Mindfulness and Change

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

A few days ago, I posted this statement to Facebook: "The only thing that makes change difficult is my resistance to it." My resistance may come in the form of something outside of myself, like a lack of education, or a physical addiction, or where I live, or how much money I have. However, ultimately, I am the one responsible for my own change. And how do I change? By changing the hardest thing in the world to change - my thinking and my beliefs.

If we've never changed a belief in our life, then 100% of the beliefs we operate by were given to us by someone else - our parents or guardians, and the people important to us growing up.  Our beliefs determine our perceptions of life - this is good, that is bad, this is right, that is wrong, this is safe, that isn't. But sometimes we test our beliefs, often because we see someone doing something we believe is harmful or wrong, but they look like they're enjoying it. Drinking is a prime example. There are people who have become alcoholic who grew up in a home where alcohol was never once used. They may have even been warned away from alcohol. But they join the Navy, because they learned that's the patriotic thing to do, and they saw all of their buddies drinking on liberty in Manila, and they thought, "Well, maybe one won't hurt." And if one doesn't hurt, and they have a little fun, their belief regarding alcohol will probably start to change. 

Most of us don't hang on to all of the beliefs with which we were programmed, but we do hang onto many. Sometimes they're not beliefs that really help us - sometimes we have gender role beliefs that don't really go with the yearning of our soul. Perhaps a man loves to cook, but he has a belief that men don't cook, and that's why they get married. Men hunt, women fix the food. So he never enjoys cooking, because (to him) it defies his manliness. Perhaps a girl really enjoys football, and yearns to play, but 'girls don't do contact sports', so she never experiences football in the flesh.

Sometimes the beliefs we hold cause us so much inner pain that we seek change. Often, we look for change outside of ourselves. For instance, I used to feel so bad about myself - low self-esteem - that I sought approval from others. I could get it, but it didn't last and I could never get enough (sounds a little like alcohol!) When I finally realized that only I could give me self-esteem, I began taking the actions that I thought a person with good self-esteem would take - basically, I began being responsible for myself. Then I began to change my thinking about myself, and my perceptions of myself began to change, and now my beliefs about myself are beginning to change. But I have to be mindful of what I'm thinking and what I'm doing. Being mindful at its most basic simply means - paying attention.

Another thing I had to do was momentarily suspend my disbelief. When I began recovery, I knew nothing would work for me. However, because I was in so much pain, I was willing to suspend that belief, if only for a few minutes at a time, to take different actions. Little by little, bit by bit, by thinking and my beliefs began to change. It definitely is not an overnight process.

I would like to share a real-life example of why change can be so difficult: My father answered the phone every time it rang - even if it was a number that was unknown to him. As he got to his last years, he got fewer and fewer legitimate calls. I assisted him nearly the last 4 years of his life, and I tried to get him to not answer the phone unless he knew who was calling (nowadays, I don't try to help someone change unless they want to). My father passed away when he was 86 or 87, so you know there wasn't going to be much changing going on. But here's the picture about the phone thing. Back when my father was growing up, if his family had a phone, it would have been a luxury. More than likely, the town he grew up in had only a few phones, and people would have shared. Also, each time someone used the phone, they had to pay. So you knew if you got a call, it must be important. Additionally, there weren't answering machines. You either took the call or you missed it. Answering machines really didn't come into popular use until the 80's (that's 1980, for my younger reader), and my father was in his fifties in the 80's. So that's a long habit of answering the phone every time it rang with the belief that the call must be important, and that behavior won't change unless given a good enough reason to do so. 

Many people will do an outer change without making an inner change simply because the society around them is changing, and it's more expedient to go along with the flow than to continue on in their behavior. An example of this would be if a woman who loved telling sexist and racist jokes at work learned that her company instituted a new policy whereby the jokes she loved were now forbidden at work. She could probably, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, conform her behavior to meet her company's expectations, so long as the job was worth it to her. Nothing has changed inside. She doesn't respect men or people who look different than her any more than she used to; now she just doesn't show it. She will probably continue her behavior outside of work, never giving it another thought.

True change takes mindfulness, because human beings naturally resist change (see one of my earlier posts about the way the human brain operates to protect us). Welcoming change or even understanding the benefits of change is a form of higher thinking. But, again, because our beliefs and our habits are deeply rooted neural pathways in our brains, real change takes more than just the desire to change.

The resistance to change comes when I become mindful of my obstacles to change, which, at first glance, are usually my thoughts. I do control my thoughts to a great extent, so I don't have to let any one thought pattern control me. But if I've made a physical or behavioral change, and it's not sticking due to repeated thought patterns, then I must look more deeply than just my thinking. And this is where the real resistance comes up, because I have to begin to look at my beliefs, or my subconscious. Beliefs can be not only mentally difficult to change, but biologically difficult as well. Some beliefs we hold are called defense mechanisms, and we have them because at one time they served us - we needed them, they protected us. They are wired into us biologically, so when we start poking around at them, we start getting symptoms like anxiety.

For instance, I hate conflict. I will go out of my way to avoid conflict. I will pay money to avoid conflict. I will do things I don't necessarily want to do to avoid conflict. If two people are arguing around me, I feel great anxiety, and I want to leave, to escape. Avoiding conflict is an old defense mechanism from way back. I no longer need it. Today I'm safe. But because I haven't yet worked on that defense mechanism, it's still there. When I do get to work on it, this is what I will need to do:

When involved in a conflict situation with another person, I must physically calm myself, probably by breathing, even perhaps by temporarily removing myself from the situation to calm down. Then I must reassure myself with some pre-planned self talk to let me know that I'm ok and this is ok and I am safe. Then I must engage and try to peacefully and reasonably resolve the conflict. And then, I must tell myself that I survived it. Repeat probably 20 or 30 times, and I'll have changed my belief about conflict, and it will no longer engage my automatic autonomic fight or flight reaction.

I haven't worked through this one yet because I haven't gotten a big enough carrot; I do, however, see it on the horizon. I've experienced so much change and growth over the past 4 years that I now expect more to come. I've still got a lot of stuff hanging in there that I can get rid of.

But the point is that the more I allow change to occur in my life, the easier it gets for me to let it happen. My resistance drops much more quickly than it used to because I'm reaping the vast benefits of positive progressive change. I used to live in a pretty small and narrow world. I suffered. I choose to no longer suffer, but, in order to avoid suffering, I must  accept some temporary but beneficial pain.

If you've made it this far with me, God bless you! I just learned today some ways to make desired change a little more palatable, and if I implement these methods, I'll let you know how it turns out. 

Namaste,

Ken