I have been thinking a lot about the process of change recently. I remember the first time I went for psychotherapy. I was in my 20's and believed that needing help meant I was a failure. I had long assumed that at age 25 I would have most of the answers about life and be ready to take on the world, so I was bitterly disappointed and ashamed to admit I was relatively clueless and afraid.
I had grown up the oldest of two boys in a moderately dysfunctional family where my mother’s feelings were more important than anyone else’s. I had been cast in the role of Mother’s hero. She would frequently ask my opinion about things and confide in me more than she did my father. My brother was seen as less intelligent, the bad kid, and likely to go to trade school, juvenile detention, or worse. All three of us males were often confronted with our failures and educated, often hysterically, as to how they left Mom feeling uncared for and unloved.
Fortunately, at 25 and at other times in my life, I have chosen warm, knowledgeable, and accepting therapists and mentors, who were able to help me see that the expectations I had internalized (making someone else happy, for example) were grandiose and impossible to fulfill. I have found a lot of peace in the acceptance of myself as I am and have become the kind of therapist who tries to help others do the same.
I share that bit of personal history because I want to focus on the fear many people in our culture have about asking for help, admitting a problem, or acknowledging pain, loss, anger, emptiness, and helplessness. I want you to be able to trust that my knowledge about this subject is not just theoretical and dispassionate, but personal as well.
In The Road Less Traveled, Dr. Scott Peck notes that good mental health is only possible when we place truth above our personal needs or wants. Adherence to truth when it is unpleasant, painful, messy, embarrassing, or even threatening, must come first if we are to be whole as individuals, families, businesses, organizations, and countries. The recent ENRON scandal is representative of the tragedies that occur when individuals have little integrity.
Dr. Peck likens non-organic mental illness to having a bad map of the territory we are trying to navigate. We draw our map of the world of relationships, roles, intimacy, trust, self, etc. from our family of origin. The accuracy of our map depends a great deal on that of our parents’ maps. Regardless of how accurate, it is part of everyone’s life task to continually keep revising their map in the face of new experience.
Even for the most accurate map holders, some required revisions are often painful, confusing, overwhelming, and downright scary. Consider how distressing all of us in San Antonio find our continually changing freeways and the construction happening on city streets. “That exit used to be over there! I missed it again! You can no longer get there from here!” Now imagine major changes. Loop 410 no longer goes around the city. Austin is West of town. Mexico is where France used to be. Or, more personally, your home is now 500 miles from your workplace and in another direction! What about the kids’ schools, the grocery, drugstore, doctor, other family, etc.?
Sometimes the changes people are required to make in their personal maps are of just such emotional magnitude. It is not surprising that we develop ways of ignoring or discounting contradictory feedback: “I don’t need to stop and ask for directions!”
More distressing is the fact that before you can come up with a new and better map, you have to let go of the old familiar one. The one you have long trusted. This has been called the “trapeze” experience of change. - - - You are swinging on a trapeze. You are safe. You have a good grip and can hang on. This is not change. When you land on the other trapeze you will again have a good grip and be able to hang on and be safe. That is not change either. Change occurs during the time you let go of one trapeze and fall freely through the air towards the other!
Now, THAT IS CHANGE! You don’t know with absolute certainty that you will land safely. You have launched yourself, hopefully with the best of intentions and preparation, but you just don’t know! All change is fraught with some level of uncertainty and risk.
Since that is so, it may seem contradictory that Dr. Carl Rogers (founder of the Client Centered method or school of psychotherapy) said, “It is only when I accept myself exactly as I am that I change.” The paradox is resolved when we focus on the issue of acceptance. We feel more willing to take a flyer the more we feel personally safe and have accepted the possible consequences of failure. Hence, I know of no approach to psychotherapy that involves blame or judgement. As I have noted in another article, judgment or fear of it, always hinders or stops growth. Judgement cannot be proven wrong. It can only be rejected. Rejecting life long patterns of judgement can feel like a blindfolded free fall.
Rogers called the heart of his method, Unconditional Positive Regard. Within the boundaries and limits of a therapeutic relationship, the therapist is required to courageously accept clients unconditionally and to regard them positively despite their problems, weaknesses, failings, etc. This always presents a challenge to growth for the therapist. There is a theological name for this attitude. It is called grace. When we feel safe and accepted we have more courage, energy, and hope. We become more effective explorers. We are more able to reconsider in the face of new and even disappointing information. We become our own compass and take responsibility for ourselves and our lives. We learn how to better make ourselves happy, how to redraw our maps, to change.
More and more I am a recipient of grace. I experience it in the offering of it, when I share my truth with clients, peers and loved ones, when I listen to their truth and when I recognize the blessing of being alive and participating in creation. As my personal shepherd says: “This is the Kingdom of Heaven. It begins now and extends forever.”
It can be hard scary work to find and keep hold of. The joy and peace is in the process of searching for and sharing this ‘pearl of great price.’
Paul
