Becoming Is Not a Straight Line

A personal inquiry into how our experience of life can change

There have been moments in my life when I believed I had moved beyond a familiar difficulty. I understood the pattern. I could explain where it came from. I felt different.

Then something happened, and the old response returned.

An insight had changed what I could see. Living differently required something more.

Looking back across my own experience of recovery, self-discovery and creative practice, this distinction has become increasingly important. Understanding, emotional change and everyday behaviour do not necessarily move together. We can recognise something long before we know how to respond differently when it happens again.

What changes when we develop—and how do we recognise that change in the life we actually live?

This question became the starting point for a framework I call Stages of Experiential Development.

Where the inquiry began

There were periods of my life when much of my attention went towards coping, keeping moving and finding ways to feel accepted. Creativity offered expression and connection. Activity also helped me avoid experiences I found difficult to meet.

Over time, self-observation, reflective practice, learning and attention to my body helped me notice more of what was happening. I began recognising the relationship between a situation, the meaning I gave it, the feelings that followed and the choices I believed were available.

During a fourteen-month period of private retreat in Egypt, I had sustained time to explore these relationships through awareness practices and creativity.

That period gave me space to notice changes in the quality of my experience: how readily I reacted, how I understood my needs, and how much permission I felt to make choices of my own.

It also raised a question about integration.

A retreat creates particular conditions. What becomes possible there still has to encounter relationships, responsibilities, uncertainty and ordinary demands.

The significance of an insight becomes clearer through what it enables us to live.

This framework grew from those observations. My experience prompted the inquiry; it cannot establish a universal account of human development.

A map of experience

I initially imagined growth as a game of snakes and ladders.

Some encounters opened possibilities. Others brought me back into familiar reactions. The metaphor captured the unevenness, but it also implied that difficulty sends us backwards.

I am less certain of that now.

Returning to an old pattern with greater awareness can be a different experience from living inside it without recognising it. We might notice sooner, ask for support or repair something we would previously have left unresolved.

The stages below describe recognisable ways of experiencing ourselves and participating in life. They offer a proposed movement towards greater choice, creativity and participation, while leaving room for overlap and return.

A person might feel creative in their work, conforming within their family and concerned with survival in their finances. Circumstances matter. So do resources, relationships and the real consequences of acting differently.

A stage describes an experience to investigate. It does not define the whole person.

1. The Contracted Self

“I need less to cope with.”

Experience feels narrowed. Contact, decisions or ordinary demands may feel difficult to meet. We might withdraw, become highly guarded or struggle to imagine anything beyond the immediate discomfort.

The distinction here is limited room to engage. Even recognising what we need can feel difficult.

The first useful movement may involve support, reduced demands or a manageable experience of connection. Expecting immediate openness can overlook what the person is currently carrying.

A question to explore: What would make this moment more manageable?

Related work: John Bowlby’s A Secure Base offers a relational perspective on security and exploration. It provides context for considering support, rather than a test for identifying this stage.

2. The Survival Self

“I have to keep going.”

Here, we remain active, but immediate demands organise much of life. Work, money, care or uncertainty take priority. Rest may feel unavailable, and reflection can become another demand we cannot accommodate.

Unlike contraction, this experience may look highly productive. The difficulty is how little room remains for recovery or a longer view.

Sometimes the necessary change is practical: more income, shared responsibility, safer conditions or reliable help.

A question to explore: What pressure needs to change for me to have more room?

Related work: Research associated with Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir examines how scarcity can occupy attention and constrain cognitive resources. This helps place survival-focused experience within material circumstances.

3. The Conforming Self

“What must I do to remain accepted?”

Belonging becomes closely tied to meeting expectations. We may recognise a preference or disagreement but hesitate to express it because acceptance, security or connection feels at risk.

The central tension is between what we recognise internally and what we feel permitted to show.

Conformity can be protective. Questioning it requires attention to the actual consequences of standing apart.

A question to explore: Where do I agree outwardly while feeling something different within?

Related work: Solomon Asch’s experiments investigated independence and conformity under group pressure. They illuminate one aspect of this tension without explaining every reason people accommodate others.

4. The Conditioned Self

“This is simply how life works.”

Some expectations become so familiar that we stop experiencing them as expectations.

Our assumptions about success, relationships, work or identity may feel like descriptions of reality itself. We can live competently within them while rarely considering alternatives.

The distinction from conformity is subtle. In conformity, we may feel the pressure to fit. In conditioning, the frame itself has become difficult to see.

A question to explore: Which assumptions about my life have I rarely examined?

Related work: Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory describes people as both shaped by social systems and capable of influencing them. This offers a useful perspective on learned patterns and agency.

5. The Undefined Self

“The old description no longer fits.”

We begin questioning familiar identities without yet knowing what will replace them.

New communities, ideas and ways of living can offer possibilities. They can also provide another set of expectations to inhabit before we have examined whether they fit.

“Undefined” names this transitional openness. Uncertainty can make room for exploration, even when it feels uncomfortable.

A question to explore: What am I discovering through experience, and what am I adopting because it promises belonging?

Related work: Jane Loevinger’s work on ego development provides a broader developmental context for thinking about changes in how people organise experience and understand themselves. Her model is distinct from the stages proposed here.

6. The True Self

“I can take my own experience seriously.”

We become more able to recognise needs, consider values and make decisions we can stand behind.

“True” describes a growing quality of honesty and self-authorship. It leaves room for uncertainty, contradiction and revision.

We might set a boundary without needing everyone to approve it, or acknowledge a desire before knowing how to pursue it. Our experience becomes something we can consider alongside evidence, responsibilities and other people’s needs.

A question to explore: What choice can I recognise as mine while remaining open to learning?

Related work: Richard Ryan and Edward Deci’s self-determination theory identifies autonomy, competence and relatedness as important psychological needs. It helps connect self-direction with capability and relationship.

7. The Creative Self

“What could I bring into being?”

Recognising what matters begins to inform experimentation.

We try a different conversation, make something, change a routine or explore a possibility that previously felt unavailable. Creativity becomes a way of participating in circumstances rather than only adapting to them.

The distinctive movement is from recognition into generative action. An idea meets materials, other people, constraints and feedback.

A question to explore: What small experiment could give this possibility a form?

Related work: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow explores deeply engaged activity. It offers one perspective on creative absorption, rather than evidence that creativity occupies a fixed developmental stage.

8. The Emerging Self

“What I am learning is becoming how I live.”

Changes begin connecting across experience.

An insight about boundaries affects a relationship. A creative practice changes how we approach uncertainty. Something we once understood only in reflection becomes available during a difficult conversation.

The emphasis is integration: whether new understanding can inform participation beyond the conditions in which it first appeared.

A question to explore: Where is something I have learned beginning to change my everyday response?

Related work: Ryan and Deci discuss internalisation and integration: processes through which values and motivations become more personally endorsed. These concepts offer a useful connection to the question of living what we understand.

9. The Expanding Self

“How can I participate more fully?”

Greater self-trust creates room for wider engagement.

We may become more willing to encounter difference, revise our understanding and contribute without requiring certainty about the outcome. Development includes how we respond to people and realities beyond ourselves.

Expansion can involve ambition, service, intimacy, collaboration or a quieter life with more deliberate commitments. Its expression will differ between people.

A question to explore: What can I contribute, and what must I remain willing to learn?

Related work: Research on eudaimonic well-being examines meaning, self-realisation and functioning. It provides context for considering fulfilment beyond immediate pleasure or the absence of difficulty.

What helps movement become possible?

Naming an experience is only useful if it helps us respond.

Different experiences call for different kinds of support. Someone facing relentless practical demands may need those demands reduced. Someone questioning inherited expectations may need information, examples or a relationship in which disagreement is possible. Someone with a clear idea may need an opportunity to test it.

This is why reflection, learning and action belong together.

We notice something. We investigate what may be shaping it. We encounter another possibility. We try a response and discover what happens.

The framework still needs to be tested through use. Its value will depend on whether people find it recognisable, whether its distinctions help, and whether it supports useful choices without encouraging people to rank themselves or others.

Somewhere to begin

I developed this map because my own experience changed, and I wanted language for understanding that movement.

Within DIALOGIC, it informs aspects of the Inner World space as an invitation to self-assessment and inquiry. A person can recognise something in a description, question what does not fit and consider what support might help.

The map remains revisable. The person remains more complex than the map.

Perhaps the most useful place to begin is with a question close enough to answer from experience:

Where do I currently have room to choose—and where might I need support to find more?