Why Is It So Hard To Change: The Reality Of Resistance

by Mitch Meyerson and Laurie Ashner
excerpted from Six Keys To Creating The Life You Desire

 

Cindy, 32, left her coaching session all smiles, bubbling over with ideas. She’d had a brainstorm that was going to turn a mediocre future as a personal trainer in a city already replete with trainers into an exciting adventure. She had an idea for creating a special type of exercise manual and software program that was unique.

If there was anyone who seemed motivated to pull it off, Cindy seemed to be the one. She’d spent months looking at her own ambivalence about success. “I always had to perform for my father. We all did. It hurt me more than I knew. I’ve been trying to send out this message—I’m not going to perform for anyone again just to get attention, I’m enough the way I am. But the only one getting the point of the message was me. Other people just thought, Here’s a girl who talks a good game but never really gets past go.

“For thirty two years, my life hasn’t been my own. But I don’t want to do this project to please or impress anyone. I’m not even going to tell my father about it. I want to do it because it’s the kind of thing that would have helped me when I first started getting into shape.”

She was back in a week, more silent and moody. But her enthusiasm reappeared as she discussed her idea some more. “I’m going to make an outline this week,” she said as she left.
When we asked how her project was going a week later, her eyes grew dark. “You know, I’m really not here for career counseling. Can’t we talk about something else?” She was clearly angry. Suddenly she said, “My father thinks it’s a dumb idea, anyway.”

Why had she told her father after vowing not to? She’d gone to the same dry well looking for water in spite of a wealth of insight. What she hadn’t counted on is how much unconscious and even conscious resistance there can be when one goes about changing a pattern.

Kevin was a member of one of our therapy groups who could discuss personality theory from Freud to Kohut to Adler and beyond in incredible depth. He had read more than many Ph.D. candidates preparing a literature review for their dissertations. He was so insightful about other people’s problems that his sharp analysis sometimes brought the conversation of half a dozen people to a complete stop as they pondered, “Wow, why can’t I think like that?” Still, the other group members called him Mr. Yeah-But. When it was his turn to confront his own issues, it often went like this:

Group: Have you thought of calling a friend to talk when you feel so depressed?
Kevin: Yeah, but, I end up feeling worse afterwards, like I’m wallowing in my problems instead of moving forward.
Group: Have you tried to break your goal down into pieces, so you don’t feel so overwhelmed?
Kevin: Yeah, I have a To Do list. I never do it.
Group: Maybe you should call one of us when you feel so stuck.
Kevin: Yeah, but when I call you guys at work, I end up in this whole shame thing about why I’m not working, and why I haven’t found a new job yet.
Group: This sounds like your same old stuff with your mother.
Kevin: Listen, she’s been dead since ’79. Why blame her?

At this point, everyone in the room was frankly bored. Some tried to hide it. Others looked pointedly at their watches and sent invisible hate-bombs at the therapists for letting Kevin talk so long. They resented Kevin for making them relive what life is like in The Land of the Forever Stuck.

Strange, but for Kevin, this was a big moment. Everyone had tried to help and everyone had failed. He felt vindicated as the group moved on to the next person. Here were all of these smart people, and no one could help him.

Alana’s type of resistance can be best summed up in the sentence: “I’m too fragile, don’t push me.” She had many reasons to feel fragile. She had experienced a great deal of loss as a child. Her only surviving parent was a stepmother. She had become so frustrated with her lack of success at college that she’d gone to be tested by an educational therapist. She was shocked to find that she had tested in the superior range verbally, but was a full standard deviation below the mean in performance. The therapist gave her a list of suggestions for overcoming the gap. She hadn’t followed through on any of them.

Like many people, Alana wanted to change her patterns, and knew that change would be the best possible thing for her, but felt too tired, too depressed, too vulnerable to take the necessary action. She worked hard to better understand herself in therapy, and often announced that she was tired of being a victim and acting like a victim. One day she told us that in an argument with her boyfriend he’d accused her of giving off an aura of fragility, when it was really a way of fending off responsibility on him or refusing his requests. “You’re saying, Look at how I’ve suffered; how can you expect any more from me? Then when I give up on you, you tell me I’m treating you like a child and that I’m trying to control you. What do you want from me?”

There are those people who love change, who crave the stimulation of something new and different. But our suspicion is that there are a lot more of us like Cindy, Alana and Kevin wanting to change, but battling resistance.

Cindy’s resistance sprung up on her after she’d made a commitment to make a change. Kevin and Alana had to battle resistance from the start. Their experience validates the point that insight alone is not curative.

We’ve watched numerous clients go through similar scenarios. All three of these clients made headway, in spite of their resistance. They didn’t do it overnight, and they didn’t get rid of it completely, but they all moved forward, and so can you. You can overcome resistance and create the life you desire.

If one of the six keys helped you recognize the origins of your chronic dissatisfaction including its payoffs and its ultimate frustrations, you’ve done half the work. But you’re going to have to battle resistance to change. Change is an easy thing to decide and a difficult thing to do. It’s the daily struggle of change that defeats most people. You have insight. You have motivation. Then you come face to face with one of your old triggers and there’s suddenly a moment of choice. Do you move forward, or fall back into old patterns?

 

Mitch Meyerson and Laurie Ashner are the authors of three self help books including Six Keys To Creating The Life You Desire. If you are interested in breaking through your barriers to success visit www.BreakingFree.com and get notified about our next personal breakthroughs group or work with Mitch privately www.MitchMeyerson.com Feel free to post this article on your website with this resource box included.