By now most of you would’ve seen the signs on my door and in my consulting room:
Warning: psychotherapy leads to change
For years I have been joking that therapy should come with a warning like those on cigarette packs because change can be pretty scary. Well, I finally got a sign and put it up so don’t tell me you haven’t been warned!
That being said, the vast majority of you come into therapy because you want to change and when the change starts to take place you face it with honesty, courage and dignity.
What some of you haven’t counted on is the resistance in your immediate environment to that change.
Generally two things happens: A) the people close to you don’t seem to notice the change and keep relating to you in the usual manner, or B) people notice the change and don’t like it and do everything they can to maintain the old order of things.
Why do they do that?
Well, people close to you may not be aware that you’ve changed because they have not perceived any changes. To understand how that can happen we need to understand a little about the way human beings processes information.
At any given moment, there is a vast amount of information coming to the brain from both external (the environment) and internal (the body) sources. For example, we hear sounds, smell things, see things, touch things, navigate our bodies through space without bumping into things, taste things, maintain balance, we have memories triggered, we have feelings, we have internal feedback from the body about temperature, oxygen level, presence of bacteria etc etc. So much information going to the brain all the time.
So what does the brain do in order not to become overwhelmed by all this input? It uses stereotypes, pays selective attention to some information and filters out information. Which means that a lot of the time we super-impose an image from our memory onto things and don’t realise that the memory-image may be outdated and reality has changed.
For example:
Partner: you always scream at the kids!
Person in therapy: No, actually I haven’t screamed at them for the last 6 weeks since I started working in therapy on my feelings of being overwhelmed.
Partner: Really? I could’ve sworn that you have been screaming at the kids lately.
The second thing that sometimes happens is that people close to you notice that you’ve changed but then do everything they can to revert things back to the way things were. For them it was so much easier when you weren’t assertive, or setting limits, or in touch with your own needs, or demanding to be heard or respected, or insisting on the domestic workload being shared etc.
So, psychotherapy leads to change and although you probably embrace and welcome this, it may take a little longer for other people in your life. Give them time and gently show them the person that you’re changing in to. In some instances they may not want to accept the change in you and then you’ll have to decide what that means for your relationship with them.