D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
December 2009
Who Said Therapy Was Easy?
Why people don't want to change — even though their lives would be so much better — and what to do about it.
By Bina Breitner
It's a conundrum of psychotherapy: Why, when life would be so much better, do people not want to change?
Well, they want to. But many don't. They hold onto old patterns, old wounds, old beliefs and old ways of being. As a therapist, I meet this tendency regularly, and I know it also in myself. Explanations over time have included Freud's "repetition compulsion," descriptions of clients' "resistance," and a whole range of more modern views about neurological patterns in the brain, cognitive habits and ways to approach behavior that can improve a person's happiness. The therapeutic community keeps searching for what can work.
What's going on? Why do we hold onto ways of being that aren't good for us, even when we are offered happier alternatives? The following are a few thoughts — certainly not a complete list, but perhaps helpful.
The old part wants recognition. If you've had a difficult history — whether as a member of your family or in a traumatic situation — you've been in your own personal "war." We all understand that a soldier is focused on survival. He cannot take time to wonder how he feels, to acknowledge his pain, to sympathize, to weep with his sadness or despair. He either continues to fight and defend himself, or he dies. When times are tough for us, we're like that soldier. We have to survive, whatever that means in our own case.
Keep an eye on the parent's mood. Get out of the way when Dad gets abusive. Do whatever it takes to help Mom be more functional and cheerful. Find ways to avoid getting beat up by your sadistic sibling. Help out with the younger children, and try to hold the family together, after a divorce or death of a parent. Deal with hunger when there isn't enough money to buy food. Get on with life after an early sexual-abuse trauma. Whatever is required, we do.
Survival involves neglecting ourselves. Everything out-there requires our attention. We miss the chance to get to know ourselves. So the "neglected self" demands our recognition. "You can't move on without me," it announces. "You have to pay attention to me!"
We want to live today, and our lives demand that we progress, but the neglected self goes on strike. It holds us back. Someone has to listen to what we've been through.
A few years ago, I met a woman who made documentaries for the PBS program "Nova." One of her projects was to listen to war refugees. She couldn't "do" anything for them. She was a filmmaker, not a social worker. But she listened. They desperately needed for someone to hear their stories. We are no different.
We cling to a learned identity. When we've grown up in our family role, we assume that's "who we are." We were treated as independent, on our own and free to do whatever seemed right to us. Therefore, we are independent and free to make our own choices. Or, we served our parents' needs. Therefore, we are helpers and supporters. We had to fight off untrustworthy people. Therefore, we are rebels who are quick to see potential betrayal.
This limited perception of ourselves ought to be easy enough to change, but it isn't, because an identity is our anchor. If we aren't who we grew up knowing ourselves to be, then who are we? We're naked. We don't know how to be anyone else, because we have no practice. So we hold onto the familiar identity.
We need to belong. If we shift our values, our sense of ourselves, and our way of being in the world, we are leaving our usual membership in our family or community. That makes us disloyal, doesn't it? It threatens our sense of belonging. We feel safer when we belong to a group. We know that isolation can make us more vulnerable. We also know a group sometimes punishes the people who depart from it.
Besides, we're unnerved by any deep change. When our lives become less predictable, we lose the reassurance of what is familiar. Think of those charts comparing the stresses of a new job, the loss of a spouse, a move. We want to hold onto what we've "always" known.
So, what can a therapist do in the face of all these legitimate reasons for holding onto old patterns?
The first thing is to acknowledge openly that the reasons are legitimate. If I don't acknowledge the validity of her conflict, a client might feel I don't understand what she is struggling with, and she'd be right. Her pal can advise her to "move on." I have to do better than that. I have to develop a sense of what matters to her in her holding-on.
Once I have grasped what she is protecting by holding on, I can help her understand her own ambivalence. The moment she sees it from outside, she's partially freed from it. For example, if she sees herself as a supportive person, she can consider whether or not that's really who she is, or whether it's primarily the role she was required to assume. Her belief about herself is defined, so she can ask herself whether it's accurate.
Along with the recognition of what she's protecting, she can also see how deeply important it is (to belong, to maintain an identity, to be loyal, to attend to whatever feelings of her own she cast aside in order to cope with stressful circumstances). She begins to understand how difficult the therapeutic work is. Anything that important isn't going to be easy to change.
What can the client do? After admitting the difficulty of her challenge, she can offer to develop a relationship with the part of her that wants to hold back. It can't be forced. It has to trust her. (I have responsibility for being respectful and compassionate toward the part of her that wants to hold back, because I'm her model for relating to that part of herself. I show her how, so she can become trustworthy.)
Therapists often call this process "re-parenting." The client provides for herself or himself what she should have had all along: someone who notices and cares about how she feels, what she needs, and what will help her navigate the world in productive ways.
Without that relationship, the adult client and the holding-on part of her will be at a stand-off. They'll be enemies, and they both lose. The holding-on part loses, because its efforts to protect itself never get respected or honored. All that energy spent on belonging or surviving or maintaining an identity is taken for granted and then dismissed. At the same time, the current self loses, because it stays caught up in the struggle with what holds it back.
If, on the other hand, they can become friends, everybody wins. The holding-on part is finally heard and comprehended. Its loneliness is eased, as is the fearfulness of change and the need to cling to something outmoded. The current self benefits from having a new partner in life, a part of herself with which she can talk, learn and grow.
There are some fortunate people who have had good-enough homes and whose decision to seek therapy, if they ever do so, is based on a wish to learn more or to work through a particular challenge. They don't need to reconfigure their sense of themselves, or change in any other deep way, in order to live fully in the present. For too many others, the choice is whether to take their pain up close for a while, and start to feel better, or to keep it at a distance and struggle with it, openly or secretly, for the rest of their lives.
Bina Breitner, MA, is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) in private practice in Silver City. She can be reached at 538-4380.