Understanding & Managing Change Fatigue
You don’t need another article telling you that “change is hard.” You already know that. You’ve felt it—in your work, your community, your faith space, your family system. Maybe it’s been relentless: new policies, shifting staff, leadership turnover, economic uncertainty, another reorganization, another farewell, another pivot. Even good changes—new hires, new initiatives, new possibilities—can add to the exhaustion when they keep coming.
This kind of exhaustion has a name: change fatigue.
What Is Change Fatigue?
Change fatigue is the mental, emotional, and physical depletion that builds when we’re expected to adapt to too much, too fast, too often—without time to fully process, recover, or integrate.
It’s essentially burnout that we experience because of too much change and can feel like:
Feeling numb or checked out
Increased irritability, cynicism, or dread
Trouble concentrating or staying motivated
Emotional heaviness or confusion
A sense of “Why bother?”
And what often gets missed is that many of these symptoms are sometimes labeled as “coping poorly” or “resisting change.” While sometimes they might be, what might be additionally (or more) true is that they might be signs of grief.
Change Fatigue Is Often Unacknowledged Ambiguous Loss & Grief
When a person loses someone they love, we expect them to grieve. But when a community loses a familiar structure, a team loses its cohesion, or a workplace loses predictability—we don’t always acknowledge that as a loss. We just expect people to keep going.
Ambiguous loss—a type of grief that lacks clear resolution (something that was here is gone but part of it is still here)—often shows up during prolonged, disorienting change. You might not be able to pinpoint exactly what’s been lost, but something is missing: a sense of safety, identity, purpose, trust, or belonging. You can learn more about it here.
So What Helps?
You can't eliminate change. But you can work on reducing the toll it takes—and rebuild your inner resources to face it with more steadiness and choice. These are some of the ideas I help people explore and practice:
1. Name the Loss
Whether you’ve lost a routine, a role, a colleague, a sense of control, or your belief that things will work out—naming it can help your brain make meaning, and meaning can help your body feel closer to safe-enough. Sometimes what we’re grieving isn’t a person or a specific event. It might be the loss of routine, the loss of stability, the loss of how things used to feel. Allow yourself to name these: Write them down, speak them aloud. Grief doesn’t need a eulogy to be real.
Try asking:
What part of this change feels like a loss?
What did I used to count on that I no longer can?
2. Validate your emotions and make room for mixed emotions
Change brings up all kinds of conflicting feelings—relief and guilt, grief and hope, curiosity and resistance. You’re not doing it wrong if your emotions are complicated.
Instead of choosing which feeling “wins,” try making space for both/and.
“I’m excited and exhausted.”
“I believe in this change and I miss how things used to be.”
Try asking yourself: "Given what I’ve been through, how might this reaction make sense?" You don’t need to judge or fix it—just understand it.
3. Slow the Pace Internally
When external changes are rapid, it’s even more important to create small internal pauses. This might look like:
Noticing and naming how your body feels before rushing into the next task
Setting a 2-minute timer to just breathe and stare out the window
Journaling a few words each day about what’s changing and how you’re responding
Your brain needs space to process. If you don’t give it some intentionally, it’ll try to do it at 3am instead.
4. Reconnect with Anchors
In seasons of upheaval, it’s grounding to return to what hasn’t changed. Consider:
What values still guide me?
Who or what helps me feel like myself?
What’s one thing I can count on today?
When a lot of change is happening, a small familiar action lighting a candle, taking a daily walk, repeating a mantra—can be helpful. You can also create a few things that stay the same. This could be a morning check-in with yourself, a weekly walk with a friend, or a simple grounding practice. Regular routines signal safety to your nervous system.
5. Practice "Tiny Effectiveness"
Change fatigue can make everything feel overwhelming. Try choosing one small, effective action that honors your values—not to fix the whole situation, but to offer yourself momentum. This might be asking for clarity in a meeting, saying no to something extra, or journaling for five minutes.
6. Reframe Your Capacity
You are not the same person you were before all this change. That doesn’t mean you’re failing—it means you’re adapting. Adaptation sometimes looks like rest, sometimes like messiness, and sometimes like rediscovering new parts of yourself. Let go of old benchmarks. Choose kinder ones.
7. Build in Recovery Time
Rest isn’t just sleep. It’s also unstructured time, quiet moments, and creative outlets. It’s laughing with people you trust or crying without needing to explain why. Recovery isn’t optional if you want to be well enough to keep going.
Final Thoughts
Change fatigue is not a personal failure. It’s a reasonable response to living in systems and communities that don’t always slow down, acknowledge loss, or offer support. But it doesn’t have to take you out.
With care, clarity, and practice, you can build the skills to grieve what’s gone, process what’s happening, and stay rooted in who you want to be—even as things keep changing.
