How Do People Change?
There’s an old joke that says that psychoanalysis doesn’t cure symptoms so much as it bores them to death.
There’s a kind of truth in that. It feels at first like the joke is sneeringly dismissive of talk therapy - what a waste of time! - but then when you sit with the joke for a couple of beats, the “symptom” does go away in the end, doesn't it? So isn’t that success?
I’m not a therapist. I have benefitted greatly from therapy at times in my life and I can say without hesitation that I would not have the relatively secure, unambiguously joyful life I have today without it. I know all of it can disappear in an instant and I remain unceasingly grateful. It’s why I’ve started this site: to pay it all forward and give back what I’ve been given.
I was trained in my late 20’s as a clinical psychologist with a heavy emphasis on therapeutic practice and training, with a concentration on family violence and trauma. I was part of a Psy. D. program that gave us 4,000 hours of supervised clinical therapeutic experience, which is a lot, and I had fantastic supervisors and mentors with great skill and training and depth as human beings. I was very fortunate in that. I was still low key a bit of a mess underneath it all, as young men tend to be, but not so bad off that I couldn’t be helpful to people in a meaningful way. Let’s say I had a lot more growing up to do, and thankfully I had enough help from some very patient and generous people along the way to get me there.
Anyway, as it turns out, the job market for newly minted psychologists in New York State back then in the late 90’s was crashing due to changes in insurance reimbursement, so I leaned into my prior background in business and became a psychologist consultant to enterprise, getting involved early on in positive psychology before it even had a name, and I never looked back. Though I did not become a clinical psychologist, I’ve still always practiced as a different sort of psychologist, formed by that early training, and it has made a great deal of difference in my work life.
Perhaps the core lesson I brought with me from my years of training as a psychologist was this: all human growth is derived from positive relationships.
Sometimes the memory of a past positive relationship is also enough to propel us forward in critical times.
In spite of the great mythology that surrounds us in the global west focused in individuality, individual achievement, success heroism and the like, it’s obvious to me that, simply a matter of neurology and brain development, all of the wiring and development that happens in the wetware between our ears is shaped and formed, for good or ill, by our social interactions, even more than by our genes.
The whole nature-versus-nurture debate is silly because, from the moment of conception, development is influenced by its environment in the mother’s body and simultaneously fetuses also influence the mother’s body. Once born, the same circular, interactive dynamic continues, and as we grow, the span of people and social experiences that shape us and that we shape in turn expands. Along the way, our patterns of perception, thinking, and emotion form like grooves and pathways and patterns in the neurons of our brains, like well trod deer paths in a forest. Some patterns and pathways fall into disuse only to be replaced by others, and on and on throughout life. The brain is also biologically wired for major growth spurts where this vast network of neurons explode:: first during the first three years of life and then again during adolescence, starting with puberty and zooming through the teen years until the pace parachutes into an adult baseline shape at about age 25.
After that, the brain continues to grow and change with our experiences due to neuroplasticity. Even when we think we are growing or learning solely on our own, say, by reading books or consuming other cotent, it’s critical to distinguish learning concepts or ideas from actually growing or changing as a person. Word or language coded knowledge does not equal growth or change. When we’re growing or changing, it’s often the cerebral cortex (where all those words are) that is the last to know. The part of our brains that traffics in logic and language ends up being tasked with the job of trying to code or analyze what has been bubbling up and which has finally taken shape inside us after the fact. Therapists in training learn that “insight” is not change. Those “aha!” breakthrough moments in therapy are the stuff of Hollywood, not so much real life. Instead, change manifests itself in new ways of feeling, thinking, relating, and behaving, and may or may not be accompanied by any conscious “insight.”
People change from experiencing on a fundamental level that new possibilities exist. Seeing that, experiencing that, in the form of another person who shows it to us, more by how they relate to us than by what they say to us. . . that’s the magic sauce.
So let’s revisit the joke above. Is the “symptom” just bored to death? Or does talking one’s challenges through with a person whose training is designed to help us explore, feel, relive, and reprocess our old experiences, beliefs, and social patterns in the context of a new, positive, informed, and supportive context open up the possibility to test out alternative ways of being and engaging the world, ways that are new and more satisfying? If change were as easy as learning ideas, reading an article like this one or watching an instructional YouTube video could change people’s lives in no time. But that’s not how it works. We need to learn and grow from people who we trust in the context of positive relationships to grow, to truly learn the hard things, and to fulfill our dreams.
Sometimes the memory of a past positive relationship is also enough to propel us forward in critical times. Thinking back to a loved one, mentor, parent, or therapist, even if they are gone, can become a great resource. In this case, growth comes from the echo, or perhaps more precisely, the internalized representation of the sum of our experiences with another person inside our brains.
People change from experiencing on a fundamental level that new possibilities exist. Seeing that, experiencing that, in the form of another person who shows it to us, more by how they relate to us than by what they say to us. . . that’s the magic sauce. Maybe that’s a therapist. Maybe that’s some other mentor, or friend, or aunt or uncle. Whoever it is, it’s someone we trust, who genuinely has our welfare and wellbeing on at least a level priority with their own. I’m leaving our parents not because parents are bad, but because even as they (hopefully) give us the best that they have, they can’t tell us or show us how to be the best, most fulfilled versions of ourselves. Sometimes they give us a good head start and sometimes not so much. Coming from our families of origin, there are always at a minimum gaps to fill because we are not our parents and they are not us. If at least one of them loves us and is good enough, then the luckier among us at least get a head start and maybe a decent working example for how to live and thrive from them. But parents, like the rest of us, are limited and flawed, even the best of them.
Some caveats: I’m not saying don’t get professional help if you need it and can get access to it. Cost can always be a barrier, as is the general lack of good mental health resources out there sufficient to meet the need and demand of the many walking wounded among us. If you are actively depressed or unable to function in work or relationships, by all means, get help. Do it now. Things can get better. No matter what, bring people into your life who lift you up, and find ways to sets boundaries or otherwise to free yourself from relationships that hurt you or hold you back in repeating cycles of highs that get cancelled out by lows, over and over. Learning how to break those cycles virtually always requires the circuit breaker of a positive relationship to help us find the off ramp.
Therapy at the right time in one’s life with a therapist with whom we have some chemistry is great, and super powerful if we stick with it. At the same time, human growth and fulfillment were not invented when psychotherapy came along. The common denominator across time to propel our growth and fulfillment is positive relationships.
That’s how people change.