Stay with the unsettled stretch between selves
When the identity you authored stops holding, expect an in-between period and get support rather than rushing to rebuild.
Why it works
If the self-authored system is what a person has been, then seeing it as partial removes the ground it provided before anything replaces it. In one qualitative study of people describing this move, participants reported losing old identifications and an experience of emptiness before a new way of living settled. Knowing that this stretch is part of how the move is described can keep a person from either clinging to the old self or grabbing the first new certainty on offer.
How to do it
- Name what has stopped holding: a principle, a role, a story about who you are.
- Resist building a replacement identity this month. Write down the urge when it comes.
- Keep the basics steady — sleep, routine, people you trust — while the meaning is unsettled.
- Find at least one person you can talk to about it regularly, and if the emptiness becomes heavy or lasts, talk to a professional as well.
Evidence
Balas Rant (2021) analysed 36 self-selected written accounts from people describing their own move from the self-authoring to the self-transforming order, and proposed seven phases that include disassociation from core relationships and identities and an experience of void before a new subject-object relationship. The author notes the study is understudied territory, used only written essays, and was coded by the author alone. (anecdotal)
The sample self-identified as "self-transformative" and was gathered from an online question about spiritual awakening; no one was assessed with Kegan’s interview, so the accounts may describe other kinds of change. Low mood and emptiness also have many other causes and deserve support on their own terms.
Sources
Common mistake
Reading the unsettled stretch as proof of being at a later stage. Losing your footing is not evidence of development; the study describing it did not measure stage.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for The Self-Transforming Mind: Kegan’s Fifth Order, Made Practical
- Come back to something real right now, not a worldview
Stop mapping your own mind and let the floor, your breath and one ordinary task tell you what is real today.
- Reach a person now if nothing feels real or worth doing
If nothing feels real or worth doing, and you think about not being here, call or text a person now rather than trying to rebuild meaning alone.
- Ask what your own system leaves out
Take the framework you live by and look at it as one partial system: what does it see well, and what is it built not to see?
- Treat a contradiction as information, not a problem to close
When two frameworks you trust contradict each other, study the contradiction before choosing a side.
- Catch yourself owning one side of an opposite completely
Notice when you have put all the good qualities on your side of a split and all the bad ones on the other.
- Talk across whole ways of seeing, not just positions
In a deep disagreement, try to understand the other person’s whole framework and let it question yours.
- Notice when the self you authored starts defending itself
Watch for the moment a challenge to your principles lands as an attack on you, and name it.
- Hold the developmental map — and your place on it — lightly
Notice when knowing about later stages has become another way to feel ahead of other people.
- Laugh at how seriously you take your own growth
Practice light-heartedness about the effort to get yourself right, as a way of loosening the grip of the self you are building.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind
Kegan’s stages, subject-object moves, and authoring your own life
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
Why a change you truly want keeps not happening, and the step-by-step way Kegan and Lahey take it apart
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
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