People who come to see me are usually unhappy with parts of their lives (or parts of themselves) and want to change them. Most of them have pretty good ideas about what they would like to change: work, partner, living situation, health, social life, habits. They start very enthusiastically telling me all about troubles, problems, relationship issues. It usually takes a little while until they learn that, unfortunately, any change won’t come just because they want it to come; that their partner or the way they live won’t magically transform just because they want it to transform, that it is a process that requires some work (i.e. changes) on their side.
This is usually the turning point of therapy; some people go and never come back, some keep coming but do nothing more than sitting and talking about change for an hour once or twice a month; some start doing something…
So called “personal growth process” is difficult and very rewarding. Difficult, because it requires stepping out of routine, of a comfort zone that keeps us safe and cozy and sometimes miserable in an old, known way. Rewarding, because it allows us to take charge of ourselves, our frame of mind, emotions, reactions, being in the world.
It is a process, not a one day challenge that makes your life change dramatically and for good. A process that shows you how to react differently with the same partner, same work, same life circumstances and how to feel differently in exactly the same moment that used to make you angry, sad, or incredibly unhappy.
We have a good reason to feel the way we feel and react the way we react. We learned how to see the world and ourselves in the world way before we could comprehend it. We learned it from our parents (caregivers), from the way they respond to us, the way it made us feel.
The first years of our lives are all about survival: we have to be cared for by adults because we cannot survive by ourselves. Therefore we would do everything to be accepted, loved, well cared for. This “everything” may include behaving in a specific way, disregarding our own feelings and needs, accepting things that would normally feel unacceptable. We have to make sure that our caregivers are pleased with who we are and keep us well fed, warm, and safe. Even if pleasing them doesn’t really feel good to us. This is the price we have to pay to survive.
At some point, we may not even know who we are anymore: we think that what we do is “normal”, because we have always done it this way, before we can even remember. If we are lucky to have parents (caregivers) who respect us, our needs, personality, feelings, we may become well adjusted, well functioning adults. However, some parents are not so skilled with the above. After all, you didn’t come to this world with a manual. Maybe the things they did or didn’t do for you, were not the best. Maybe they taught you that being sad or feeling angry wasn’t acceptable and you learned to hide those feelings in order to please them. Maybe they taught you things, because they were taught the same by their parents? Maybe they truly believed that that was the best way?
Maybe they had another good reason to teach you to do things in a specific way.
Whatever it was, this good reason might not serve you well anymore and you might need to learn to do things differently to see different results.
We all know the definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” (misattributed to Albert Einstein and in fact created by a writer Rita Mae Brown). We know it but we don’t want to apply it to ourselves when the moment comes. We know it and somehow we believe that we can get around it. Why?
Change is scary and uncomfortable because we feel that we “lose” something without knowing gains. We can imagine our future, but there is no guarantee that it will come. We can imagine how we would like to feel, but we have no idea if we are going to like the feeling. What we know now might be boring, annoying, and unsatisfying, but it’s familiar and comfortable, like an old shoe. It is much easier to feel the old misery rather than create a new one. We can complain about the “same old same old”, we can dream about changes as long as we want, we can blame everybody around us for our problems without really doing anything new. And this, quite often, is enough.
Yet, you don’t grow if you don’t take risks: risk of doing something differently, risk of losing your comfort and knowing the outcome, risk of taking responsibility for the new outcome, risk of making mistakes, of having to try again. You have to decide if you are willing to take this risk. If the answer is no, don’t be surprised that you are arguing with your partner about the same thing over and over again, don’t get upset about how much your job sucks, or why you are alone again on the weekend. Don’t complain: things won’t magically transform just because you want them to transform.
By Eva Sadowski
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