From Change Fatigue to Adaptive Thinking: A Coaching Psychology Perspective

Change is often described as something we move through. Something changes, we adjust, and eventually things settle into a new normal.

But what happens when they don’t?

For many people, change is no longer an occasional disruption to working life. New technologies are introduced, roles evolve, organizations restructure, priorities shift, and expectations change. Before one period of adjustment has finished, another change is already underway.

Recent research suggests this is taking a toll. Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends research found that one-third of workers had experienced 15 major changes in the previous year alone. Across its global research, 68% reported decreased wellbeing as a result of workplace change, while 60% reported increased workloads and 58% described feeling less relevant or left behind.

It’s perhaps not surprising that change fatigue has become an increasingly familiar term.

Change fatigue doesn’t necessarily mean someone is resistant to change. We can understand why change is needed, recognize its potential benefits, and still feel tired by the amount of adjustment being asked of us. For example, when organizational changes keep coming, it can become harder for people to maintain the same level of energy and engagement with their work.

This raises an interesting question for coaching. If we can’t always reduce the amount of change someone is experiencing, how can we help them develop more flexible ways of thinking and responding to it?

When change reduces predictability

We like to understand what’s happening, anticipate what’s coming next, and have some sense of what to expect.

During periods of repeated change, much of that predictability can disappear.

We may not know whether a role will look the same in six months, how new technology will affect the way we work, whether another organizational change is coming, or whether a decision we’re making now will still make sense a year from now.

This lack of predictability can increase stress and place greater demands on our psychological resources as we continually assess what is changing, what it might mean, and how we need to respond.

A natural response is to look for more information or try to anticipate what will happen next. Sometimes that’s entirely sensible. But when change is ongoing, we may have to make decisions and move forward without having the full picture.

This is where coaching psychology can offer a different perspective. Rather than trying to predict or control what happens next, coaching can help someone explore how they are thinking and responding as circumstances change.

From coping with change to thinking adaptively

Adaptive thinking is our ability to adjust how we interpret and respond to circumstances as they change. Cognitive flexibility is an important part of this, allowing us to revise our thinking as circumstances develop.

This isn’t about welcoming every change or deciding that something difficult is actually positive. There may be very good reasons to dislike a change. Something important may have been lost, or a decision may genuinely create additional pressure or conflict with someone’s values.

Adaptive thinking leaves room for that while also recognizing that our first interpretation of a situation may not be the only one available to us.

Consider the difference between:

I don’t know what’s going to happen.

and:

I don’t know what’s going to happen, so I can’t make a decision yet.

The first describes uncertainty. The second adds a conclusion about what that uncertainty means.

That distinction gives us something useful to explore in coaching.

Reframing without putting a positive spin on things

Reframing is sometimes misunderstood as finding a more positive way to look at something. Used well in coaching, it is more nuanced than that.

It invites us to examine the frame through which we’re currently viewing a situation. What are we focusing on? What assumptions are we making? Could there be another way of understanding what is happening?

Someone experiencing a significant change at work might initially focus on everything that is outside their control. Coaching isn’t going to put those things back within their control, but it can help them distinguish between what they cannot influence and where they still have choices.

Similarly, a client may interpret an unexpected change as evidence that a carefully considered career plan has failed. Rather than trying to persuade them otherwise, a coach might help them become curious about the assumption behind that conclusion.

Does a plan changing mean it has failed? What might be possible now that wasn’t part of the original plan?

The intention isn’t to replace a “negative” thought with a positive one. It is to loosen thinking that has become fixed enough to restrict the person’s available responses.

Creating more psychological room

Under pressure, our thinking can narrow.

We might become attached to a particular outcome or start thinking in either/or terms. There is a right decision and a wrong one. The change will either work or it won’t. We need to stay or leave. We need to know what comes next before deciding what to do.

Cognitive flexibility can help us hold more than one possibility for a little longer.

That can be particularly useful during periods of change because there may genuinely be no single right answer. What makes sense now may need to be reconsidered as circumstances develop.

Coaching gives us somewhere to examine those possibilities without immediately needing to resolve them.

Instead of asking, What’s the right decision?, we might explore, What makes sense based on what you know today?

Instead of, How do I get back to where I was?, the conversation might become, What do I want to take forward from what I’ve learned?

At other times, the shift might be from trying to predict what will happen next to considering how someone wants to respond as things develop.

Adapting doesn’t mean accepting everything

There is an important caution here. Helping people think more adaptively shouldn’t become another way of placing responsibility for difficult working conditions entirely on the individual.

Sometimes the environment needs to change.

Excessive workloads, poorly managed organizational change, unclear expectations, or repeated restructures can’t be reframed away. Coaches need to recognize when a client’s response makes complete sense within the context they are working in.

Adaptive thinking doesn’t require us to tolerate everything. It gives us more options for how we respond.

That could involve adapting to a new situation, setting a boundary, challenging something, changing direction, or deciding that an environment no longer works for us.

What positive psychology coaching can contribute

Positive psychology coaching has a useful role to play here, although this can sometimes be misunderstood as encouraging people to “think positively.”

Positive psychology coaching draws on psychological theory and research to understand what supports people to function well, develop, and make meaningful changes in their lives.

In the context of change, we might explore existing strengths and resources, become more aware of patterns in our thinking, use reframing thoughtfully, or consider where we still have some agency as circumstances shift.

Solution-focused approaches can also help shift attention away from trying to anticipate or control what happens next and toward identifying what might be useful now.

These are some of the approaches we explore in AoCP’s Accelerated Certification in Positive Psychology Coaching, particularly how coaches can draw on psychological theory and evidence to help clients develop more flexible and adaptive ways of thinking.

As the pace and frequency of change increase, developing that adaptability may become increasingly important.

We may need to move beyond asking how we help people cope with each new change as it arrives. A more useful question might be how we help people develop ways of thinking that can adapt as their circumstances do.