There’s a particular kind of exhaustion I see in my therapy practice that doesn’t fit the usual categories. People come in, sit down, and say some version of: “I’m so tired, but I can’t figure out why. Nothing’s even happening.”

That last part is the giveaway. Nothing’s happening – and that’s precisely the problem.

We talk about burnout from overwork, stress from crisis, fatigue from trauma. But we rarely acknowledge the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from being stuck in between. From waiting. From existing in a state of permanent maybe.
Your nervous system is working overtime, and there’s nothing dramatic to show for it.

The Anthropology of Being Stuck
The term “liminal” comes from anthropology, describing thresholds and transitions. Anthropologists originally used it for rites of passage – those ceremonial moments when someone is no longer who they were but not yet who they’ll become. The bride before the wedding. The graduate before the diploma. The initiate before the ritual completes.

The key feature? These transitions had endpoints. Clear beginnings, clear endings, community support throughout.

Modern liminal space has none of that structure. You’re job searching with no timeline. Your relationship is ending in slow motion. You’re caring for someone who’s declining without knowing how long. You’re planning to leave but the exit door won’t open yet.

You’re in the hallway, and nobody knows when it ends. Including you.

What Prolonged Uncertainty Does to Your Body
The exhaustion shows up in specific ways. Someone applying to jobs tells me they’re waking up at 3am, mind racing through interview scenarios that haven’t been scheduled yet. Another person describes sitting in team meetings, contributing to projects they hope to abandon in three months, feeling like an imposter for reasons they can’t articulate.

There’s the person whose relationship has been “ending” for eight months, who can’t move forward but can’t go back. The adult child managing a parent’s slow decline, living in a constant state of anticipatory grief with no clear timeline.

The common thread? They all feel guilty about their exhaustion. Because externally, nothing looks wrong. They still have the job. The relationship technically still exists. Their parent is still here.

But internally, they’re navigating sustained ambiguity while maintaining the appearance of normalcy. And that split is corrosive.

Why Ambiguity Is Physiologically Expensive
Your nervous system evolved to handle threats with clear resolution. Danger appears, you respond, the danger passes, your system recovers. This cycle is how we’re designed to function.

Liminal space breaks that cycle. There’s no acute threat, but there’s no safety either. Just sustained uncertainty. Your body doesn’t know whether to activate or stand down, so it does both – staying vigilant while depleting resources meant for actual emergencies.

Clinically, this shows up as chronic activation without recovery. Think of it as running your body’s emergency systems at 40% capacity indefinitely. Not enough to trigger crisis protocols, but enough to slowly drain you. Sleep becomes less restorative. Decision-making gets harder. Small frustrations feel enormous.

It’s physiologically expensive to maintain two contradictory realities. And most people are doing it while also trying to perform competence, enthusiasm, and stability for everyone watching.

The Performance of Presence While Planning Your Exit
The job search scenario illustrates this particularly well. You’re actively trying to leave, but you still have to show up. Not just physically – you have to show up emotionally invested enough that nobody suspects you’re one foot out the door.
So you contribute to the Q4 planning meeting. You volunteer for the committee. You engage with next year’s strategy as if you’ll be there to see it through. Because if you don’t, questions arise. Relationships shift. References become complicated.

Meanwhile, you’re customizing cover letters at night. Prepping for interviews during lunch breaks. Calculating how many months of savings you have if nothing pans out. Refreshing your email obsessively for responses that mostly don’t come.

The cognitive load isn’t just about managing two realities – it’s about actively concealing one reality while performing investment in the other. That’s not multitasking. That’s sustained deception, even when it’s necessary, even when everyone does it.

Your body registers this split. You can’t fully commit to staying because you’re trying to leave. You can’t fully invest in leaving because you’re still stuck here. And that unresolved tension has to go somewhere. Usually, it goes into exhaustion.

The Paradox of Feeling Everything and Nothing
Here’s the emotional paradox of liminal space:
You’re grieving, but the loss hasn’t happened yet, so the grief feels premature. You’re hopeful, but nothing’s confirmed, so hope feels foolish. You’re angry, but you need to maintain relationships, so the anger gets suppressed. You’re tired, but you can’t rest because rest requires resolution.

Every emotion exists in a state of “yes, but.”

Yes, I’m leaving, but I’m still here. Yes, I care, but I’m also done. Yes, I’m trying, but I’ve already given up. These aren’t contradictions you can resolve through logic or positive thinking. They’re structural realities of being in transition without a clear endpoint.

Your nervous system doesn’t have a protocol for this. It’s designed to process emotions that have somewhere to go – grief that leads to acceptance, anger that leads to boundary-setting, hope that leads to action. But in liminal space, the emotions just accumulate. They can’t fully resolve because the situation hasn’t resolved.

Why “At Least You Still Have a Job” Misses the Point
People mean well when they offer perspective. “At least you’re employed while you search.” “It could be worse.” “Be grateful for what you have.”
And they’re not wrong, exactly. Yes, having a job while searching is materially better than not having one. But that observation doesn’t address the exhaustion. It just adds guilt to it.

Because now you’re tired AND you feel like you shouldn’t be. You’re struggling AND you feel ungrateful for acknowledging it. The comparison to worse scenarios doesn’t give your nervous system permission to stand down. It just adds another layer of “you should be handling this better.”
What gets lost in these well-meaning comments is that liminal exhaustion isn’t about the circumstances being objectively terrible. It’s about the sustained physiological cost of managing ambiguity while performing certainty. That cost exists regardless of whether your situation “could be worse.”

When Liminal Space Isn’t a Choice
There’s an important distinction between choosing to be in transition and being trapped in it.

Some people are strategically job searching – they have options, timeline, leverage. That’s still exhausting, but it’s different from the person who’s been applying for eight months with minimal responses, watching their savings dwindle, unable to leave a toxic environment because the alternatives aren’t materializing.

That version of liminal space removes the element of control that makes ambiguity bearable. You can’t force companies to call back. You can’t manipulate the job market into cooperating. You can’t will yourself into a new situation through positive thinking or better strategy.

All you can do is keep trying. Keep showing up. Keep performing competence in a role you’re desperate to leave. While the timeline extends indefinitely and your nervous system pays the price for uncertainty you didn’t choose and can’t resolve.

This is where liminal exhaustion becomes particularly brutal – when you’re working as hard as you can to exit the hallway, and the hallway just won’t let you out.

Your Exhaustion Is Real (And You’re Not Broken)
Listen. If you’re in liminal space right now (job searching while employed, watching a relationship slowly end, caring for someone who’s declining, waiting on test results, planning an exit you can’t execute yet), I need you to hear this:

Your exhaustion is legitimate. Full stop.

This isn’t a character flaw. This isn’t you being “unable to handle it.” This isn’t evidence that you’re weak or ungrateful or dramatic.

You’re navigating sustained ambiguity while maintaining performance. That’s genuinely one of the hardest things we ask human beings to do.
Your nervous system is designed to respond to threats and then recover. Fight, flight, rest. Threat, response, resolution. But liminal space doesn’t give you that arc. It gives you constant low-grade threat with no resolution. Vigilance without rest. Holding contradictory realities simultaneously: I’m here but I’m leaving, I’m present but I’m gone, I care but I don’t, I’m trying but I’ve already quit.
That cognitive and emotional dissonance creates tremendous strain. Your body isn’t being dramatic. It’s responding exactly as it should to an impossible situation.

What Actually Helps (Not Toxic Positivity, I Promise)
Okay, so what actually helps when you’re stuck in the eternal hallway? Not “just be grateful.” Not “everything happens for a reason.” Those platitudes don’t touch the reality of what your nervous system is doing. They’re the emotional equivalent of putting a band-aid on a broken leg.
Here’s what actually works:

Name it out loud. Say the words: “I’m in liminal space and it’s exhausting.” Just naming it takes some of the power away. You’re not broken. You’re having a normal response to an abnormal situation.

Stop apologizing for being tired. You don’t need permission to be exhausted by uncertainty. You don’t have to justify why the waiting is hard. It just is. Your nervous system doesn’t care about your productivity metrics.

Create small pockets of certainty. Your morning coffee ritual. Your evening walk. The exact route you take to work. The things you can control when everything else is chaos. These anchors matter more than you think. They’re life rafts in the ambiguity.

Stop performing emotional investment in things you’re leaving. This is important. You don’t owe full commitment to something you’re exiting. You’re not being fake or dishonest. You’re protecting your energy for what comes next. It’s called strategic disengagement, and it’s a survival skill, not a moral failing.

Rest now. Not later. Now. You don’t have to wait until you have the new job to rest. You don’t have to wait until the situation resolves to take care of yourself. Rest in the mess. Rest in the middle. Rest in the uncertainty. Your body needs you to stop waiting for permission.

The Hallway Eventually Ends (Even When It Doesn’t Feel Like It)
I’m not going to lie to you and say it’ll all work out perfectly. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll work out in ways you didn’t expect or particularly want. I don’t know your specific outcome, and anyone who claims they do is selling something.

What I do know: liminal space doesn’t last forever. Even when it feels endless. Even when you can’t see the exit. Even when the hallway stretches so far you’ve forgotten what actual rooms look like.

Eventually, something shifts. You land somewhere. You leave. You arrive. The in-between ends.

But until then? It’s completely okay to be exhausted by it. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing something incredibly hard, and your body is keeping track.

You’re Not Alone in the Hallway
As a trauma therapist, I work with people in liminal space constantly. Job searching while employed. Leaving toxic workplaces. Executives planning their exit while still managing teams. Caring for aging parents. Waiting for test results. Stuck in the hallway between what was and what’s next.
So if you’re there right now, I see you. Your exhaustion is valid. You’re not alone.
If you’re a practitioner experiencing this (whether your group practice is imploding, you’re navigating a partnership dissolution, or you’re just waiting for something to shift), you don’t have to perform gratitude for being stuck. You’re allowed to be exhausted by it. You’re allowed to acknowledge that the in-between is hard, even when you chose it, even when it’ll be worth it, even when you know it’s temporary.
Your nervous system doesn’t care about your long-term plan. It cares about right now. And right now is hard.

Working Through It: EMDR Intensives
In my EMDR Intensives, we work on the trauma responses that keep your nervous system stuck in activation mode. We heal the patterns that make you feel like you have to keep performing even when you’re suffering. We rebuild your capacity to trust yourself: to know when it’s time to leave, to honor your exhaustion instead of pushing through it, to validate your own experience without waiting for external permission.

If you’d like to learn more about EMDR Intensives and how they can help you navigate liminal space, reach out at info@fivestonestherapy.com.