The In-Between Stages of Awakening Nobody Warned You About

Written by Alice Patterson, Holistic Health Practitioner

Alice Patterson is a holistic health practitioner, mindfulness and meditation guide, and creator of the RISE method, blending reflexology, Reiki, and energy healing helping people reconnect with their natural state of well-being for over two decades.

---

Here's the thing about the hangover groans that sit in-between stages of personal growth. There's no ceremony, no notification, no gentle tap on the shoulder that says, "Congratulations, you are now officially waking up. Please expect some turbulence." They just show up.

Once you see, you can't unsee

That's the thing nobody quite warns you about when you begin to wake up.

You start to become aware. You read something, or feel something, or have a conversation that shifts something quietly inside you. A door opens. Light gets in and for a beautiful, hopeful moment, you think, "Oh. I think I'm getting this."

Then your husband, wife, child, or roomie doesn't do the dishes. You snap. Like you always have. Before you even saw it coming, the words are already out and the energy in the room has changed. And there you are, standing in your kitchen, fully aware of exactly what just happened. Knowing precisely where that reaction came from, and feeling like you've somehow failed the entire journey of personal growth in one spectacularly domestic moment. Ugh.

Welcome to The Space Between. Population: everyone who has ever started waking up. Which, if you're reading this, is almost certainly also you. Pull up a chair. We have coffee.

The hangover effect

Here's what's actually happening, and I want you to hear this clearly because it matters enormously: You have not slipped backwards. You are hungover. There is a massive difference. A hangover isn't about what happened last night. It's about what's leftover from before.

Think about it. The negative effects of a big night don't show up during the party. They show up the morning after, when you're trying to do better. When you're attempting to be a functioning, reasonable human who makes good choices and responds to things with grace and maturity. That's exactly when the residue arrives. Uninvited. Inconvenient. Deeply unimpressed by your growth journey.

Your old autopilot reactions are the alcohol. And the hangover? It’s what happens when they surface in a version of you that's actively waking up.

The discomfort you're feeling right now, the frustration, the "I KNOW better than this," the apologizing in the kitchen with minimal dignity, is not evidence of failure.

It is evidence that something in you has genuinely changed. You just haven't fully metabolized it yet. Give yourself the same grace you'd give your body after a big night. Water. Rest. Kindness.

Why I celebrate the dish incidents

When someone comes to me frustrated, and they come to me often, trust me, the dishes are a very common culprit, apparently doing a lot of heavy lifting in the personal growth space, my response probably surprises them. I celebrate it with them!

Not in a patronizing, "gold star for you!" kind of way, but in a genuine, heartfelt, "Do you understand what just happened there?" kind of way. Because here's what I want them, and you, to understand: The fact that you noticed is the waking up. The fact that you apologized is you choosing differently. The fact that you're sitting here frustrated with yourself instead of completely unconscious to the whole thing, that is the most beautiful kind of progress there is.

Frustration at yourself for reacting? That's not a setback. That's your awareness having opinions. Which means your awareness is home. That's the whole point. Here's what I've watched happen, over and over, with people in this space: It softens.

Every single time it happens, and you notice, it softens. The gap between the reaction and the awareness gets smaller. What used to take a week to recognize takes a day. What took a day takes an hour. What took an hour takes a breath.

One day, not every day, but one day, you'll feel the familiar ripple of not feeling heard or appreciated, and instead of the snap, there will be a pause. Just a small one. Just enough space to choose. That pause? That tiny, barely perceptible pause? That's shifted perspective.

You are people too

Here's something I say to almost everyone at some point in this stage. Usually when they're sitting across from me, mid-list of all the ways they've let themselves down. You are a people too.

We are remarkably good at extending compassion, patience, and non-judgment to the people we love. We would never speak to a close friend the way we speak to ourselves in the aftermath of a kitchen moment. We would never look someone we care about in the eye and tell them that one snap means they've failed everything. Yet, there we are. Doing exactly that to ourselves, daily.

So the next time you catch yourself mid-self-judgment, pause. And ask honestly: Would I say this to someone I love? If the answer is no, and it will be no, you've just found your next move. Speak to yourself accordingly. You are, after all, a people.

The teeter-totter is not broken

This stage feels like a teeter-totter. Up into awareness, back into old patterns. Forward into the new perspective, sliding back into the familiar one. It can feel like an amusement ride nobody quite bought a ticket for. Yet here you are, riding it anyway. Honestly? Brave.

But here's what I need you to know about teeter-totters. They are supposed to move. That's literally their whole thing. A teeter-totter that doesn't move is just a plank. And nobody is growing on a plank.

The movement isn't the problem. The movement IS the healing. Each time you come back to awareness, each hangover, each kitchen moment, each apologetic cup of coffee, the old pattern has a little less grip than it did before.

You are not going in circles. You are in a spiral and every loop brings you slightly closer to the center. To peace.

Notice the noticings

The hangover has a sneaky way of making us blind to our own progress. We remember every slip and conveniently forget every single win. So we fix that.

Start keeping a tiny, private record. Not a formal journal. Not a practice that requires discipline or a beautiful notebook or a dedicated app or any kind of commitment whatsoever. Just a note. On your phone, on a scrap of paper, on the back of a receipt from the coffee you absolutely needed that morning.

Every time you notice, after the fact, in the moment, even mid-spiral, write it down. One line. "I noticed faster today." "I caught it before I said it." "I apologized without turning it into a whole thing." "I saw the pattern and chose differently."

Over time, this record becomes something quietly extraordinary. Evidence. Undeniable, in your own words, that you are moving. That the spiral is tightening. That the gap is closing.

People often need to be reminded how far they've come. This is how you do it for yourself. No one else needs to see it. It's just for you. A little private collection of proof that you are becoming exactly who you're trying to be.

Being, not doing

The hangover stage is loud inside the head. The inner critic has a lot to say. The replay of what went wrong runs on a comfortable loop. And all of that thinking, processing, and reviewing keeps us firmly in our heads and completely out of the present moment, which is incidentally the only place any of this actually shifts.

So here's something simple. Genuinely simple. No retreats required. At any point during the day, mid-spiral, mid-frustration, mid-doing absolutely anything, stop. Close your eyes. Take three slow, deliberate breaths. And then, instead of continuing to think, turn your attention to your other senses. What can you smell? What can you feel against your skin? What sounds exist around you that you weren't hearing a moment ago?

Then open your eyes. Slowly. Notice how much quieter the mind became, even briefly. Notice that you are here. Present. Not in the kitchen moment from this morning or the imagined one from tomorrow.

Just here. Right now. Which is, as it turns out, the only place one can actually wake up. Practice this often. It costs nothing, takes about forty-five seconds, and works every single time. You're welcome.

Let’s celebrate

Maybe you arrived at this article fresh from a kitchen moment, still holding the coffee, still a little sheepish. Maybe you arrived from somewhere quieter, that persistent whisper of "there's more" following you around like a very patient golden retriever. Maybe you arrived somewhere in between, which, funnily enough, is exactly where this whole article lives. Either way. You're here and that’s worth celebrating.

Because here's the thing about the in-between stages that nobody warns you about. They don't announce themselves. There's no ceremony, no notification, no gentle tap on the shoulder that says, "Congratulations, you are now officially waking up. Please expect some turbulence." They just show up. In your kitchen. In the grip of everything you've built. In the quiet moments when life looks right but something in you is already reaching for what's next. Without a map, they feel an awful lot like failure.

They aren't failures. They are evidence. Evidence that something in you has genuinely, irrevocably shifted. Evidence that you are no longer sleepwalking through your own life. Evidence that the version of you who started this journey and the version of you reading these words right now are not the same person.

That's not a small thing. That's actually everything. So if you're in a hangover, raise your coffee cup. You noticed. You're here. You're returning. If you're in the unfolding, uncurl one finger at a time. You built something real, and now space is opening up for peace to appear.

Both of those are worth celebrating. Loudly. With good coffee and zero apologies. Nobody warned you about the in-between. But now you know, and knowing changes everything.

Wanting more?

If coffee with me, over Zoom, with personalized guidance through the morning after blahs sounds like a good time, my one-on-one guidance sessions may be helpful. The door is always open.

A note on finding me: You are unlikely to find me on social media. Not because I'm hiding, but because I made a quiet, intentional choice to step out of the attention economy. My website is where I live online, where I share, and where the door is genuinely always open. No algorithm required.

Visit my website for more info!

Read more from Alice Patterson

---

Alice Patterson, Holistic Health Practitioner

Alice Patterson calls herself a Peace Insurgent, and after two decades of holistic health practice, mindfulness teaching, and helping people find the quiet beneath the chaos, she has earned the title. She is the creator of the RISE healing method, the Allow Peace framework, the Safe Space Holding practitioner training, and a mindfulness workbook series called The Space Within Us. She is also an emerging speaker, a storyteller, and your all-natural pain reliever. No prescription required.