How Do You Know When You’ve Outgrown Something?

By: Tamara Gestetner, LMFT

I sat at the bungalow this July 4th weekend and felt nothing. Not sad, not peaceful, not even bored. Just nothing. And I remember thinking that this used to be the thing. For a few years, I’ve gone up twice every summer—two weekends I circle on the calendar before the season even starts. I count down to it. My shoulders drop the second I pull up and see the same porch, the same trees, the same stretch of summer that has given me some of my favorite memories. This year I looked around and thought: Can we just go home?

I didn’t say it out loud. I smiled, unpacked my bag, and made small talk as I tried to locate the person who used to want this so badly (me) because surely, she was still in there somewhere. She wasn’t. Or she was but had moved on without telling me.

I hate when that happens, when part of you evolves and forgets to send the rest of you a memo.

The first feeling wasn’t relief; it was almost shame. Like I’d been caught being ungrateful. Who gets bored of a bungalow, the nature, and the tradition that’s given her so much joy summer after summer, year after year? I spent an embarrassing amount of time that weekend doing the math on what was wrong with me instead of just accepting that something inside of me had shifted. By Saturday night, I packed up and drove back home. I didn’t even wait for the fireworks.

Here’s what I keep coming back to, and it’s not a neat insight, it’s more like a thing I’m still turning over. Our brains don’t lie to us about what we need even when we wish they would. There’s this whole field of neuroplasticity, the science of the brain literally rewiring itself based on what we go through, and I used to talk about it clinically, like it was a hopeful fact you tell clients. The good news is your brain can change. But sitting in that bungalow, feeling nothing, I understood it differently. I understood it as loss and maybe also as an arrival.

Because if your brain rewires itself based on your needs, it means the person who needed the bungalow during the summer is gone. Not gone like erased, gone like outgrown. The way you outgrow a winter coat that used to keep you warm and fit perfectly a few years ago. For years, that trip to the Catskills was my relief. I would work all week, show up for clients, show up for family, but by the time I got to that porch I was depleted in a way that only quiet and distance could fix. I needed to leave my life to remember who I was underneath.

This year, sitting there, I realized I wasn’t depleted. If anything, I was itching to get back to my life, back to the podcast, back to my writing, back to work that’s finally starting to feel like it’s truly mine. That’s a strange thing to admit, because it means the thing I used to need a break from is now the thing I don’t want to be away from. My nervous system used to reach for that porch like it was oxygen. And somewhere in the last year, without a ceremony, without me noticing, it stopped reaching because it found something else to reach for instead.

That should feel like winning. Some days it does. But mostly it feels like standing in a place that used to be filled with something, and now it’s just a bungalow.

I think we undersell how disorienting healing and growth actually are. We talk about it like it’s all relief and forward motion, like one day you wake up lighter and grateful. Nobody tells you that a lot of it feels like grief at first. You don’t get to keep the old comfort and get the new peace simultaneously. You have to actually let go of the old thing before you can begin to see what has replaced it.

I called my sister on the way home and told her I think I ruined the weekend by not being excited enough. She said maybe you didn’t ruin anything; maybe you just don’t need it the way you used to. I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted to be the person who still needed it, because at least that person made sense to me. I knew her.

And it’s strange because it’s not like the bungalow stopped being good. The porch is still the porch. The quiet is still the quiet. If anything, everything about it is exactly the way I’ve loved it for years, which is almost worse in a way. If something had actually changed, I would have some way of explaining this internal shift. But nothing changed except me. And that’s a much harder thing to sit with. I don’t think that makes me less connected to the people I used to share the porch with, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t noticed a little distance too: conversations that used to fill a whole weekend now feel like they wrap up in twenty minutes, not because anyone did anything wrong, but because my mental energy lives elsewhere. Now I’m focused on my business, my podcast, the guests I’m interviewing, the columns I’m writing. That’s where my curiosity lies right now. It’s hard to sit on a porch and make small talk when your mind is drifting back to an episode you’re still thinking through.

I used to think that outgrowing something meant you were running away from it. I’m starting to think that sometimes you outgrow something because you’re finally running toward something else. Something that’s actually yours. I think a lot about my mother in moments like that, about how much of who I am grew out of losing her, whether I wanted to or not. Grief rewires you. Growth rewires you. Sometimes you don’t choose to become someone who needs less escape; you just get carved into that person because life forced new pathways whether you consented to them or not. So, when I felt nothing at the bungalow, some part of me wondered if I was finally arriving somewhere. Not somewhere better necessarily, just somewhere truer, somewhere more like who I am right now rather than someone I used to be when I needed that porch.

Outgrowing something doesn’t feel good while it’s happening, even when it’s actually a sign of becoming more yourself. Maybe that’s the real question underneath all of this growth and change. Not “why don’t I love this anymore,” but “who was I when I needed it and am I finally becoming me?”

I don’t know yet if I’ll go back for the second weekend this summer. Part of me thinks I owe the place a visit for all the joy it gave me. Another part of me wonders if I’ll spend the entire weekend wishing I was home working. I’m still deciding. But I drove home Saturday night before the fireworks even started, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel guilty about wanting to leave. I think I finally know what actually lights me up. And it isn’t a place anymore. It’s who I’ve become. 

Tamara Gestetner, LMFT, is a psychotherapist and certified mediator based in Cedarhurst who helps individuals and couples navigate relationships, career questions, and the challenges people face in everyday life. She is also the host of the podcast Talk2Tamara. Readers are welcome to submit questions or topics they would like addressed in future columns. Tamara can be reached at TamaraGestetner.com, [email protected], or 646-239-5686