Chapter 3

Identifying barriers to change

You’re uncomfortable about something in your life, feeling ineffective, unsettled and dissatisfied. You’d benefit from making changes. But, does change feel possible for you? Do you perhaps find yourself making excuses where change is concerned?

This chapter focuses on attitudes of mind that could sabotage your efforts to generate change, attitudes such as, ‘I can’t change’; ‘I was born this way’; ‘I’m powerless to change’; ‘I’m afraid of change’; ‘I’ll make mistakes and fail’; ‘I can’t be bothered to change’.

Change, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, means ‘to become different’ or ‘to make different’. With these definitions in mind, I now introduce you to six attitudinal barriers to change:

1.	How can I become different when I was born the way I am?

When it comes to the concept of ‘becoming different’, one of the most common concerns voiced by new clients is ‘I am the way I am. I was born this way. I can’t change’.

But, are these statements true? Is it the genes that we’re born with that dictate who we are and how we behave or rather, the experiences we have in the environment in which we’re raised, that teach us who to be and how to behave? Yes, that old nugget: The nature/nurture debate.

It is certainly true that many animals are born genetically pre-programmed to behave in specific ways – a salmon returning to its place of birth to spawn for example, a bird’s migration to warmer climes, and so on. Yet, for human beings it is different.

You may believe that you were born the way you are, Duncan certainly did, yet, when you really think about it, from the moment you were born, you have changed on a daily basis, some changes being more radical than others. You were born with certain hardwired abilities to cry, to suckle, to turn your head toward the source of potential food, but you had to learn how to hold your head unaided, how to sit, to crawl, to toddle, to walk, to run, to eat, to gabble, to talk, to sing, to debate and so on. You have already learned to accommodate so much change, but it felt so natural, you didn’t acknowledge it as change.

We are born into this world with a brain full of billions of neurons, some hardwired abilities, some genetic predispositions and a whole lot of potential. This potential is fashioned by the environment we live in, the experiences we have and the resulting neural pathways that are formed and strengthened.

In his latest book Not in Your Genes (2016), Oliver James says ‘there is a mass of solid evidence that how we are nurtured makes an enormous difference to how we turn out, for good and ill’. Based on the findings obtained through analysis of the Human Genome Project (2000), it has been demonstrated that individual genes for psychological traits of any kind do not exist, and that genes explain only 1-5 per cent of the variation of human mental abilities and personalities. It has been concluded that it is the environment in which we grow and experience life that generates who we become. Who we are is learned and, therefore, can be changed if so desired. We are not fixed in set cement. Yeah!

Our genes may at some level pre-dispose us toward certain physical characteristics, but our brains need experience to form neural connections. If neural pathways are not utilised, the potential abilities they offer tend to fade and die – neurons that fire together, wire together; neurons that fire apart, depart. For instance, we may be born with the ability of sight, but if we’re not exposed to ‘normal’ visual stimuli, the neural pathways that are devoted to sight will not be stimulated and will, because of lack of use, become defunct. This was demonstrated via experiments on new-born kittens in 1963 (Hubel and Wiesel). They found that if a kitten was deprived of normal visual experience during that critical period at the start of its life, the circuitry of the neurons in its visual cortex was irreversibly altered. Another example: we may be born with the potential to be tall (both of our parents are tall), but, if we’re born into an impoverished environment in which we’re regularly malnourished, we might never reach our height potential.

In The Brain (2015), David Eagleman, an American neuroscientist who specialises in the plasticity (malleability) of the brain, states that genes give a very general direction of how neural paths in the brain may form and function but that ‘world experience fine-tunes the rest of the wiring, allowing the human to adapt to the local details of their surroundings’. He continues, ‘The human brain is born unfinished and allows itself to be shaped by the details of life experiences.’ For example, in 2006, another neuroscientist, James Fallon, inadvertently discovered that he had ‘the brain imaging pattern and genetic makeup of a full-blown psychopath’. However, having been born into a nurturing and loving environment, although he did lack empathy, rather than commit heinous crimes, he became a ‘successful scientist and family man’. As he surmises, ‘I never knew how profoundly an (early) environment could affect somebody’.

A child’s brain rapidly develops until the age of about 2, but the process of building a human brain takes up to 25 years. Even when full development of the brain has been achieved, it continues to change through experience. ‘Your family of origin, your culture, your friends, your work, every conversation you’ve ever had – all these have left their footprints in your nervous system. Everything contributes to a continual reshaping of the neural networks we summarize as us’ (Eagleman, 2015).

Every day of our lives, with every experience that we have, we have changed and adapted to our environment. From birth to death, we are works in progress. We are capable of changing. We do change. FACT.

Having read the above, do you believe that you are capable of changing?

From birth to date, list some of the ways in which you have changed.

2.	How can I make things different when I am powerless to change?

Have you picked up this book, I wonder, in the hope that I will resolve your problem for you?

It’s true that I do sincerely want this book to be of use to you. And, I would, in some ways, love to have the abilities to resolve all people’s problems. If this were the case, I would become very powerful indeed (‘SuperChris’, methinks) for each person who looked to me to resolve their problem on their behalf, would, in fact, be giving away their power to me.

Let me explain further:

You’re feeling ineffective within yourself or uncomfortable about something in your life. You want things to be different. But, how did your life get to this point? Do you firmly believe that you and your current situation are simply a product of your circumstances? Do you feel you are where you are because you’ve been driven by others’ dictates, their ‘musts’, ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’? Do you believe that the direction your life has taken has been determined by forces that lie beyond your control? Destiny? Luck? Bad luck? If so, you will probably have formed the belief that you are not in control of your own life and that you have no power to bring about change.

This view of life represents a responsibility-avoidance mind-set, because if you negate any sense of power and control, then nothing is your fault. If this is the case for you, you are living ‘at effect’.

Difficult things do happen from time to time; it’s part of being alive. But, living ‘at effect’ means routinely having things happen to you, habitually looking outside of yourself for someone/something to blame for how you feel, for what’s happened or for what you’ve not achieved. People who live ‘at effect’ typically experience feelings of loss of control, fear, anxiety, powerlessness, dependency and hopelessness, remaining, on an everyday basis, passively within the confines of their comfort zone. This is where Mia and Duncan found themselves to be.

Living with the ‘at effect’ mind-set you believe ‘I can’t’, and simply hope that things will change or that others will make things better for you. You make yourself a victim of circumstance. And, when you believe yourself to be helpless in a situation, you automatically filter out all the possible ways in which you could take control and create something different, because you simply don’t see that there are alternative opportunities. Thus, in your own mind, the belief that ‘you can’t’ becomes true.

As young children, we tend to be offered very little control over our own lives, for good reason – we don’t know what we’re doing. But, as we grow, we experiment and develop, and ideally learn ways in which we take up the reins and become responsible for the direction our own life takes. We learn to develop an ‘at cause’ mind-set. Within this approach, we believe ourselves to be the creator of our lives, accepting responsibility for who we are and who we will become, the choices we make and the consequences that will result.

Being ‘at cause’ is approaching life from the position of having personal power and authority over what happens and how we choose to feel about it. It’s about actively taking control.

Central to living ‘at cause’ is the belief ‘I can’. We are motivated to look at ourselves and to understand how we can start to do things differently. We believe ourselves to be the creator of what happens in our lives, learning from any mistakes made, taking self-responsibility, and choosing our own end result.

Throughout our daily lives, there will be aspects over which we feel particularly in control, and others over which we feel we have little or no authority; depending on what we’re doing, we can feel responsible for the outcome, or at the whim of others’ behaviour. For example, in our professional role, we might find it pretty straightforward to make decisions. But, when it comes to our domestic lives, we might leave decision-making to our partner.

Think through where you are on this spectrum of being ‘at cause’ or ‘at effect’ and in what circumstances you become particularly aware of your sense of control or lack of it. What are the typical consequences of your approach in these situations?

If nothing else, what I have learned from working alongside my clients over the years is that the most enduring and successful outcomes result from the individual’s acceptance of self-responsibility for creating change and resolving problems.

It is my role, as therapist, to provide information and to ask questions that help people understand their problem in more detail. But, my aim is not to tell them what’s right for them to do; there are no rights and wrongs, just choices with consequences. I will direct you through the process of change and enable you to see the resources you have to equip you to change, but it is down to you to put the work in, to take action and to make the changes.

There have, sadly, been a few occasions when I have been unsuccessful with a client. Typically this lack of success has centered on the client’s misconception that hypnotherapy can make a person change, whether they want to or not. As you will have read in Chapter 2, this is not possible. I cannot make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. It is for the person desiring change to acknowledge that change will only occur when they take personal responsibility for that change.

Let me explain through example. A couple of years ago, a client came to me presenting with weight problems. There were no medical reasons to explain why she was overweight. She was adamant that she did not over-eat and couldn’t understand why she had put on weight; she felt despondent. She didn’t recognise the part she had played in the problem arising and felt at the mercy of the weight she had gained. Because she took no responsibility for her weight problem, she saw no need to change her behaviour. She had heard that hypnotherapy was like magic – that it could, in one or two sessions, make anyone do anything, even if they didn’t want to do it. She wanted me to make her thin whilst she continued to eat as before. Alas, she was disappointed.

Think of a successful person you know and admire. To what do you attribute their success? Were they just lucky, were they born a genius, or did they simply work hard?

How have you tackled past problems? Have you overcome things that you didn’t think you could? If so, take an example of one that you’re proud of and reflect on how you achieved it.

Reflect a moment on all that you have achieved to date, no matter how trivial you think the achievement is, and make a list of these achievements.

Where your own sense of discomfort is concerned, reflect on whether you’re waiting for things to change or investigating ways in which you can make things change. What, if anything, is stopping you from changing?

3.	How can I make things different when I’m afraid of change?

Some people thrive on change and enjoy the thrill of the unknown. For others, change can feel big and frightening; it suggests a state of huge uncertainty and can stop them taking action. Fear of change can call into question our confidence in the resources and abilities that we have, generating self-defeating doubts. And, these doubts automatically trigger the fight/flight/freeze (stress) response, creating that physical discomfort.

But, the fact is that fear, although physically uncomfortable to experience, is nothing more than an emotional response to a perceived threat. We perceive change to be a threat; and yet, as already discussed, we continue to change on a daily basis, adapting to what’s around us. Some changes are bigger than others, for example getting divorced or being bereaved, but change, whether small or large, is a very normal part of our lives and we are fundamentally adept at accommodating it. It may challenge us, but key to managing change is our belief that we have the skills and abilities, the resources, to rise to it and the knowledge that we will handle it.

Change can also feel rather frightening to those immediately around us. When we change or are changing, others can find it difficult to accept and might consciously (or unconsciously) look for ways to keep us as we were. Perhaps a jealous husband prefers their partner to remain overweight for fear of losing them should their goal be achieved. They might then buy chocolates, suggest going out for dinners and so on to sabotage their efforts to lose weight. The friend of a person wishing to stop smoking might fear losing that friend, so encourage the person to remain a smoker; or, they may feel even worse about their own smoking habit should their friend quit, so, again, encourage the friend to remain a smoker. These forms of sabotage are rarely deliberately undertaken, but they can play a key role in a person’s ability to achieve their goal.

Mia’s husband, Geoff, found the changes that she made led to his needs no longer being prioritised as they once had been. He remonstrated and accused in an attempt to maintain the status quo. She learned to acknowledge his fears where she was concerned and enabled him to talk through his uneasiness. By discussing her goals with him and keeping him ‘in the loop’ on a regular basis, she was able to help him realise that, in the long run, he would benefit too.

In what circumstances do you fear change?

Hold that fear up to the light and examine it; what does it mean to you?

What skills and abilities do you have that will enable you to accommodate change?

How might your changing affect others around you?

4.	How can I make things different when I’m convinced I’ll make mistakes and that I’ll fail?

All human beings are fallible – we make mistakes and we all fail at things from time to time. Yet, rather than accept this as a normal part of life, we can grow up terrified of getting things wrong and almost phobic of the shame that failing can generate.

Mia was one of these people. When her parents’ marriage began to degenerate, their tolerance for mistakes plummeted; they didn’t have the energy reserves to view Mia’s errors, or her siblings’ or each other’s errors as anything other than a burden. Mia was regularly scolded for things that she got wrong and, as time went by, she developed a fear of making mistakes. In her attempt to minimise the likelihood of her making mistakes, she began setting incredibly high standards for herself. But, far from reducing her chances of making a mistake, this approach resulted in her feeling a sense of almost permanent failure.

Her parents became so self-focused that they were unable to help Mia differentiate between her behaviour and her value as a human being, and she began to view her mistakes and failures as a reflection of her ineptitude and worthlessness. Her self-esteem plummeted and she strived even harder at school, driven to get the best grades that she could to please her troubled parents and make them proud of her.

The fear of making mistakes and failing can often lead us to form unconsciously driven self-sabotage behaviours that set us against achieving our goal and so maintain the problematic behaviour. These sabotage behaviours include procrastination, putting things off until conditions are met that will ‘guarantee’ success; perfectionism, setting unattainably high standards for self (as in the case of Mia) and avoidance, side-stepping a situation to hide flaws from others and avoid risking public shame (as in the case of Duncan).

But, evidence demonstrates that it is the most successful people in society who make the most mistakes and live through the most failures. Making mistakes and not succeeding at things is an invaluable part of realising how to (or how not to) do something. Based on the lessons learned, we adapt our behaviour to better effect; we adjust what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. Thomas Edison found many ways of not making an electric light bulb before he finally found out how to make one. ‘I have not failed,’ he said, ‘I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work’.

To further explain this, let’s look at learning a new skill – playing rugby. Perhaps it was different for Owen Farrell, 2016 Six Nations England fly half, I don’t know, but for most of us, the first time we find ourselves on a rugby playing field, we don’t have much idea of what to do or how to do it. There are rules a-plenty. We need to be taught how to pass the ball, to kick the ball, the role each team member plays in the game, etc. There’s a host of information and new skills to take on board. At first we might apply our foot to the ball intending it to fly into the air in one direction, and find that it’s heading in quite the opposite way. We learn that the error happened because we had placed our foot on the wrong part of the ball. So we learn to kick more effectively and we practise and we practise and we practise, until gradually we learn what’s necessary to play rugby effectively. We know that Farrell, from time to time, misses penalty kicks – he is human.

How do you define a ‘mistake’ and a ‘failure’?

Identify some of your past mistakes and failures.

What were the consequences of these?

Having made these mistakes and lived through these failures, what lessons did you learn? How did you grow as a person?

With your definitions of a ‘mistake’ and a ‘failure’ in mind, are these definitions helpful to you in any way? If not, what would be a more beneficial way of viewing mistakes and failures?

Would you describe yourself as a perfectionist? If so, in what circumstances do you find yourself being more perfectionist than others? What are the typical consequences of you being perfectionist in these circumstances?

Do you tend to put things off? If so, under what circumstances do you do this? Again, what are the typical consequences of procrastinating in these situations?

Do you tend to avoid things? If so, what type of things do you routinely avoid and with what consequences?

5.	But, if I change, I might have to give up … secondary gains

Difficult though it may be to identify and acknowledge, for every long-term problem experienced, there will be some, albeit perhaps subtle, benefits derived from the issue continuing – this is what we call secondary gains.

For example, the problem we have might be acting as a shield, as an excuse to avoid doing certain things that we don’t want to do; the problem might provide us with a lot of attention from other people, attention that we enjoy; the problem might act as an excuse for maintaining behaviours such as drinking too much, overeating, smoking and so on, behaviours that we want to continue doing.

Due to her experiences, Mia lacked belief in her ability to make wise decisions. Whenever she could, she avoided making decisions. In so doing she felt no sense of responsibility for the decisions that others made on her behalf – negating responsibility was Mia’s secondary gain.

Without necessarily being consciously aware of them, these secondary gains might be so useful to us that they generate self-sabotaging behaviours where our efforts to create change are concerned.

Mia felt so troubled by the prospect of learning how to take responsibility that she cancelled an appointment with me.

With secondary gains in mind, is your sense of discomfort beneficial to you in any way?

6.	How can I make things different when I am not committed to doing so?

We’ve discussed some of the attitudinal obstacles faced when considering the prospect of change. But, change is made even more difficult when we’re neither fully motivated nor 100% committed to making it happen.

Motivation is, simply put, the desire to do something. We all experience motivation at some levels: unless we’re naturists, we typically get dressed before we leave our home; we brush our teeth and wash ourselves; we eat and drink. But, finding the motivation to change can feel more difficult, more challenging.

In order to help ourselves to develop a sense of motivation toward our goal, it’s important to acknowledge all the rewards that we’ll enjoy as a result of achieving it. By understanding how we’ll benefit from our goal, we can begin to fully realise that it is something we really want, something, therefore, to get excited about; something that warrants our effort. Motivation gives us the confidence to step out of our comfort zones, face any difficulties that arise, and achieve. Rather than ‘because I ought to’, ‘I should’ or ‘I have to’, ‘because I want to’ is the language of the motivated.

And, related to this is commitment. The ‘I’ll try’ or ‘I’ll give it a go’ approach simply won’t cut it; it suggests a half-hearted attitude that, particularly at times of strain, is easily defeated. One of the ways in which commitment can be generated is by understanding how the proposed change fits into the bigger picture of our lives. Change for change’s sake, or change that will not enhance our lives in the long run seems futile, not worth the effort, nigh on impossible to commit to. Yet, when we can see the value of the change in relation to improving our lives as a whole, we are more likely to commit ourselves to achieving it, and so dramatically increase our chances of successful change. ‘I will’ and ‘I am’ is the language of the committed.

We will address these issues in more detail in the following chapter when we begin identifying the specifics of your goal.