— Early October 2026

Written by Francine Van den Acker — Founder of SoulRise Global

When control disappears

Sometimes, life changes direction without asking for our permission. We did not choose to lose a job, a person, a relationship, our financial security, or something that had represented a point of stability for years. We did not plan to find ourselves suddenly in unfamiliar territory, uncertain how to move forward and, above all, how long it would last.

It simply happens.

Sometimes a single event changes everything. At other times, losses arrive one after another, without even giving us time to process one before the next appears. Work comes to an end, money becomes a source of concern, a relationship finishes, someone moves away, a project collapses, a family changes shape. In a short time, what seemed stable only yesterday can suddenly feel fragile.

And that is when we encounter an uncomfortable truth: the control we believed we had over our lives was far more relative than we imagined. We can be responsible, cautious, and prepared. We may have worked hard, made sensible choices, and built carefully. Yet part of life remains beyond our reach: there are events we cannot prevent, people we cannot hold on to, and decisions made by others that we cannot change.

When this happens, we do not lose only something tangible. The frame of reference through which we had learned to recognise ourselves may begin to falter as well.

When loss enters our identity

A job is not merely a salary: it may represent independence, competence, recognition, and a social role. A relationship contains habits, plans, and an image of the future. Money also represents autonomy, freedom, and the ability to choose. This is why some losses do not remain outside us: they can alter the way we perceive ourselves.

This can be especially destabilising for those who have spent a long time living at a high level of activity. People accustomed to doing, deciding, planning, and holding many things together may find powerlessness particularly difficult to tolerate. Being unable to intervene, to correct immediately what is happening, and having to live with uncertainty means confronting a limit that no degree of efficiency can erase.

This is where an important risk arises: turning a loss into a definition of who we are. We no longer feel merely affected by an event; we begin to feel defeated. The distinction is fundamental. Loss describes what happened. Defeat, when internalised, can become the lens through which we interpret who we are and what we believe is still possible.

Our sense of self-efficacy—the belief that we are capable of influencing our own lives—may also diminish. A specific event is then generalised: if I could not prevent this, perhaps I am no longer capable of choosing well; if a project failed, perhaps I am no longer able to build anything. Separating the event from our judgement of ourselves is one of the first steps towards recovery. Not everything that happens to us says something about our worth or our abilities.

Making life smaller to regain a sense of control

After life has taken a great deal from us, something apparently contradictory may happen: we begin taking things away ourselves.

Fewer commitments, fewer people, less exposure, fewer complications. A more essential daily life and, above all, one that feels more manageable. This is not necessarily surrender. After a period in which reality became unpredictable, deliberately narrowing our world can restore a sense of agency. We cannot change what happened, but we can decide what we allow in, which responsibilities we accept, where we invest our energy, and which demands we continue to carry.

The world becomes smaller, but it begins to feel manageable again.

For those who have spent years responding to external demands, this reduction may serve a regulating function. It lowers pressure, limits stimulation, and creates a space in which safety and calm can return. It can become a kind of decompression chamber between what no longer exists and what we do not yet know we want to build.

Making life smaller can therefore be a useful phase: a way of quieting the noise and hearing again what truly matters.

When protection and self-punishment become confused

The boundary, however, is subtle. The same reduction that initially protects us can become a limitation when we begin to associate desire with vulnerability. The more something matters, the more its loss could hurt. Wanting less may then seem safer.

The process is rarely explicit. We do not tell ourselves that we no longer deserve something; we simply become more cautious. We lower our expectations, choose what is predictable, and avoid situations that require us to expose ourselves. We may call all of this realism, experience, or maturity.

But fear knows how to speak in very rational language.

When faced with events we were unable to control, we also almost always search for an explanation. Accepting that something happened despite our efforts means acknowledging a measure of powerlessness. For this reason, it may feel more tolerable to assign ourselves too much responsibility: I should have understood sooner, chosen differently, trusted less.

If we were the cause, we can at least imagine that by changing ourselves we will prevent it from happening again. This is where experience risks turning into self-condemnation. We take from the past not only lessons, but prohibitions: do not expose yourself too much, do not trust too much, do not build too much, do not desire too much.

A wound that has been processed can become discernment: it makes us more attentive and better able to establish healthy boundaries. A wound that continues to decide on our behalf restricts our freedom instead. We may find ourselves living by rules written at the moment when we were most vulnerable.

Avoidance readily reinforces this process. In the short term it works: not exposing ourselves reduces anxiety and makes us feel safer. That is precisely why it tends to be repeated. Yet every time we avoid a situation solely out of fear, we also lose the opportunity to discover whether we now have different resources with which to face it. Over time, immediate relief can become a gradual narrowing of possibility.

The value of what is essential

Not everything we have reduced must be reclaimed. After a very intense life, it can be healthy to discover that we do not need to rebuild everything. A quieter phase may help us distinguish what genuinely belonged to us from what we had continued to sustain out of habit, duty, or other people’s expectations.

Not every former ambition needs to return. Not every relationship must be replaced. Not every empty space has to be filled. A less crowded life is not necessarily a poorer one.

Simplicity can become a space for observation. We are no longer entirely the person we once were, but we do not yet know who we will become. It is an uncomfortable condition, especially in a culture that tends to equate doing with progress. Yet not all stillness is stagnation. Sometimes, while little seems to be happening externally, we are reorganising priorities, meaning, and direction.

The question then changes. It is no longer only “How can I recover what I had?” but “Do I truly want all of it back?” This is where rebuilding can stop being automatic and become a choice. The aim is not to return to having a great deal, but to understand what is enough: which activities, relationships, and responsibilities bring quality to our lives, and which merely fill them.

When desire returns

Every form of protection is useful for as long as it helps us recover. But what restored our balance may, over time, become too restrictive. Life remains orderly and relatively safe, yet something begins to move again: a person awakens our curiosity, a project rekindles our interest, a change begins to feel possible. The desire to learn, create, build, travel, or simply feel involved in life again returns.

It is a delicate transition because it brings two legitimate needs into tension: protecting the calm we have regained and feeling fully alive again. The question is not whether to choose safety or risk, but how to distinguish serenity from immobility.

We can live with less without living diminished. We can be selective without closing ourselves off. We can protect our peace without turning it into a barrier against everything that might engage us again.

After certain experiences, we no longer possess our former innocence. We know that things can end and that absolute stability does not exist. Yet that very awareness can give rise to a more mature form of trust: not the certainty that nothing will go wrong, but the confidence that even if something does not unfold as planned, we will still be able to find our bearings and decide what to do next.

Reinventing ourselves does not mean going back

One of the most common mistakes after a crisis is to believe that feeling better means recovering the person we were before. Reinvention does not work that way.

What we have lived through has changed us. We have discovered limits we did not previously know, needs we may not have listened to, and ways of living we are no longer willing to sustain. Returning to exactly who we were would mean disregarding what we have come to understand.

Reinvention means integration: reclaiming ambition without necessarily reclaiming constant overactivity; opening ourselves to relationships without abandoning the boundaries we have learned; making plans again without expecting to control every variable; preserving the serenity we have gained without using it as a reason never to expose ourselves again.

Not everything needs to return. Some ambitions may have lost their meaning; some rhythms may no longer belong to us. We do not begin again from nothing: we begin from who we have become.

The question is therefore no longer “How can I return to my old life?” but “With the person I have become, what kind of life do I want to build now?”

The day we change the rules

The turning point comes when what once protected us stops guiding us automatically. We can recognise that we needed a simpler life and less exposure, while also asking whether the rules created at that time still represent us.

This is the decisive transition: distinguishing what we choose today from what we continue to do out of fear of reliving yesterday. Which boundaries truly protect us, and which now isolate us? Which renunciations have become conscious choices, and which are merely old defences? Where do we want to remain selective, and where are we ready to grow again?

Three questions can help us make this distinction: Does this choice still reflect what I want today? Does it protect me, or does it restrict me? If fear of loss were not the main criterion, would I still make the same choice? These are not formulas that solve everything, but they return the decision to the present instead of leaving it in the hands of a past experience.

At this point, reinvention stops being an abstract idea and becomes a deliberate position. We do not need to recover everything; we need to choose more wisely. To choose the relationships in which it is worth being present, the projects to which we want to give energy, the risks that carry meaning, the ambitions that still belong to us, and those we can release without feeling defeated.

Perhaps this is the most mature form of control: not preventing life from changing, but refusing to let what happened to us continue to decide in our place.

We have learned that we can lose. Precisely for that reason, we no longer need to lose in advance by giving up what we desire simply to protect ourselves from the possibility that it may one day end.

Reinvention begins when we stop building our lives primarily around what we want to avoid and begin building them once more around what we still believe is worth living.

Life may have forced us, for part of the journey, to make our world smaller. The next step is to decide for ourselves how expansive we want it to become.

If you feel that one chapter of your life has closed but you are not yet clear about how to build the next, RINASCI™ is an individual programme designed to help you rediscover direction, redefine your priorities, and transform a period of transition into a conscious choice. Discover RINASCI™ →

Important Notice

This article is intended for information, personal development and reflection. It does not constitute medical, psychological or psychotherapeutic advice and is not a substitute for qualified professional care. For further information, please refer to our Terms & Conditions, section 3.5.