The Psychology of Change

How to adopt the personal change you are creating as part of your healing journey

Growth is ultimately about creating change. You can’t stay the same and grow at the same time. Creating change can be really uncomfortable, and there may be parts of us who resist the change we are trying to create.

That happened to me recently, and I want to share what I learned about creating change in my healing journey.

The Situation

As part of my healing journey, my therapist and I use an adaptive form of brainspotting called gaze spotting. It is basically brainspotting without the pointer. I found the pointer very invasive to my system, but the gaze spotting paired with slow bilateral stimulation of the EMDR paddles has yielded many powerful results.

I explained to my therapist how I was feeling stuck in my health/wellness journey, and she noticed that I had a particular gaze spot (a place my eyes focused on while I was talking) associated with this challenge. We decided to do some gaze spotting on it to see if we could break through whatever the barrier was that kept me from moving forward.

I was focused on the spot but tuned into the sensations in my body that were related to the spot. After a while, it was like there was a sentry defending the fort. The harder I tried to force my way in, the more resistance I experienced. This sentry was defending the rest of the insiders and was unwilling to allow me to enter because he didn’t want me disturbing the peace.

I stayed with it for quite some time, but ultimately, it was a stalemate. My therapist recognized that this sentry set a boundary, and he was seeing whether I would respect it. I love it when she gives me permission to not push too hard to achieve something. She said it was OK not to go there today. She asked if I would be willing to talk to the sentry and tell him that, so I did.

I felt like this was a significant part of the work, but I didn’t know why at the time. It wasn’t until I did my post-therapy journaling session that I realized why this was so important.

The Psychology of Change

I have built a 20+ year career creating and implementing large organizational change initiatives that impacted thousands of people. Over the years, I have refined the process I use to create the change and bring about the adoption of the change, and I’ve been quite successful.

I have learned some fundamental principles about change that ring true in almost every situation.

Change can feel threatening. In my experience, I’ve been asked to refine a process or create an application that reduces variation and improves performance. It seems that every line of business has a different way of executing the same process, AND they have their reasons for doing it a certain way.

The people who execute the process I am trying to change often feel threatened by the change because they are afraid for their jobs…and rightly so. Management often wants to know how much headcount you will save by changing the process before they consent to and fund the initiative.

My goal is not to put people out of work but to make the process less painful and more efficient. I believe in redeploying and shifting the responsibilities of workers to allow them to manage the process rather than performing multiple workarounds on a dysfunctional process.

Listening and learning come first. The first step in the change process is always to listen and learn. I want to understand the way they do things and why they do them. I do this by listening and asking questions. I firmly believe in the Socratic learning method of learning…asking questions. I can do a lot of learning by observing, but often I have questions that help me understand their process at a deeper level.

When I understand what they are doing and why they are doing it, I will test my understanding by walking the process through with them using their words. I either have it, or they will correct me.

This is an important step for me and them. I need to know their specific requirements for the process they are performing, i.e., what they need to get out of the process. They need to know that I heard them and am considering their needs.

Make them part of the solution. No one loves to have change shoved down their throats. If you take this approach, they will resist the change and not adopt the solution.

My approach is to recruit them to be part of the solution. They get a seat at the table…they get a voice. No one is more passionate about a process than those who must execute it daily. When you enlist their help, the solution becomes OUR solution, not MY solution.

They often have great ideas about how it could be done or what they would like it to be. This is a critical element of adoption. You can work hard to create an awesome automated process, but you have done nothing if no one uses it.

Sing off the same song sheet. As the leader, I am responsible for ensuring I am setting the vision for what this could be and that we are working toward the same goal. That means I have to hand out the sheet music and ensure everyone knows what part they are singing in the chorus.

We have to work together to achieve the goal. Anyone that is not bought into the solution will have to be removed. We can’t have people working against what we are trying to achieve as a team. Still, I don’t dismiss that person without first having a conversation with them to find out what the resistance is.

Have the hard conversations…in a safe space. When working in a collaborative environment, there will inevitably be times when you have to have some hard conversations about letting go of things that are not adding value to the greater good. This has to be done in a supportive and compassionate way. Remember, change is hard. It doesn’t come from yanking things away from people…it comes from willing surrender by the owner.

As the leader, I need to be able to hold space for the passionate and intense emotions associated with change without shaming them for having those emotions. This is also a critical part of the change process because it builds trust in the group.

Surrendering those parts is a request, not a demand…and surrender is a process that needs to be supported. There may be many emotions attached to those parts.

The Psychology of Personal Change

Creating personal change as part of our healing journey follows the same fundamental principles as corporate change. This is what I learned in my post-therapy journaling session.

Change can feel threatening to those younger parts of us that have been executing the same survival strategy for decades. To them, this is a matter of life or death, and the threat is still very real to them.

I read an article the other day about two Japanese soldiers who came out of hiding in one of the Philippine islands sixty years after the war ended. They had no idea the war was over. That is how it is with our little parts…they don’t know that the danger has passed. They don’t know that they are safe now and that we (as adults) are there to protect them now.

We must show our younger parts respect for what they managed through at such a young age and for sticking with it all this time, even though it was painful. We need to show them compassion and support. (Yes, I am preaching to myself.)

Listening and learning come first in working through challenging emotions too. We need to give those littles a voice so that they can share their experience, emotions, and why they chose that particular survival strategy. These workarounds were put in place for a reason…to survive. They need to be validated and acknowledged.

I am personally challenged by having to listen to my Littles because I am often too impatient, but I have learned it is more important for them to be able to speak and feel heard than it is for me to get to the bottom of why they did what they did. This is the work.

Make them part of the solution, not just the problem. Our Littles don’t like to have change shoved down their throats, either. We need to recruit them to help us solve the problem. This empowers them to influence the change, AND it becomes OUR change. This is a way to pull in those little parts of us that were once fragmented due to our trauma and make them part of the family…to repatriate them, if you will.

Sing off the same song sheet while allowing for many voices in the choir. While I, as the adult leader, have to create and articulate the vision and direction of where we are headed, it is important to get buy-in from all my parts; otherwise, we will be working against each other. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

This may mean influencing a Little to “sing” a different part by helping them to understand how important that new part is toward our choir’s success.

Have the hard conversations in a safe space that you create. Often, it can be difficult to say “no” to our Littles. For me, I can’t take the whining…it goes right up my spine like nails on a chalkboard (for you younger people, a chalkboard is the old version of a whiteboard, LOL). However, there are times when “no” is the right answer, and we have to help them understand that even though we said “no,” it does not mean that they are not loved and accepted.

Have any of you as parents ever experienced the “poochy lip” from one of your children when you said “no?” Our Littles do the same thing. They need to know that they haven’t done anything wrong, but our decision is in their best interest because we love and care for them.

My therapist told me how she worked with her young son to help him surrender his pacifier when it was time. She was firm about him needing to give it up but also supportive, comforting, and nurturing. We have to learn how to do that with our Littles too. (It’s a work in progress for me).

Adopting the Change

Creating and implementing change in our lives can be challenging and uncomfortable, but it can also lead to amazing accomplishments. I am on a health/wellness journey, and I know it will take some significant time and effort to reach my goal. It is not about losing weight (though I suspect that may happen)…it is about learning how to love, nurture, care for, and be a good steward of the body that the Lord gave me.

The only way I will be able to accomplish this goal is to have all my parts working together to achieve it. That does not mean that I force them to surrender to the goal, but rather, to create a vision for what it would be like for US to achieve that goal together.

Getting internal buy-in takes time…it is a slow process. Sometimes we have to slow down or pause or give our Littles time to come to the change of their own volition. That is OK. Our journey is our journey, and we can take as much time as we need.

I invite you to give your Littles a voice, to include them in the change process, and to make them part of the solution.

As always, you do not have to walk this journey alone.

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