What happens when so many parts of your life change that the floor drops out beneath you?

What happens when⁠—on the other side of all that change⁠—you barely recognize who you were before?

Are your ideas about who you are preventing you from being who you actually are?

A meaning vacuum is a period when your old sources of meaning and identity have stopped working, but the new ones haven’t formed yet. It’s a psychological in-between: a time of lostness and untetheredness. And while it’s uncomfortable, it’s also normal—because the frameworks around which you organized your sense of self have disappeared.

Misalignment burnout⁠ isn’t just a crisis of work, but a deeper crisis of meaning, identity, and values. In this article, we’ll hear firsthand stories from folks who have experienced it⁠; explore how, the current political moment, we may be feeling it more than ever; and share the three steps we can take to begin finding alignment and healing.