition
Even the butterfly, fragile and wet-winged, rests before its first flight. Safety during change is about creating containers strong enough to hold the process.
Acceptance → allow fear and grief without letting them take the reins.
Grounding practices → breath, movement, rituals of closure.
Support → community, mentors and practices that remind you you’re not alone.
Trust → remembering past thresholds you’ve already crossed.
Safety doesn’t mean eliminating fear. It means learning to rest in the cocoon until you are ready to unfurl.
Embracing Freedom in Expansion
True freedom doesn’t come from clinging to the caterpillar’s leaf. It comes from trusting the wings you haven’t yet grown and spread.
Change is not a disruption of life; it is life. To resist it is to resist your own evolution. To embrace it is to discover resilience, creativity and renewal.
Growing pains may feel like breaking, but often what is breaking is only the shell of what you’ve outgrown.
So the next time you find yourself at the edge of an ending, remember:
You are not falling apart. You are transforming.
What you fear as loss may be the very threshold into flight.
If you’d like to embrace transformation, tantra offers a powerful path. Join us in session and let us support your cocooning and inevitable growth with nurture, grace and ease.
