3 Unfortunate Yet Honest Truths About Change
About halfway through my Master’s program in grad school, the fiery and pushing 60-something cranky if also beloved professor said the following to all of us wide-eyed, apprehensive, wisdom searching counselors to be.
“You are not counselors; you are change agents. And the product you’re selling at your business is change.”
There was a smarminess to the way he presented this reality, but I'll be damned if I didn't admit, but in the short tenure I've had as a counselor, the clearest way, a client and myself can measure success for them is determining how much change is actually happened.
Even if the idea of change itself is sexy, the means of gaining this change is far from it. However, as my clients could attest and I could as well in my own personal inner healing work, healthy change is always always always worth it. In truth though, let's boil down three ways that change is difficult.
#1: Change is slow
Contrary to life hacks and/or any of what the advertisements on your feeds may tell you will radically change your life in a matter of days, worthwhile change is slow as hell. If anything, the first change you need to have regarding how we change is an expectancy of immediate results. Most of the work of therapy is unlearning as opposed to learning.
Yoda was on something.
Most of what brought the issues you are now facing developed over years if not decades if not your entire life. While this is not to discount a desire or hunger for minor immediate gains, what can be important is to focus on the control you have over the minor gains and on nothing else. If you trust that you can change, and do the work of taking baby steps every single day, you will be far less discouraged when change seems to only be small.
#2. Change is boring
There's nothing else that the modern world has so effectively destroyed then the felt experience of boredom. Our feeds have been so alarmingly successful at constant stimulation that we often conflate boredom with anxiety. This is not to minimize the stark reality of the surge of anxiety felt in the modern world, rather, that in order to contend with a 24 seven new cycle of doom and gloom, we unwittingly imagine moments of contemplation, not tainted by doomscrolling, as not only undesirable but also deeply troubling.
The truth is often the felt sense of depression we often stave off is rather our minds tightly held conception of boredom as the chief enemy to fun, excitement, and happiness. Blaise Pascal said it way better than me.
All of humanities problems them for man's inability to sit quietly in the room alone.
To be fair, this is not to minimize complexities of trauma, and how that dissuades people from engaging with their in their life. However, as another saying goes,
Wherever you go, there you are.
As such a genuine and earnest engagement with boredom often unleashes change.
#3: Change is long
At first glance this truth seems to be equivalent to number one, change is slow. And yes, there’s definitely overlap.
However, it is often through acceptance of the slow nature of change that one can then become comfortable with the idea that change itself is a long, long journey.
The goal is not for you and me, client and therapist, to achieve our goals for change and then have you ride into the sunset into a life bereft of suffering, challenge, and difficulty. Oh if I cold grant that to as some all powerful genie, you know that I would.
No.
The truth is the change we seek to gain slowly, via often a direct conflict with our existential dread of boredom (and trauma, anxiety, depression, etc.), will need to be a rock solid foundation in order for this change to be experienced in a long lasting manner.
What we do together that works now may not work later. What one season of life demands for us to adapt to will rarely if ever be the same demands of another season. The sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can rebound from when those seasons knock us on our ass and force us to evolve, or, and here’s the kicker, change into the sorts of people who can handle life on its own terms.