Why is change so hard?
Change. It’s what most people are looking for when they come to therapy. Something (or things) in their life feels off and they want a change to feel better. Most people have a lot of insight coming into therapy, that isn’t the problem, making the actual changes are the issue. So why is the change so hard? Let’s talk about the biology of this. To change a pattern, reaction, or behavior, your neurons (brain cells) must actually physically change. This requires a lot of energy. It doesn’t happen overnight. Our brains are pretty lazy, meaning they like to conserve energy. Your brain will not put all this energy into changing your neurons unless it knows you’re really serious about it. How do you tell your brain you’re serious about change? Repetition of course! When you practice something enough it both sends the message you mean it and want this new thing to stick, while giving your brain enough time to actually physically change. Our brain also prefers the path of least resistance, which happens to be the path already laid out whether you like it or not. This is because it uses less energy to do the thing it already knows, so your brain will choose familiar over new quite often. It also feels safer to our nervous system to repeat old patterns because we’ve done it before, so we can do it again. Your nervous system trusts that you can survive, it doesn’t have this level of trust with new changes. This isn’t logical at all which is why it can be so frustrating to live it, as if you’re held back by some invisible force in your own mind.
It’s me, so you know I’m going to talk about self-compassion. We must be compassionate with ourselves as we try to change anything in our lives. It takes a lot of time and practice. So often, people don’t actually make the changes they want because their expectations are so high and they don’t give themselves grace which makes them give up and go back to old patterns. As we’ve discussed before, the way you speak to yourself matters. You want to be your own biggest cheerleader, not a stressful angry bully. Change takes time, you will not do it perfectly. In fact, mistakes helps your brain learn even better! When you keep working towards the changes even though it’s hard, your brain starts to get the message that it’s important. So be kind to yourself. Change is hard enough without your being hard on yourself.
Questions to ponder.
What is one change you would like to work on in your life right now?
How can you practice this change?
What are some self-compassionate things you can say to yourself during this process?
