About resistance to change

Working both with myself and with clients in the office, I have noticed over time the strong resistance we all have to change. We are all attached to the known, the familiar, the routines, the people in our lives, even if they are nourishing, good for us or harmful and toxic. A client in the office told me a while ago, “I’m afraid to change, because if I change I think I won’t like the people around me, whom I love.”

Emotional growth and development is a long and arduous process, in which we can take many steps forward and we can also take steps back. We are at the same time subject to the forces of progress and the forces of stagnation and inertia.

I came across all these ideas, very nicely summarized, in one of my last readings, Martha Stark, “Working with Resistance” and I leave 2 paragraphs below for your contemplation.”In general, patients want and do not want to get better. They want and don’t want to keep things as they are. They want and don’t want to go to the next stage of their life. They are and are not invested in their own suffering. They are a real conflict in all the choices they have to make.

The patient might protest that he desperately wants to change. He wants it and at the same time he doesn’t want it. They might insist that anything would make them feel better. Well, both yes and no. Up to a point everyone would like things to improve, but very few are willing to change.”