The Mountain Is You

WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF ADJUSTMENT SHOCK?
Adjustment shock can manifest as simply an increase in anxiety or
irritability. However, it is often more complex than that.
Adjustment shock often comes across as hypervigilance.
If you make financial gains, your mind immediately shifts to what could
potentially derail your progress, a big bill that could come up, or the loss of
the job you just got.
If you have a new, happy relationship, you could become paranoid about
infidelity or lies.
Adjustment shock can bring to light unconscious attachments and beliefs. If
you are someone who was raised to think that wealthy people are morally
corrupt, you are going to resist having more money. If you wanted to be
famous to be more loved, you are going to resist public success, because
“famous” people are often more criticized and disliked than the average
person.
Adjustment shock can bring feelings of intense fear. This is because when
we attain something we very much care about or have worked toward for a

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long time, our instinct can be to shield ourselves from the potential loss of it
by putting up walls and desensitizing ourselves to the experience.
We often resist most deeply the things that we want most.
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BRIANNA WIEST
THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU
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This is because of adjustment shock, though we don’t always know that’s
what’s causing the resistance.
It is scary to receive everything we want, because it forces us to shift out of
a survivalist, fear-based mindset and into a more stabilized one. If all we are
accustomed to is doing what we need to do to survive, we are then
confronted with the next phases of our self-actualization.
If we are no longer worried about basic survival, our minds are free to turn
to the bigger questions in life: What is our purpose? Have we lived
meaningfully? Are we who we want to be?
We often think of big achievements as a “get out of life easier” card. They
rarely are that. In fact, the opposite tends to happen. They level us up, force
us into greater responsibilities, to think more deeply about big issues, to
question ourselves and what we previously knew to be true.
Big achievements actually pressure us to become increas-ingly better
versions of ourselves. This is a net positive for our lives but can be just as
uncomfortable as struggling was, if not more so.