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This article offers perspective on the two-level process of personal change. Thanks to Gregory Bateson, Don Jackson, Dr. Paul Watzlawick, et. al. for
this important idea.
This YouTube clip previews what you'll read in this article:
This article assumes you're familiar with
the
intro to this web site, and the
premises underlying it, and...
this
intro to personality subselves, and these
Q&A items about them.
All animals, including
humans, are ceaselessly motivated to reduce current ore future
dis-comforts (needs) and increase pleasures. Both of these result from
changing something. A common vexation for many people is trying to
change a "bad habit" - e.g. stop using tobacco or alcohol, over-eating,
gambling, biting our nails, etc. - and failing. A similar vexation occurs
when we try to change another person's attitude, perception, opinion, and/or
behavior - and fail.
Premises About Change
See how
many of these ideas you agree with:
"Change"
occurs when an event, belief, or process doesn't match a prior pattern
or expectation. Changes occur all the time personally (among your
personality subselves), between people, and in the environment. Changes in
any of these often cause changes in the others, suggesting two questions:
"What has changed?", and "What are
the effects of this change on me, us, and the environment?".
Change
can be chosen or imposed. Voluntary changes usually aim to reduce or
prevent discomfort and/or to gain short or long-term pleasure.
Most people
unconsciously resist change
because it causes anxiety ("worry") - i.e. uncertainty about the
safety and comfort of the post-change world. This resistance is greater in
people who experien-ced great pain from prior changes, like kids going
through a sudden biofamily separation. Even planned change breeds
temporary anxiety and uncertainty ("stress"). Sudden or gradual unplanned
change can breed more stress longer.
Changes
effect
different people differently, because of age, gender, values, personality, and prior experience. Some subselves and people can adapt to
change (resume their balance) faster than others. This implies that successful change-management
requires you to identify the slowest adapter among all affected subselves or
people and
adjust your pace to suit them,
without resentment or blame. Do you know who among your inner and outer
families takes the longest to
adapt to changes?
Some changes require grieving, and others don't. The former involve losing physical or
invisible things to which you've
bonded or
attached. Can you
think of things you've changed that didn't "bother you" much? Too many
losses at once can overwhelm even
the most resilient, grounded child or adult. The moral: as you adapt
to losses (changes) personally and as a family, help each
other identify what you need to grieve, and use self-improvement
Lesson 3 ("good grief")
knowledge
together.
The key indicators of reaction to inner and outer change are your emotions and
related bodily feelings and functions (e.g. sleep, digestion, and
elimination). As you monitor yourself and other family members for their
change-comfort, discern between "calmness" due to emotional
denial, repression
and/or numbing (protective
false-self strategies), and true psychological-mental-spiritual acceptance and
serenity.
Some changes occur suddenly, and others slowly. Some are foreseen, and others come
without warning. Your family members have a better chance of adjusting
to local and environmental changes if they know (a) what's going to change in advance
and (b) how those changes will affect them and those they care about.
This
suggests the long-term value of
planning voluntary changes and discussing the plan with all affected
people..
Some changes
occur in clusters, and others happen alone. Buying a new car or TV has
far fewer family-wide effects than wedding, moving in together, conceiving
a baby, moving to a new home or lo-cation, or changing jobs or careers.
Adults and kids are at the highest risk of significant stress if they make
too many major changes without planning. or allowing time to adapt and stabilize.
Option - cate-gorize changes
as minor,moderate, and major to
help you discuss and plan for them,
Invisible changes can cause just as much stress as physical ones. Many small
concurrent chan-ges (or losses) can be just a stressful as a major shift.
The effectsof personal and family changes vary between predictable and
unforeseen. The
effects of unexpected shifts (like a vehicle wreck) usually take longer to adapt
to than foreseen changes like choosing a new school or family church. This
is partly because adapting can start before the actual change.
Note the difference between changes that are freely
chosen, vs. those that are imposed by others. The latter can add hurt,resentment, and anger to the normal mix of change emotions that need
to be felt, expressed, and released.
With these ideas in mind - have you ever tried to break (change) "a bad
habit" like smoking, using drugs, overeating, nail biting, or "shading the
truth"? If you didn't succeed, do you know why? It is not
because of a lack of "will power"! See how you feel about this explanation:
Two Levels of Change
Premise - there are two levels of personal change: superficial (behavioral) changes
("I'm working to improve my eye contact"), and underlying attitude changes
("I'm working to improve my self respect"). Do you know how and when to
distinguish these levels?
Superficial changes are
behavioral
shifts that don't permanently achieve a desired result.Exam-ples
abound: diets that "don't work" over time, addiction relapses,
persistent lateness, forgetting impor-tant names and dates, avoiding exercise
or medical checkups, - i.e. broken New Years' resolutions.
(Any bells ringing?). These problems (discomforts) keep returning because we
shift our behaviors but not the core values or attitudes causing the behaviors.
One reason
some therapy, counseling, and mediation is
unsuccessful long-term is that clients and professionals aren't aware of this
distinction and what causes it - so they unconsciously aim for super-ficial
behavioral changes. Most
marital and parent-child conflict is ultimately fruitless battling over
surface problems
(needs) and demanding or
expecting superficial changes - e.g. "I need you to listen to me more
often" instead of "I need you to
want to listen to me."
Core attitude changes are permanent
value-shifts that cause new behaviors.The trigger
problem stays gone, and is not replaced by a new version (like giving
up alcohol and starting a nicotine or work addiction). Non-voters become political activists. Atheists "come to believe" in a
Higher Power. Worka-holics become Zen masters. Criminals become
peace-enforcement professionals. Hostile ex mates change to see each other
compassionately as
wounded
and
unaware, not bad.
Scrooge becomes a jolly holiday benefactor of the poor Cratchit family.
Attitude changes really happen!
The Real Problem
The idea above raises two questions -
"Can people change their core
attitudes by willpower alone? If not - why not?" Sometimes they can if they
have a compelling new experience - like quitting a nicotine addiction because of a
lung-cancer diagnosis. Other times, willpower and logic don't work for long. The
idea that normal personalities
are composed of
many subselves provides a credible explana-tion.
If you're skeptical
about this, read this memo and try
this safe, interesting exercise after you finish
reading this.
If you or
someone you care about wrestle with "habits I can't break,"
unhealthy compulsions, or "problems that
keep coming back," you
or they are
probably controlled by several conflicted subsel-ves. One says "Change (whatever)!", and the
other says "NO - Don't change!"Making a permanent attitude
change
requires your resident
true Self
mediating between the opposed
subselves.
Implications
This two-level premise suggests several things...
Asking, expecting, or demanding that you or someone else want
to change an irritating or un-healthy behavior will probably result in...
the person changing against their will,
and feeling resentful and frustrated; or...
the person agreeing to change and being
unable to do so, causing confusion, frustration, guilt, and
shame.
Have you experienced each of
these?
Asking ordemanding an addict to stop their self-medicating
compulsion ("get sober") will never work, until they hit bottom on their own and change their attitude about their health and
well-being.
Shamingand/orpunishing children for not being able to
correct "bad behavior" is abuse. Using force or punishment may stop the behavior, but at the huge
price of lost respect, trust, security, and self-esteem. A better way is to
calmly declare and enforce respectful limits and to allow painful
natural con-sequences within reason. ("Alex, I warned you that leaving your
bike outside would get it stolen, and it was. I guess you'll have to earn
enough to buy a new one.")
Feeling guilty and
ashamed for not being able to change something is self abuse.
Instead, use an inability to change (the surface problem) as
validation that your
Self is disabled (the real problem), and you
need to want to
reduce psychological wounds (Lesson 1) to achieve
permanent attitude changes.
A final implication is...
Solving relationship problems requires someone to change something.
When problems recur, consider that the original "solution" probably was
a behavioral (superficial) change caused by a disabled true Self. Most
people are unaware of this, and focus fruitlessly on trying to "fix"
surface problems rather than on
identifing
and filling the
primary needs
causing them. Do you do that? See this
example of identi-fying primary needs, after you finish here.
Option - to get a sense of whether your true Self is often disabled,
identify any "bad habits" you've not been able to let go. Then spend a few
undistracted moments reviewing this comparison and this
worksheet after you finish this article. Keep in
mind that false selves are experts at distorting (e.g. denying) reality to
avoid scary changes and the unknown!
Recap
This article offers perspective on "changing," and an explanation for why
many attempts to change a "bad habit" fail. It proposes that people often
focus on trying to change a behavior (like overeating), rather than changing
the need or attitude that causes the behavior.
The article suggests that it's rarely possible to change
underlying needs or attitudes by will-power alone, because doing
so requires a permanent shift in some key personality subselves.
That requires (a) acceptance (vs. denial) of such
subselves, and (b) knowing how to negotiate desired changes with
them. self-improvement
Lesson 1
and the related guidebook provide a practical way to do this.
Pause, breathe, and recall why you used this worksheet. Did you get what
you needed? If so, what do you need now? If not - what
do
you need? Who's answering these
questions - your wise resident
true Self,
or
''someone else''?
The Web
address of this page is http://sfhelp.org/gwc/change.htm
Premises About Change
