Change is one of the most common topics discussed in talk therapy. Whether it’s the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, economic challenges, medical issues, or a natural disaster, the adjustment of having to go from the way things were to the way things are is a common source of stress. There’s even a clinical diagnosis for this: Adjustment Disorder (that’s 309.0, with various F-code specifiers related to symptoms like depression or anxiety, for all you Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fans out there).
We know change is hard. We don’t like to change. It’s not in our nature as human beings. We’re evolutionarily programmed to avoid change, going all the way back to when our ancestors huddled in dark caves, happy to be relatively safe from the mystery and danger outside.
However, eventually, there was one intrepid soul among them who wanted more, who thought he could do better, who felt like there was a brighter future out there outside the cave. So he ventured out into the unknown. What happened to him? Nobody knows! He could have found a great new cave in a much nicer neighborhood, or he could have been eaten by something big and furry with sharp teeth. The rest of the cavemen were left to pass their status quo-loving, safety-seeking, change-avoiding genes down to future generations.
Even though it’s been thousands of years since those early humans huddled around a fire, ruled by the difference between the warmth and safety of home versus the dark, scary mystery of “out there,” we still carry in our DNA some of the survival mechanisms developed by our ancestors. Here, we focus on the fight-or-flight response. This examines the feelings we have when confronted with a threat: Do we confront it, or do we run away?
These feelings trigger a reaction not just mentally but physically as well. Where, in ancient times, this response might have been triggered by an encounter with a saber-toothed tiger, today, it might be triggered by the loss of a job or the end of a romantic relationship. This response can include an increased heart rate, rapid breathing, pale or flushed skin, and muscle tension or trembling. We truly feel it in our bodies.
But where the caveman seeing the saber-toothed tiger might be a one-time event that ends after that encounter, in our modern world, we might feel this kind of physical reaction every time we see our ex-partner’s furniture they left when they moved out or hear that song we remember them doing at karaoke the night we met. Where our ancestors experienced the fight-or-flight response when venturing outside the cave and gathering food in the presence of possible predators, in this modern world, we are continuously bombarded by stimuli that can trigger us. With all our advanced technology and social media options, we are now able to bombard ourselves constantly with stimuli that can cause this feeling. Instead of an encounter with an actual saber-toothed tiger, it’s an Instagram account.
How is this aversion to change represented in this modern world?
Instead of leaving the safety of the cave, it’s leaving the job or the relationship, the situations we find ourselves in where we might not be happy but consider things more desirable than venturing out into the unknown. A job in a career that’s not fulfilling provides a steady paycheck, job security, and insurance, all things we value. But if we complain all the time about how unfulfilling it is and how miserable we are, what keeps us from quitting and trying to find something else? The fear of change.
A relationship we’ve been in for a long time might feel like a dead end. We might complain that we’ve hit a rough patch, our momentum is stalled, or our relationship isn’t progressing. But should we break up? Heck no, I don’t want to be single again! Maybe my partner really is “the one,” and I just haven’t come around to accepting it. Maybe I just need to adjust my expectations. Maybe the problem is me. Sound familiar?
The positive aspects of our situation outweigh the negative aspects, but only until they don’t. In this scenario, negative feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction are represented by a body of rising water, and our resistance to change is a dam of denial that we’ve built to hold that water back. We stand on the top of the dam and look down at the water as it slowly rises, knowing that it will eventually reach the top of the dam, but we deny this eventuality.
Why do we do this? Because we’re not yet ready to change. We decide it’s better to wait it out rather than take a leap into the unknown. It’s a constant battle to judge the pros and cons of each course of action, and this battle is a consistent source of stress and anxiety.
Over the course of our lives, we build this dam brick by brick, thought by thought, reason by reason, emotion by emotion. Over time, the water rises. Nothing can stop the water from rising. Some of us keep building this dam for our entire lives, always one step ahead of the water. For some of us, the water eventually reaches the top of the dam and flows over, forcing us into action and driving us to confront the change. Only when we feel like something has “clicked” inside us emotionally, like a switch has finally flipped, do we feel it’s worth it to quit that job, to end that relationship, or to make that difficult decision.
You’ll know if you’ve been through this process when, after the water flows over your dam and forces you into action and you make a decision and things change, one day you wake up and look in the mirror and realize you are happier and say to yourself, “I wish I’d made that decision a lot sooner!” Well, the irony here is that you’re not capable of making that change, no matter how much you intellectually understand the reasons for doing it, until you’re emotionally ready. No amount of debate or reasoning or therapy or other people telling you they did it, and you can, too, will convince your emotions to feel differently until they’re ready to. Knowing the water will only continue to rise isn’t always enough to make us take action. We need the cold reality of wet feet to motivate us to take those first steps down a new path.
Even though many of us may find ourselves sharing the similarities of this type of situation, our specifics are unique. Some of our dams are higher than others. Some of our water rises faster than others. Some of us have one big dam, while others have a complicated interlocking series of dams.
Much of the unhappiness people feel in the course of their everyday lives is related to the guilt they feel about not acting when intellectually they know change would be better for them. It’s bad enough to be in a situation that makes you unhappy or at least does not provide much happiness. We tend to make this worse by then giving ourselves a hard time for not doing anything about it.
My advice to you when you find yourself in this situation is to let yourself feel these feelings without beating yourself up. Eventually, at some point, your emotions will catch up to your conscious thoughts, and you’ll find yourself ready to act. The water of change will eventually rise above your dam of denial, getting your metaphorical feet wet, and wet feet are often the final motivation we need to leave behind an undesirable past and embrace an uncertain future.