Category: Change

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Stages in Change

  • Sometimes we can’t see “change” because we aren’t trained to recognize how it happens. Change happens in stages we don’t necessarily perceive as the process of growing.
  • We can get frustrated with ourselves or others, and come to believe change isn’t possible, when really we just don’t know how to appreciate evidence that change is underway.
  • Because many of us are outcomes focused, we can get discouraged and give up in the process of making changes without awareness that we’ve actually made progress and are well on our way.
  • If we can shift our expectations for how change happens, we can be more patient with ourselves, others, and the process. That patience becomes a necessary ingredient for change because it prevents us from giving up.
  • We can think of changing as a multi-stage process that includes awareness, intentionality, and action. Building momentum and consistency for each of these stages takes time and repetition.
  • One of the major reasons people don’t start therapy (or drop out of it), is because they are stuck somewhere in these stages of change – or – because they aren’t seeing their own progress.
  • My entire job is centered around the belief that people *can* change. Part of what makes it possible for me to help people grow is understanding these stages of change and how they present themselves.
  • Stage 1: Was in situation, disliked the outcome, felt the outcome was completely unrelated to me and moved on. In stage one we can think of ourselves as externalized – perhaps without insight. We are unmotivated to participate in change, because we are unaware we are part of the problematic dynamic.
  • Stage 2: Was in a situation, disliked the outcome, and wondered if I was somehow different if that would have effected things. May have had my own ideas (or suggestions from others that I buy into) for how I could have been different. Here, we have more insight and more of an internalized stance, but no sense of motivation or responsibility.
  • See the rest of the post for a breakdown of the stages of change, and comments and embedded links for troubleshooting tips.  Know these stages aren’t linear – we can bounce around in these stages, be in different stages for different areas in our life, and skip and/or combine stages. How “challenging” a stage is will depend on our particular personality and history.

Stage 3: Was in a situation, disliked what was happening, and felt aware (either because of my own reflection or a tip from someone else) that I could try something different, but didn’t feel motivated to. In stage three we have built enough insight to accept something about us could change, but we aren’t yet feeling able to / willing to / capable of change.

Stage 4: Was in a situation, realized I could have done something differently, and felt motivated to participate in creating a different outcome moving forward. This is when most of us think change starts. It’s that energetic drive to “do something”. We may not yet know what “to do”.

Stage 5: Was in a situation, disliked what was happening, realized this was the moment (!) and decided to try something different. It didn’t change the outcome. This is our moment of vulnerability. The “new” way can feel clunky or awkward (potentially leaving us embarrassed or afraid to try again). This is a time many of us want to give up.

Stage 6: Was in a situation, disliked what was happening, and decided to try the new way. It helped, but not as much as I had hoped. This stage can feel defeating, “I tried but it didn’t work”.

Stage 7: Was in a situation, disliked what was happening, and decided to try the new way. It worked*! But it was a lot of effort and I’m wiped out. I might not feel like it’s “worth the work” to keep at this, and I may not be aware that it will feel like less “work” the more I practice.

*By “it worked” I mean I handled myself in a way I felt good about, but that may not mean I got the outcome I wanted. Outcomes in situations (especially relational situations) are contingent upon the other party, so even if we do all the “right” things, we may not get the outcome we want.

Stage 8: Was in a situation, disliked what was happening, and handled it in this new way. It worked* and came more intuitively to me with less effort. 

Stage 9: Was in a situation, disliked what was happening, and intuitively knew how to respond. With reflection, I realize this is now a habit. Change has happened.

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Comments:

  1. The goal of this post is not to send you into a frenzied sense of tracking which stage you (and everyone you know in your life) are in. The goal is to help you recognize all the complexities that go into growth and making changes, and to get yourself resources for places you are stuck – or – to work towards seeing the progress you’ve already made (in the spirit of further motivating your growth). Many of us may have different “stuck” points, but the idea here is to get yourself thinking about what may be tripping you up and troubleshooting it so you don’t stay stuck.
  2. Stage 1, further thoughts: A lot of people spend huge portions of their lives in stage 1, and there are many reasons we can be stuck there. The key issues in stage 1 are lack of insight, lack of motivation, potential lack of hope for the future, potential lack of belief in change, potential belief you “shouldn’t” be “the one” to change. Not to go into the “diagnosis rabbit  hole”, but many people end up diagnosed with a personality disorder who spend prolonged periods about numerous issues in stage 1. Also, some situations are stage 1 situations because we really aren’t involved, and don’t have influence over them – i.e. – they are situations in which us changing would have absolutely no impact (or minimal impact and it may not be worth it to us to change).  At those times we work towards acceptance.
  3. Stage 1, resources to help you move out of it:  (1) The links embedded – and this post on barriers to insight , (2) this post on secondary gains, and (3) this post on understanding and accepting our limits, which, not respecting, can impede an ability to make changes. Getting out of stage one requires a level of vulnerability, a willingness and ability to see how we may be contributing to a situation we don’t like. There are many other posts on this account that will help you increase that capacity for vulnerability in a healthy way. 
  4. Stage 2, resources to help you move out of it: motivation and responsibility can be tied to so many things (see embedded links in text). You can work to increase motivation by improving how you feel about yourself through building Mastery.
  5. Stage 3: so much could be happening in stage 3, including willfulness (more on that another day, but in short it’s an unwillingness to make a change even if you know it’s in your best interest). Many of the posts from stage 1 and stage 2 troubleshooting also apply here. You may be feeling overwhelmed by how much “change” is required of you, in which case you’d want to work on breaking it down into bite sized pieces. You may need to work on grounding, or staying within your window of tolerance.
  6. Stage 4: We may need coping skills building – for example, “how to say something” or how to approach something. If it’s a relational problem you’re stuck in, my post on finding balance in relationships may help. You may need concrete tips on how to have conflict constructively or the “don’ts” of fighting fair . Advice from (trusted) others can help here too. 
  7. Stages 5 – 7: All require a respect for the process of learning and the time it takes to really master something. Visiting my post on realistic expectations for change will help. We also may be struggling in these stages if we don’t have realistic expectations or beliefs around what’s within our sphere of influence or control. If we are feeling we “should” be able to control or influence something, or we “need” to control or influence something – and we can’t – we can get really stuck and really unmotivated. This is where acceptance comes in in a big way.
  8. These are not “official” stages of changes, but instead these are adapted from a DBT diary card, which aims to help people learning new coping skills track their progress. The diary card has 8 (different) stages. I have adapted the concept and flushed it out much further.
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Insight and Reflection

  • Usually people start therapy (or struggle) because there is some ongoing dynamic they can’t solve or change. Things like: “I can’t find a partner”, “I don’t have great relationships with my friends”, “I’m angry all the time” etc.
  • The journey then begins to try and uncover the mystery of what may be happening. The starting block of this understanding is reflecting – i.e. getting in touch with thoughts and feelings (and perhaps putting some patterns together that can help you better understand what has happened and why).
  • But for many, developing insight, which is awareness into how our way of being effects those around us (and subsequently our relationships), is desperately needed to inform a sense of direction, yet is inaccessible to discover (or accept) – perhaps because it requires a level of vulnerability from us.
  • To develop insight there needs to be a willingness to see ourselves outside of our rationalizations, explanations, and justifications for why we behave the way we do. It requires a willingness to see parts of yourself you like and don’t like and to examine how those parts of you effect others and your relationships. 
  • Very often, a reflective stance (where we get in touch with thoughts and feelings) is confused with an insightful stance (where we understand our impact on others). Having the capacity to reflect can lead to insight, but we can spend a lot of time reflecting and still not seeing how we are participating in creating outcomes in our lives.
  • An example: Imagine it’s hard for me to open up because I fear rejection. When I am reflective I’m aware of my fear of rejection and being hurt. I might explore the current impact of prior experiences of rejection. When I’m insightful I’m aware my guarded nature creates a wall between me and others making it difficult for others to get close to me.
  • When we can see how we effect others, we can start to see how we may inadvertently get in our own way. We can use the knowledge we gain from our newfound insight into our impact on others to help us experiment with making changes that will enable us to relate to those around us in ways that are more likely to lead to the outcomes we want.
  • In our example, I might need to take a leap of faith and work towards being more vulnerable with others in spite of my fears. This path might not otherwise cross my mind given my fears of rejection if not for my insight that the ways in which I withhold from others creates a barrier to having the close relationships I want. 
  • We can “hold on” (internally) to our insight about what changes are needed as a guiding path at those times when we realize there is a disconnect between what we want in our relationships with others and how we participate in them. That insight can anchor us to help us muster up the bravery to try something new.
  • More in today’s post about how to build insight and the differences (and links between) reflection and insight.

People come to therapy with a lot of beliefs and assumptions about “what it’s supposed to be like”.  For many people that includes some version of getting in touch with and processing their thoughts and feelings, revisiting and processing formative moments in their lives, and making connections about what’s happening now and what has happened in the past.


All of these are excellent uses of therapy and can be the building blocks of developing insight. Folks can get stuck, however, in therapy (and in life) when they struggle to more directly work towards taking that next step, which is building insight and awareness into how they effect others, the environment around them, and how they participate in the outcomes they have experienced in their lives.


When we are busy justifying, defending, or rationalizing we often too wrapped up in ourselves to notice how we may be effecting others and the outcomes we experience. To be insightful we need look at the facts of how we treat others from a perspective that isn’t informed by all the awareness we hold about how or why we are justified in doing or saying what we do or say. Empathy can be a component of self-awareness: imagine yourself in the shoes of the other party and think about how you might react toward you if you were on the receiving end of your own words or actions (without the internal information you hold that informs your decisions to treat others or behave the way you do).


To try and build more insight get invested in the idea that you are likely effecting and contributing to the outcomes in your life, even if you don’t want that to be the case. Ask yourself, “how have I participated in this?” What might I be communicating with my action / inaction, tone, body language, or responsiveness?”.  Pay attention to dynamics like reciprocity. Ask yourself how much trust or suspicion informs your stance in a relationship. Although others can’t read our minds, they can pick up on cues from us that inform the dynamic between us.


Reflection and self-awareness are different from one another, but both important in understanding yourself, making changes in your life, and improving your relationships.

Comments:

  1. Insight and self-awareness are used interchangeably in this post, and some would call “insight” holding an awareness of your thoughts and feelings. I’m using the term reflection to refer to having awareness of your inner world, and insight to have the awareness of your impact on others as a way to highlight the different nature of these two components of emotional and relational awareness.
  2. What I hope we can avoid here is too much confusion around semantics. I’m less concerned that you pin point when you are reflecting versus demonstrating insight, and am more interested in having you be invested in both, seeing the value in both, and recognizing an opportunity to incorporate both into your life (and – if applicable – your therapy). I’m also not communicating that reflecting is “inferior” to insight. Reflecting is important because it helps us find patterns, make connections, and get in touch with our inner world; it’s valuable in and of itself. 
  3. One thing that’s a bit tricky about building insight is we aren’t often told (directly) by others how we are impacting them or the community around us – people don’t usually say “you’re not getting that promotion because you can’t collaborate well and take in others ideas and so others around you see you as controlling and domineering” it’s often more like “we’re looking to see you continue to grow and work as a teammate with your colleagues, try and work on delegating”. So we have to do a bit of intuiting and piecing together based on patterns we observe and feedback we do get. This can run right into predispositions we hold to make assumptions or read situations based on our histories, so sometimes our attempts to build insight can be thwarted because we are trying to understand how we may be effecting others without necessarily having all the information. A tip here: Ask a safe, nonjudgmental person in your life for their honest feedback if you have a theory about how your way of being might effect them (or others). Another tip: Take a look at how you act/behave and what you say, and then work to observe how others around you handle similar situations (and how folks respond to them). You can learn a lot from watching what works (and doesn’t work) for others. I personally had a very transformative experience once when I went into a store and silently watched how a friend handled a return (in a way that was foreign and un-intuitive to me, but effective). There can be small teaching moments for us to tap into in our lives if we are looking to make use of them.
  4. A potential blockage to self-awareness / insight?: Anxiety or Depression. In our efforts to cope with our emotional state we may start to ask for things like reassurance, only be comfortable interacting under certain conditions, have difficulties tolerating conversations where others don’t agree with us etc. Ultimately, all of that effects our relationships with others AND simultaneously feels necessary for us to cope with our emotional state. This is where learning new coping skills can come in very handy (once we have a sense of how our response to our symptoms is effecting others and our relationships).
  5. You can think of “coping by distancing” as an example of a time when our thoughts, beliefs, and coping mechanisms may effect those around us in an unintended manner. Another example of us coping in a manner that might negatively effect our relationships is displacement.
  6. This post encourages you to make changes. This post is full of tips on making changes in a sustainable manner. 
  7. For more on how we can inadvertently participate in creating outcomes in our life see my post on cyclical psychodynamics.
  8. Looking to try and build more awareness into how your thinking informs how you approach others and problem solving? See my post on Internalizing and Externalizing.
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Acceptance vs Hopelessness

  • What if it’s hopelessness, rather than acceptance, when we tell ourselves or others “this is just how I am”?
  • One of the biggest precipitants to disengaging too early from treatment, to not starting treatment at all, or to not really being “in” treatment even when you’re in it are beliefs we hold about what is fixed within ourselves, what cannot be changed, and what is possible for us.
  • A core tenant of finding satisfaction in life centers around acceptance; acceptance of what we cannot change, acceptance of how our development shaped us and informs how we are predisposed to interpreting the world, and acceptance of what we can and cannot control.
  • But how do we know when we’ve accepted something that might actually be more malleable than we realize? And what about those times when our acceptance is actually just us giving up because we’ve tried but been unable to shift something?
  • The short answer to that question is, of course, there is no way to “know” for certain, but if something doesn’t work for you, creates problems for you, or creates problems in your relationships let that be enough of an indicator that you (and others) are probably “tolerating” rather than “accepting”.
  • This is because we and others will carry anger, resentment, shame, guilt, frustration, fear and all sorts of other cues that there is a problem that needs to be addressed when something disrupts us, our responsibilities, and our relationships in this manner.
  • So now we are in a bind, where something within us seems as though it cannot change, and yet it causes problems in such a way that we need it to change for us to find satisfaction or peace in ourselves and our relationships.
  • “This is just how I am”, is usually also, “this is how I have been up until now, living life as I know it, with the beliefs that I hold about how change happens and what is possible for me”.
  • I often find when folks are in this spot they have previously tried to make a change, sometimes putting themselves through intense scrutiny or demands (I’m going to read every book on this, try these 300 different tactics, completely turn my schedule upside down…etc).
  • When those tactics don’t work, or don’t work sustainably / in the long run, take that as a cue you may be substituting discipline or control for what’s actually needed; trying differently, rather than trying harder. See more in today’s post.

Many of us go into treatment (and through our lives) with a lot of unquestioned notions about what is possible for us and our well being. “I’ve always been this way”, ‘I’ve tried and never been able to change it”, and “my family is this way too”, are just a few of the thoughts that can inform our sense of what is possible for us.

Holding on to those notions also influences what we see as “on the table” for working on in ourselves or in our treatment; if we’ve made up our minds it won’t change, we’re less inclined to talk about it as actively as something that we do hold more hope around. Some of the most important moments in my work come when my client and I realize I hold a belief that something within them can change that they themselves had given up on.

When we’ve given up on the possibility that some dynamic can change within us, we are usually asking others and ourselves to live with something that isn’t working; a temper, a drinking problem, a spending problem, an intimacy problem – etc.

Giving up on the belief that something could be different for us usually follows extensive effort on our part to elicit change in the ways we know how to. If you find yourself trying to put more and more control, discipline, or strategy into it, if you’re living your life jumping through hoops for this, or, if you’ve just outright given up even though the issue remains, I’d encourage you to take your emphasis off of how “hard” you are trying and focus more on trying differently.

Unfortunately there is not one single answer to what it means to “try differently”, but it usually starts with broadening your scope of looking at the issue. This could mean accepting secondary gains you experience from the “problematic” dynamic; identifying when you are relying too heavily on pulling away from or stuffing down emotions rather than using them as guide posts to learn from; challenging difficulties with trust or boundaries; or trying to be more open to something that might actually be helpful that you don’t want to need or rely on (i.e. coping skills, medication, limits, meditation, etc).

Everyone can learn, grow, and change. Don’t give up. More in today’s comments.

Comments:

  1. One very important key fact here: while we can change how we behave, relate, process, and make decisions we cannot change what thoughts or feelings arise in us. We can learn to tolerate them, take care of them, honor them, distract from them, and a whole host of other practices – but the content of our thoughts and feelings cannot be controlled and is ours to learn to tolerate and live alongside.
  2. I mention the idea of “broadening” the scope of how you conceptualize the problem at hand in this post. I heard another therapist use this metaphor once and it has always stayed with me. Think about a leak in your ceiling. Where you see the wet spot doesn’t necessarily tell you where the issue is. You often have to open up more of your house than you would have guessed to take care of the leak. Our internal worlds are like that home. If we focus our energy exclusively on the target “part” of us we want to change (or leaky spot) we often miss the big picture of what’s happening, and we are at risk of it continuing to happen without getting at what the larger system (i.e. whole person – i.e YOU) needs to function well, and function consistently. Often times folks that are trying to manage a systemic issue with discipline or control are missing out on addressing the root cause of the “leak”. This would be the equivalent of painting over the wet spot, or constantly using a hair dryer on it; labor intensive tactics that don’t get to the core problem at hand.
  3. There’s a great joke that I reference all the time in therapy – “How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?” the answer “One, but the light bulb has to really really really really really want to change”. Now of course, it’s not that simple, motivation is hugely informed by hope and trust, which we can all lose access to based on our prior experiences (so sometimes we have to start first with building hope and trust before motivation can arise – and this can take years, especially if you have a history of relational trauma ). BUT, the key take away from the joke, which I try and help my clients with, is that the desire to change, and a willingness to have the accountability for that change come back to you (rather than others or outside forces) is one of the most important influencers of change and success in treatment. This joke also holds another important point in it about boundaries; it doesn’t matter how dark the room is, or how much change is needed/urged/requested/desired from outside forces, the desire for change still has to come from within. While we can influence others with our expressions of how they effect us, our concern for them, or our perspective on how their life could be better, we cannot (even by forcing someone to go to therapy) make people want to change without there being some desire from within them for their life to be different or better in some way.
  4. An area where I see this attempt for control often is around food and dieting. “If I could just stop eating these bad foods I would be able to keep the weight off”, so now I don’t eat chocolate, or I only eat it on weekends, and I have to count out every nut, and fruit is bad because it has sugar – etc”. While I am not a dietician (and I have to be careful here not to speak outside of the scope of my training), I have referred many of my clients who have struggled with eating / weight problems to dietitians and spoken to those dietitians along the way about their treatment recommendations and notion of healthy eating. Without fail, I have been told that “controlled” eating is usually on the disordered spectrum, which includes any kind of restrictive diet or rule based relationship with food that classifies some foods and “good” and others as “bad”. It’s not uncommon to have to unlearn the habit of trying to eat in an intellectual manner (i.e. counting calories, only eating “good” foods, restricting “bad” foods etc) and to have to learn how to listen to cues from your body about when, what, and how much to eat. I would call this an example of trying differently; your intuition may be to double down on your discipline and efforts to control, the path out may actually be controlling less and learning to listen to you body more. If this sounds like you please listen to the actual dietitians out there: Christy Harrison (a registered dietician) has a great podcast called “Food Psych” that covers many topics related to binge eating, restricting food, dieting, the link between anxiety/depression and eating; I’ve also encouraged clients to read books like “Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food” by Jan Chozen Bays; or “Intuitive Eating “by Evelyn Triobole and Elyse Resch.
  5. I mention how overly relying on pushing away emotions can get us into trouble. More on understanding our triggers here.
  6. I talk about how difficulties with communication can be a common dynamic people tolerate between one another. For tips on effective communication see my posts on fair fighting and on the benefits of taking space in conflict.
  7. One of the places we can go when we’ve given up hope on the possibility of being different is classifying ourselves or others as “lazy”. More here on how to deconstruct laziness .
  8. Sometimes we have a lot of trouble being open to something that might really help us because we don’t think we SHOULD need it or we don’t want to need it. If that sounds like you, read this post on acceptance.
  9. I talk more about the notion of holding accountability towards one self for the life you want to have in this prior post.
  10. What I am writing about in this post is drawn somewhat from Marsha Linehan’s conceptual skill, “Willingness”, which she defines in her manual as, “Accepting what is, together with responding to what is, in an effective and appropriate way. It is doing what works. It is doing just what is needed in the current situation or moment”, rather than imposing your will or your sense of what is “right” when it conflicts with what is actually needed to meet your goals for the situation.
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The Myth of Exposure Therapy

  • Many of us wrongly believe that “exposure therapy” is repeatedly putting ourselves in a feared situation in the hopes it will decrease our anxiety in that situation.
  • I.e. “If I get on the plane enough times my fear of flying will go away”.
  • While low-level anxiety often dissipates with repeated exposure, higher level anxiety is made worse or stays the same with this tactic.
  • That’s because what makes exposure therapy effective is that the therapist exposes someone to a feared situation AND helps them have a different set of internal responses
  • It is that repeated experience of being in a situation and having a DIFFERENT internal experience that can shift our relationship with the situation.
  • An exposure therapist would NOT advocate for white knuckling your way through
    Exposure therapy isn’t the only way to deal with fears of this nature, but the key for any and every individual to be aware of is that exposure therapy is not simply putting yourself in the situation time and time again and “pushing” through it.
  • If you want to work on a feared situation I’d encourage you to work to increase your awareness of where that line is between “high” and “low” anxiety situations
  • In low-anxiety situations – sure – expose yourself. You may just need to get the hang of it. 
  • You can address high anxiety situations in a variety of ways including formal exposure therapy, standard therapy, working to build insight into what’s under the anxiety in an effort to help it dissipate, and increasing your mindfulness and grounding skills (info on those two in the comments).

I can’t tell you how many times a client has walked into my office talking about a struggle in a particular situation; a fear of flying, anxiety with public speaking, difficulties with crowds. Often, they tell me about how they have “white-knuckled” their way through this situation time and again in an attempt at “exposure therapy”. More often than not, they find it doesn’t work.


This is when I tell them that’s not how exposure therapy works. When a therapist is helping a client with an exposure the therapist is both EXPOSING the client to the situation they struggle with AND helping them have a DIFFERENT internal experience while doing so. It is that repeated experience of being in the situation and having a DIFFERENT internal experience that can shift our relationship with the situation. 


For most of us, if we knew how to have a different internal experience while in the situation we would have done that long ago. What may feel intuitive to us in those moments (and perhaps not in our control)  is to have the reaction we’ve always had. 


Getting on the plane 35 times in an effort to expose yourself to a feared situation in the hopes it will neutralize (or numb) you to it can work with situations where you feel anxiety in a low intensity manner (i.e. think about performance anxiety where we are jittery the first few times, but with repeated experience we get more and more comfortable). With higher intensity anxiety you may actually be reinforcing (i.e. strengthening or making worse) the anxious response by exposing yourself to it without having built up coping strategies or skills for how to manage your internal world while you are exposed to the situation. 


What I can do with my clients, and what you can do too, is work know ourselves well enough to know where that line is between the “low(er)” anxiety situations and the “high(er)” anxiety situations. When our anxiety is lower we often just need to stick with it and get the hang of it. You should notice yourself feeling less and less anxious over time. When anxiety is higher, the anxiety doesn’t change or get worse with repeated exposure. That’s a cue not to keep going without a different set of internal responses.

Notes:

  1. How much anxiety we feel in a certain situation can vary based on a variety of factors. I.e. one day a situation might be “low intensity” and the next day the same situation might be “high intensity”.  The key here is to work to pay attention to knowing your own anxious cues and responding to what they tell you.
  2. I am not a specialist in exposure therapy, and in fact when I have clients in need of this type of treatment I will send them to a specialist for a series of sessions to work with someone in the situation they are struggling with to come up with strategies specific to their situation and their needs. This is often short-term work and it can be done alongside a longer therapy.
  3. One tactic you can try if you want to try building that different set of internal responses is strengthening your grounding based skills (those help combat anxiety by keeping you in the present) and mindfulness skills (those both keep you in the present and help you increase your ability to control your attention. Both Mindfulness and Grounding will help you “tame” your anxiety in those moments, though there are many more skills and techniques that an exposure specialist could work with you on (sometimes in as little as 4-6 sessions) if you’re really stuck with something. 
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Building Mastery

  • There are concrete steps you can take to improve your self esteem, confidence, and sense of worth / value.
  • To feel good about ourselves we need to be doing something routinely that we feel proud of.
  • For us to feel proud of something it needs to be hard enough that it is a challenge, but not too hard that it’s overwhelming.
  • If it’s too easy we won’t really feel proud of it, and if it’s too difficult we’ll feel overwhelmed or defeated.
  • A common area of struggle in this arena is that many of us don’t actually hold realistic expectations for what’s “too difficult”.
  • This is one of the reasons many new years resolutions fall apart – many of us don’t accurately assess where that sweet spot is between “a challenge” and “unrealistically challenging”.
  • To be successful at setting and achieving realistic goals many of us have to wrestle with our “shoulds”.
  • We can feel like “I should already be____”, so when we set a goal we are inadvertently trying to make up for lost time.
  • This often backfires. When we try a challenge and it’s too far out of reach it actually DECREASES self-esteem, and can leave us feeling lazy, out of control, inadequate and generally unmotivated.
  • Accept where you are now, pick a goal to work towards that it just beyond that, and gradually work to get to the final milestone.

Marsha Linehan outlines in her Dialectical Behavior Therapy Treatment Manual exactly how to increase your sense of self esteem and confidence, and it’s through a process she calls “Building Mastery”.

Taking on appropriately challenging activities, goals, and tasks is a tool we can use to help us boost our sense of worth, confidence, and self esteem. If you’d like to try building #mastery you want to pick a #goal to work towards that feels challenging, but is realistic with how you live your life. For that sense of mastery and #accomplishment to be built the goal needs to be just out of current reach, but still accessible with effort.

If you find you are often someone who doesn’t meet the goals you set for yourself, your ambition might be blinding you from what is realistic and sustainable in your life. For many of us, we set goals that require we make changes that are too far out of reach, we then can’t meet the goal, and wind up feeling defeated, lazy, and incapable. This puts us at risk of giving up, and over time, this can erode at our sense of worth, ambition, and ability.

If you find yourself in a position where you set goals and routinely don’t meet them it’s not a signal that you are failure, you “can’t do it”, or that there is no hope – it’s often a signal that you have selected a goal too challenging for where you are at this juncture in your life. And yes, something can be too challenging even if you think it “should” be simple.

When you find yourself at the crossroads of wanting to make a change, wanting to learn a new skill, or wanting to boost your self esteem remember the key concepts behind building mastery, which includes setting an appropriately challenging goal and building on it over time. If you cannot achieve it, find a way to make the goal a little less challenging. Maybe it’s too much to exercise 5 times a week, but maybe 4 times or 3 times is more accessible (at first). You can always keep setting end goals that are a challenge beyond what you’ve mastered, but the key is doing so in a way that maximizes sweet spot between not enough of a challenge and too much of one.

Notes:

1 . It’s not uncommon for people to hold beliefs like, “exercising is good for me, so I should be able to do it regularly” or “I want to be a person who________’s every day, so I’m going to start that now”. The challenge is, we start with the end goal in mind, feel overwhelmed by how much it actually requires of us, and often give up and feel defeated. We come to believe “I’m not a person who can _____, because I tried and it didn’t work”. And yes, we did try, but we didn’t try in a way that was within that window of “challenging enough”. Instead, we may have unknowingly picked a goal that was too challenging without recognizing it in that way because we believed it “should” be within our reach. Unfortunately, this approach actually diminishes our sense of self-esteem because we are unable to stick with a goal we set. Read here for more on how “shoulds” can show up in disguise and throw us off track.

2. For more information on how to set realistic goals for yourself, and how to make gradual changes see this post.

3. Been trying to make a change for ages and it just won’t stick? In addition to exploring the reasonableness of your goals, it may also be time to consider “Secondary Gains”.

4. Do you have a hard time letting go of the “shoulds”? This is not uncommon. Really. It holds many of us back. This post may help.

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The Ripple Effects of Change / Introduction to Systems Theory

  • One of the most unexpected parts of working towards personal growth is that our relationships change 
  • This is because when we grow we often change habits, patterns, capacities, and expectations.
  • Because of this, when we change ourselves we may no longer be the same in our relationships.
  • Sometimes our growth means we connect differently, which means some relationships can feel like they lose the glue that once held them together.
  • Sometimes others struggle with our changes, because they’ve come to depend on us to be a certain way; some way that serves a need for them – a need we may no longer be able to fill while being our authentic selves.
  • When we change and start taking on a new role (or no longer take on a familiar role) it can throw off the sense of balance that others have come to depend on when everyone participates in familiar and predictable ways.
  • Many relationships can grow and evolve together, but some cannot. When we “grow out of people” this is often what it means; not that we are better than them, but that our new way of being is no longer compatible with the needs of each party.
  • Sometimes our growth helps us see other’s behaviors or words through a different lens, causing us to see the relationship differently, and potentially participate in it differently (or not at all) moving forward.
  • To take care of your health and wellbeing you may need to change how you participate, and, others may be effected by how that changes the larger dynamic.
  • So, if you’re making changes in your life, be aware, a lot more than just you may change.

When we change, grow, and evolve there are often unexpected ripple effects in our relationships. Just as there are “growing pains” with physical growth, we can experience growing pains with emotional, relational, and psychological growth.


Our personal growth usually involves concrete changes in how we live our lives. We can set new or remove old boundaries, we may shift how we spend our time or where our limits are. When we grow we may find we talk about different topics with friends or family or look to others for different kinds of support. We may also find that we connect with others in ways that are different from how we used to connect. We may bring new availability to others, or, we may not be available in ways that we were before.


When we change in the ways I’ve described, it means we are different in our relationships with others. Often our growth happens in personal or private moments outside the observation (or awareness) of friends of family. This means as we change we may surprise people, or people may not know what to to expect of us and may look for us to continue participating in the relationship in the way we have in the past.


Our change can challenge some of our relationships; if we are not longer able to fill a predicable role within our relationships others around us may feel confused, lost, angry, or unable to connect. We too can experience loss as relationships that once felt predictable change. 

All of this is natural, healthy, and normal when we grow. If you are working on making changes, expect for this to effect the relationships around you. Work to be consistent with the changes you need to make, and expect others may not “get it” at first.  Be patient (and consistent) with others and yourself during this adjustment period. Some will struggle with your adjustments, and others will adapt with time.

Notes:

  1. A common example of this (and one used as an example in my graduate school class on family treatment) is the TV family “The Simpsons”. Marge holds the responsibility for keeping the family organized and running while Homer earns money, and doesn’t do much more to attend to the emotional or relational needs of the family. Homer has come to depend on Marge to do the parenting, and Marge has come to depend on Homer to earn the money. Imagine how “thrown off” the family would be if one day Homer became a much more involved parent. A burden would be lifted off of Marge – but – Marge also may feel lost, untrusting, and unsure what to do with herself as her entire identity is formulated around caring for her family and cleaning up after Homer’s (literal and figurative) messes.  More in this article from the Baltimore Sun .
  2. What I am describing here is an extension of what (in the therapist world) we call “systems theory”.  In short, this theory describes all of us as being components of larger systems (family systems, work systems, cultural systems, etc). These systems can reinforce behavior, roles, and dynamics within us as individuals and within our relationships. So, when you change one part of a system, the rest of the system needs to adapt too. If you see a therapist describe themselves as a “systems therapist” it means they operate with this framework in mind.
  3. This dynamic is often common is families where one person is identified as “unwell” (physically, emotionally, developmentally – etc). A number of members of a family may get used to thinking of themselves in caretaking roles, and they may rely on the unwell member to be less able or capable. If the “unwell” person becomes more independent and capable over time other member of the family may struggle with how to relate to them, and how to relate to each other as roles change and shift. Identities and a sense of purpose can be lost, and sometimes families can come to depend on a dynamic of having an “unwell” member to keep a sense of balance intact. This “unwell” member can also be called “the identified patient” in therapist lingo, which means the person the family, organization, or system has come to rely on to hold the position of being unwell. 
  4. If you find you have a hard time “catching up” when those around you have made changes I’d encourage you to work on mindfulness – taking in each moment as its own unique and individual experience with a person. We can simultaneously hold awareness of how someone “used to be” while paying attention to current actions and behaviors to allow room for their growth. We may need to spend time processing through losses or gains we experience when those around us grow. This introduction to meditation may be a helpful starting point.
  5. Sometimes even “positive” changes can be met with resistance or pushback from those around you, or perhaps you are finding yourself struggling with someone else’s “positive” changes. That may be because their are secondary gains in place for the person who has not made the change, but who is effected by it.
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Secondary Gains

  • If you have been trying to make a change in your life, but find yourself unable to sustain it, you may want to consider “secondary gains”
  • Secondary gains are the positives or benefits associated with something that is otherwise problematic in our lives
  • Often, we are so focused on how a behavior, choice, or response is “a problem” that we don’t see how it benefits us  
  • Sometimes there are perks to thought patterns, reactions, ways of relating, or behaviors that otherwise concern us or the people around us.
  • We may not be aware of the perks, and it can take active reflecting and internal exploration to identify how we may be benefiting from something we or others in our lives identify as problematic
  • For example: Maybe our angry outbursts help us regain control, or help us feel powerful at a time when we’re feeling helpless. Maybe our excessive drinking helps us feel confident and enables us to be relaxed and in the moment in a way we otherwise struggle with.
    Sometimes, our secondary gains are actually concepts that we hold onto – concepts that help us manage in our lives and in the world at large. 
  • If you are finding yourself stuck, and unable to make a change despite your best efforts it’s time to consider if there are secondary gains. 
  • Once you’ve identified them, you may need to reconcile how to receive those “gains” elsewhere from other concepts, actions, or behaviors, or if that’s not possible than face the losses that may come with making the change you want or need to make.
  • Further explanation in post and detailed examples in comments.

Despite our best efforts and intentions sometimes we find ourselves unable to make a change. We can get stuck in a pattern of doing something we desperately wish we could stop. This can apply to any change we want to make, from how we think about things, to behaviors, to substance use, or relationship patterns.  We know our choices, responses, or how we are handling ourselves is not what we want, yet we cannot stop or break the pattern or cycle and engage in a new way of being.


As a therapist, when I hear about situations like this I will find myself curious about possible “secondary gains”. Secondary gains are some added benefit, something positive, some way in which some part of this pattern or cycle actually DOES benefit you.


When I start asking clients about this, I often get a lot of “nothing. There are no benefits. I hate that I do this and I wish I could stop”. It can be hard to “flip the script” and start thinking of how something you dislike about yourself or your choices actually serves you or benefits you.

Even for problematic patterns, behaviors, or choices there may be positives too, positives that we would lose when we make a change, and positive that draw us back into the cycle again and again. These positives are the “secondary gains” that can make change difficult.


So, while it might be something we wish we weren’t engaging in, sometimes the only way for us to make a change is for us to allow ourselves to consider how we ARE benefiting from it. To do this, we often need to actively suspend our narrative that “it’s bad” (even if we know it’s problematic) and give ourselves permission to list out what is good, helpful, unique, or powerful about it. That work, of being honest with yourself about what is “good” about this “bad” thing can bring about some difficult truths, but it is essential for you to get in touch with them to get over the road-block of secondary gains.


Once we can get in touch with how we are benefiting, we can figure out how to get those benefits in other areas of our lives, or process and accept the losses that will come with making a change.

Notes:

  1. Example: Imagine you want to slow down your drinking. You’ve make a lot of efforts to cut back, but you can’t seem to stick to them. It might be helpful to consider what you would lose if you cut back on your drinking. Maybe alcohol helps you relax in a way nothing else does, maybe it drowns out your anxiety in social situations. If you work on increasing your capacity to relax, or decrease your social anxiety you may no longer need the secondary gains of alcohol and it may be much easier to cut back.
  2. Example: You can’t seem to stop snapping at people in your life (i.e. yelling) when you’re frustrated, overwhelmed, or upset. You know this is an issue, and you feel ashamed about it, but you can’t seem to change the pattern. Perhaps it’s helpful to consider what you gain by KEEPING the behavior intact. Maybe it’s the only way you know how to release your own emotions and it feels like your feelings won’t settle until you let them out in this way. Maybe you hold a fear that if you don’t yell at someone they won’t change, and so it feels (on some level) like this is the only way someone can “learn their lesson”. Maybe when you snap and yell it’s actually a way you regain control, since everyone else’s behavior instantly stops. If you can work through the ways in which you actually feel safe, protected, and in control by snapping and then work to find other ways to feel safe and in control in those moments without the snapping behavior the snapping will be much easier to change. This may mean working on decreasing your reliance on the control you feel when your anger erupts.
  3. Example: You’ve gotten into a pattern of cheating on a spouse or partner. You feel terrible because you believe in monogamy but you find yourself again and again drawn towards someone outside of your relationship. It may be time to consider what you DO gain either from the person, how the person makes you feel, the outside relationship, or the experience of courting someone. Maybe there is something enlivening in the risk taking, maybe it helps you feel attractive in a way you haven’t for sometime, maybe you find yourself more able to be honest with a stranger than with your partner and you crave that ability to be honest in your life. You may need to work to find ways to incorporate those positives into your life and / or your relationship. If you can give yourself permission to explore what you are gaining by the behavior and the relationship(s) it will be much easier to change the pattern(s).
  4. Example: You find yourself in a pattern of getting overwhelmed with obligations or responsibilities. You feel like you can’t say no to things because you feel guilty when you do, but time and again you find yourself burned out. As much as you try and set more boundaries you can’t seem to and the cycle repeats again and again. It may be time to consider what the secondary gains are here. Maybe you actually feel proud of yourself for being able to “manage so much”, and maybe it boosts your self-esteem to “get so much done”. You may also enjoy telling others or telling yourself about the list of accomplishments, and you may also feel like “this is what is means to be a good friend / family member / colleague etc”. So despite your burnout and misery, you may not be able to make the change without first finding other self-esteem boosting experiences and without working through this concept you’ve held onto about what it means to be a good support to others.  
  5. Example: You’ve fallen into patterns of helplessness in relationships. You ask for things before trying for yourself more often than not and its hurting relationships in your life. This may become hard to change if there are secondary gains to the helplessness. Perhaps you take comfort in people stepping in to help you, perhaps its how you reassure yourself that you’re not alone. It may be a way in which you feel powerful or in control by asking something of others and having them provide. You may feel scared of failure if you were to try doing things more independently and while you know this tends to rub people the wrong way and hurt your relationships, you don’t feel you can let go of the pattern. Facing how this way of being benefits you, and working to build in those benefits in other areas of your life will make it much easier to change the behavior.
  6. Secondary gains are not the only barriers to making changes. See this post on “how change happens” for more help understanding barriers to change.

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How Change Happens

  • Long Term Change happens gradually
  • We are all capable of making quick changes, but more often than not we want to make sustainable changes and that is a different (and much slower) process. 
  • We often give up or think of ourselves as a failure / lazy when we encounter a situation where we fall into old patterns rather than use the new ones we are trying to work towards.
  • This happens because we’ve tried to use the new skill without really getting the hang of it first. 
  • When we want to change a behavior or pattern we need to start working on making changes in low stress situations and work on increasing the complexity only when we are able to do the new thing consistently in the low stress situation.
  • Unfortunately, we can feel defeated because those high stress / more complex / difficult situations will still  arise before we’ve been able to make the changes necessary to handle them in the new way.
  • Those moments are not failures. They just arose before we were ready.
  • The key is to stick to the gradual plan rather than give up. You will get there eventually. 

When you learned how to drive, did you start on the highway? Probably not. You probably started in a parking lot, got your bearings, and gradually made your way to side streets, main streets, and eventually you got on the highway.

Often, when we try to change, whether it’s building a new habit or trying a new coping skill, we come into it with unrealistically high expectations of ourselves or others for how quickly that learning and growth process should be. Then, we can’t keep up with the activity or properly implement the skill and despite our interest or desire to change we lose hope, can start to feel like a failure, or we label ourselves (or others) as lazy or incapable.

This is because more often than not we start on “the highway” rather than in “the parking lot” with something new. The time to start working on learning how to take deep breaths to soothe your nerves is not when you’re at your wits end. It’s when you feel a little off.

The time to work on being more vulnerable with your partner is not when you’re feeling intense negative feelings, it’s when you feel pretty safe and comfortable with them and yourself.

The time to start working on taking a step back and pausing rather than saying something you might regret is when you’re a little irritated not fuming with anger.

Eventually, with time and practice you can work your way up to more complex situations. The goal is to get to those situations, but to be effective in them we can’t start with them or get to them before we’re ready.

The trouble for many people is that those difficult situations will continue to arise while you are working on building this new way of doing things. This can leave someone feeling like a failure because they fall into old patterns. But, the way to really make change is to accept that you will get to those more complex situations eventually and the way to get there is with lots of practice in simple(r) situations. See comments for more.

We must work our way up to situations with increasing complexity and intensity and we must do it gradually, otherwise we are not setting ourselves up for success or permanent change.

Notes:

  1. A “complex” situation may not seem “complex” at first. It may seem really simple, like “we were just trying to figure out who was going to load to the dishwasher” but what makes it complex is your mood, what your day was like before, how prepared you were for the conversation, what this relationship is like more generally, and how you felt about how the other person was reacting to what you were saying. How able we are to do new things is also diminished if we are hungry, tired, or in pain. Trust yourself. If it felt intense, it probably was.
  2. In this account I am going to offer you A LOT of suggested coping mechanisms, ways to think, and ways to potentially change how you approach yourself, others, and the world. You may, at times feel overwhelmed, or like you can’t keep it with you. THIS IS NORMAL AND HEALTHY. The only way to really integrate changes is to expose yourself again and again, stick with it, keep trying, and taking things bit by bit and chunk by chunk.
  3. When I do skills based work with clients, and I cover the materials I am sharing in this account, I tell folks to expect it to take two years for life to really be different and for these skills to feel seamless. Now, that doesn’t mean two years to see changes; progress and change can start right away – that means two years of learning, talking, revisiting, applying the skills, and then covering them all again and again until they become second nature (though they will probably always require some degree of intentionality). Two years may sound like a lot, but that’s with me teaching 50-100 skills. So if you’re only working on a handful of things it will and can go faster.
  4. Example: If you are trying to work on not saying something in anger that you might regret start working on it when you’re annoyed, irritated or angry (but at like a 1 or 2 out of 10). Anything beyond that, you want to just let go, tell yourself you’ll get there eventually, and stay working on those less intense situations. Once you can do that consistently, then try upping the scale to a 3 or 4 – or perhaps a situation where the outcome isn’t terribly important to you (like if you got overcharged for gas and you’re angry you may be more likely to challenge yourself to take a breather before speaking than if your family member who regularly drives you nuts says something irritating…again). Keep working up to increasingly important relationships (the more important the relationship the higher stress the situation may be), increasingly important topics (like getting a raise is going to more important than returning a 3 dollar item), increasingly difficult scenarios (like it’s going to be harder to keep your cool when you’re starving and tired then when you’re well fed and rested), and relationships with decreasing safety (like if you often feel judged by someone they are going to be harder to be vulnerable with than someone who you feel is accepting, supportive, and forgiving).
  5. You don’t have to have it all mapped out at first, that would be way too complicated. Just work towards looking for opportunities that feel accessible, keep trying, and work to reflect on what may have made a situation where you didn’t succeed stressful so you can be thoughtful about how to approach it again.
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