Sometimes a person reaches a stage where things that once seemed valuable suddenly become meaningless. Friends, goals, hobbies - all lose their color. This state often creates a fear of "I have changed."
Neuroscience describes a developmental mechanism called "synaptic pruning." This process, starting from childhood and adolescence, involves the brain weakening rarely used neural connections and strengthening more efficient networks. The brain works on a functional, not emotional, principle: unused pathways are gradually withdrawn.
Many people experience this period as follows: internal changes begin, perspective broadens, old behavioral patterns stop working as before. Then a strange sense of emptiness follows.
Relationships that once felt like home seem cold. Long-pursued goals become meaningless, even previously enjoyable hobbies lose their effect.
People often misinterpret this: as depression, loss of motivation, or "losing oneself." However, this feeling is not always a clinical problem. Sometimes it's a transitional phase related to the brain adapting to new conditions and restructuring priorities.
Here, another observation related to attention and motivation systems emerges. For example, in ADHD, some people do not experience success as "rewarding" as expected, linked to difficulties in executive functions and the dopamine-based reward system working differently.
In such cases, starting, continuing, and completing a task may require high mental effort and internal tension. Procrastination, easy distraction, and difficulty in time management further complicate this process.
As a result, the feeling upon task completion is often relief that "it's finally over" rather than success. This can make it difficult for the person to internally reward the achieved result. Added self-criticism and feelings of inadequacy further weaken the emotional impact of success.
But the important point is that these observations do not manifest equally or with the same intensity in everyone and are related to individual neurobiological differences.
Some metaphorical approaches explain this as "a change in internal frequency": old connections may not align with new conditions. The brain gradually pushes aside what doesn't fit.
This feeling is often experienced as emptiness. Something seems wrong. Yet what is happening is the old structure giving way to a new one.
People usually try to bring back this emptiness - they want to return to old relationships, old goals, old feelings. But the nervous system no longer works in the previous configuration.
Perhaps the issue is not losing something. It's simply the brain pushing aside a version that no longer works.
And the question changes: have we truly changed, or just the brain's operating model changed?
