5 Strange Things That Happen When You Change Your Life

I always knew I wanted more out of life than what I was watching everyone else settle for. Not because I was ungrateful, but because something always felt… missing. I’d show up, do what was expected, follow the path I was “supposed” to take, but hardly ever felt excited or challenged by any of it.

About two years ago, I met my therapist, and with her help everything started shifting. Slowly, then all at once. I’m now in a much better place and actually building the life I want to live, but along the way, a bunch of unexpected things kept popping up. Things no one warns you about when you decide, “Actually, I want a better life.”

Here are five strange things that surprised me when I really started changing my life.  

1. You hit deep lows right after good days

This one blindsided me.

I’d be on a run of brilliant days, working on my YouTube channel, making progress, feeling genuinely happy, and then BAM. I’d wake up the next morning in a deep, heavy depression. Not “a bit flat.” I’m talking: tear everything down, nothing matters, everything is pointless depression.

It made no sense. Nothing had changed. Why did it feel like falling off a cliff?

Turns out: it’s a protective mechanism.
When you’re not used to feeling good, your body thinks happiness is unsafe. The other shoe always dropped in the past, so if it doesn’t this time, your nervous system panics and slams the brakes.

But here’s the good news:
Once you spot the pattern, it loses its power.

Now when it hits, I name it:
“This is my body freaking out because life is good. This isn’t danger.”

I scale back to the bare minimum, ride it out, and, more often than not, I bounce back the next day. No pressure. No spiralling. Just acceptance.

Those dark dips don’t mean you’re failing. They’re your body learning what safety actually feels like.

2. You lose old comforts and miss them

This one feels weird to admit:
I miss my old coping mechanisms… even though I don’t need them anymore.

I used to binge-watch, binge-read, and binge-game like it was a full-time job. Whole weekends — sometimes whole weeks, lost to fictional worlds. At the time, it felt like escapism. Now I know it was dissociation. I was unhappy, stuck, and had no idea how to change anything, so I disappeared into other worlds where everything felt easier.

Since doing the work, that obsession is gone.

I still enjoy things, but I don’t vanish into them anymore.
I can read without inhaling an entire series overnight.
I can watch a show and… stop at a normal time.
Gaming barely hooks me at all right now.

And while this is obviously healthier, part of me misses the intensity, that feeling of being completely absorbed in something I loved.

It’s a strange grieving process: mourning the comfort that once saved you, even though you know you’ve outgrown it.

3. Your tolerance for complaining disappears

Not my proudest revelation, but here we are.

After two years of actively changing my life, I’ve become hyper-aware of complaining, both mine and other people’s. Now, if I complain about something more than twice, I automatically start looking for a fix, a workaround, a way forward.

But most people?
They want to complain. Not change.

They vent about the same issues for months, sometimes years, without taking even the tiniest step toward improving the situation. And honestly? Good for them. If they’re truly content with staying where they are, that’s their choice.

But I struggle with it now. Not because I want to be mean, I genuinely don’t, but because solving problems has become part of who I am. Complaining, to me now, is a sign to take action… not a loop to stay stuck in forever.

It makes me feel harsh, but it’s the truth:
Once you start changing your life, endless complaining becomes unbearable.

4. Your body gets REALLY loud when something isn’t right

People always talk about “gut feelings,” but mine didn’t exist for years. Or more accurately, I had them, but I didn’t recognise them. I’d feel “off” every day going to certain jobs but never understood it as my body trying to scream, “Hey, we’re not meant to be here!”

Now?
The reaction is instant.

Recently I decided, again, that I was going to learn digital drawing. I found the course, the tools, everything. And immediately… everything felt wrong. Heavy. Dreadful. Like pushing through mud. I found excuses to avoid starting. I even chose VACUUMING over beginning. (If that’s not a sign, nothing is.)

My body wasn’t being subtle:
“This is not the thing.”

When I pivoted to 3D modelling instead, the heaviness vanished. Suddenly the mountain of learning felt exciting, not impossible.

Listening to that internal shift, that lightness vs heaviness, has become one of the most powerful tools I have. It doesn’t mean I always get to follow it (hi, job I still need to pay bills), but it’s shaping a future that’s actually aligned with me.

5. You start dreaming again, sometimes for the first time

For the longest time, I had no dreams.
 Not big ones, not small ones, nothing. Just a vague sense that my life wasn’t right, but no idea what “right” even looked like.

Even during the early stages of growth, I still felt stuck. I’d try things half-heartedly, but without a dream driving me, everything felt flat. Directionless.

Then one day, I genuinely don’t know when, the fog lifted.

Suddenly I could see the life I wanted. The feelings, the work I was doing, the home, the creativity… it all clicked into place like it had been waiting in the wings for years.

Now I have the opposite problem:
I’m impatient.
I want it now. But at least I know where I’m going, and every step forward feels like progress toward something real.

Having dreams again, vivid ones, is one of the strangest, best parts of healing.

Conclusion

When I first sat down with my therapist two years ago, I didn’t plan to overhaul my entire life. I just knew something had to change because I was deeply unhappy.

The journey has been messy, weird, emotional, and absolutely worth it.

No one tells you about the odd side effects of getting better, the identity shifts, the lost comforts, the emotional whiplash, the new dreams, the louder intuition. If they did, maybe fewer people would sign up for it. But once you start, it’s impossible to go back.

These five strange things are just the beginning. But if you’re changing your life too, I hope they remind you that you’re not alone, and that the weirdness is part of the process.

And as always, thank you for reading, and let’s see what other secrets we can uncover next time on Nerdy Investigations.

Photo by Joonas Sild on Unsplash