MysteriousFaith

The Trauma of Personal Change

A week ago, still before I began the J.D. program I am currently enrolled in, I took the time to write in my journal the following thoughts: “… a new chapter in my life begins. The only question is how big of a change it will mark in me? Am I up to really changing? To go through those final challenges that lay between where I now am – the person I am now – and that which I know I am capable of being? I must summon the strength to be different [than I have been], to take these final steps, to change. It will only be in hindsight when I will appreciate how monumental the decision to leave [my employment] and pursue my J.D. was. It is within my control to make this a moment of enormous significance.”

People from all walks of life crave certainty, with many times certainty taking the form of stability – a life lived with an attempt to avoid those people, situations and ideas that might cause us to wander from that which we derive safety. We wall off certain parts of our being – whether it is an idea whose consequences we are unprepared to handle, or the act of introspection out of fear we might be unable to continue to hide from the realization we are wasting our life. Carefully hidden away in our fear of introspection or seriously considering new ideas is our fear of change – a fear we all share, but one whose mastery over creates the possibility to become something more, something of inherently greater and better value. In my own spiritual journey, before I could consider the act of changing itself, I had to struggle with whether or not my motivations for seeking to change were pure. Was I looking to change because I did not have the success or accolades I felt I deserved, or was something deeper taking place? Once I established some level of comfort that my motives were pure (which in my case required me to divest or de-emphasize certain impure motives), I had to face a second challenge to my purity, which was realizing that the change I desired would more than likely cause pain for many around me, family and friends included. Was this suffering worth it? Was I doing it for the right reasons? Was I going to see, as a result of these changes, the type of results I felt were both necessary and appropriate?

A healthy tension must exist between suffering that results from striving and being at peace with ourselves and our situations. One of the limitations to Buddhist thinking is that it seeks to eliminate suffering entirely, whereas Christianity sees suffering as serving a purpose and, as a consequence of the Fall, a necessary dimension to life. Christianity does a good job of balancing striving that occurs out of envy, with striving that occurs as an act of bettering ourselves, our situations, and our worlds. What can be less helpful in my estimation is that within Christianity suffering is traditionally viewed as being bestowed upon man for the purposes of leading the individual to a closer walk with God. While this part of Christianity’s ideas on suffering is not completely helpful to me, it does serve to point out that suffering has a purpose and can be a necessary dimension to personal growth.

Where Buddhism asks that we discard all that which causes suffering – which it identifies as striving – Christianity seems better prepared to delineate between that which is legitimate versus illegitimate striving. If all striving is bad, then harmony in life would be possible only within Buddhism or some enlightened form of Stoicism. Both these approaches are helpful, but they inevitably have a chilling effect on those things that serve as motivations for personal change because some suffering is necessary if we are to become better people. To adopt the Buddhist mindset is to rise above possessions and even those things that might engender personal fulfillment in the form of accomplishing goals; these are valuable insights for many, myself included, because they serve as cautions to what can happen when we lose sight of ourselves and believe we are nothing but that which we own, achieve or attain. Certainly Christianity echoes these truths in the primacy Christ gave teachings concerning the problems of riches and the good in meekness. Christianity’s emphasis that suffering has a purpose is more helpful to me not because of its introduction of the Divine, but because in elevating the question of where suffering comes from it becomes an effective tool in the process of transforming the internal dimensions to my life through contemplation not on eliminating that which I strive for that is empty, but in finding those things to strive for that are worthwhile. Buddhism wants us to see that all suffering has at its roots desire; Christianity seems to do a better job of acknowledging the truth of this, but seeking distinctions between healthy and unhealthy desire. The ideal is to pull from both Buddhism and Christianity’s conception of where suffering comes from, add in a dash of the Socratic ideal of moderation, and conceptualize a way of being that has a manageable understanding of the role healthy suffering can play in appropriate personal change.

What does all this have to do with the question of personal change? Most of us only seriously investigate changing our lives when we are broken, confused, and questioning that which once defined us. Making matters worse, we often refuse to let go of that which we need to – we hold on to what we think will make us happy when it is precisely that which weighs us down. The epiphany that will change your life is when you realize two things: to change you have to first have a healthy concept firmly in mind of what the change will result in and second, you must realize that the act of change will require an intermediate stage of floating where you will feel you are not at rest, are deeply uneasy about the decision itself, and feel as if you are being blown about by every wind and others’ whims. If you are someone who needs professional therapy during this stage (whether counseling or deeper psychotherapy), what will sustain you through the process is an idea in mind, one that will grow increasingly clear, of the person you can be at the other end of the counseling process. If you are someone beset by fear, this vision is of a person who understands what is worth being afraid of and what is not. If you are someone who has a history of damaged relationships with family and friends, what compels you to stick with the therapeutic process is a belief that you can have healthy relationships if you can learn to change those things that make your relationships shallow, brittle and volatile.

The second dimension to personal change is, in my estimation, the much more problematic and traumatic part. When you have set your mind firmly on the need to become something different you must push off the end of the pool where you are happily holding the rail and venture into uncertain waters. What will sustain you during this process is primarily the continued reminder that at the other side of this process of change is a new way of being that is deeper, richer, and more fulfilling than the way of being you previously knew. The act of letting to and changing may not have any immediately helpful results; in fact, you may find yourself beset by doubts, fears and a desire to go back to where you came from. This is why a trauma can be such a formative step in someone changing: if the trauma is great enough, people realize they simply must change (the example of a heart attack that prompts long needed exercise and changes to diet comes to mind). For people whose trauma consists of people who repeatedly wound them, it is important to write down what was done to you, not so you can wallow in bitterness and anger, but so you can remember in moments of vulnerability when you wish to return, why it is you left. Spouses and children in physical, sexual or emotionally abusive relationships will struggle during this process of change to not go back into the damaging relationships primarily because they feel they deserve how they are being treated. It is easier to stay in an unhealthy relationship, believing in some way you are “part of the problem” than it is to change because someone who should love you simply can not, or does not know how. Many times the act of letting go involves being willing to admit that someone you needed to love you simply did not, or realizing that someone you needed to help shape you wounded you because they themselves were wounded. Realizing the truth to the old adage that “hurt people hurt people” is a first step in acknowledging why past hurts occurred.

Change is not necessary. You can live your life in the state it now is, with whatever incremental advances can be made without dealing with deep hurts, pains, and needs to make more substantive changes. You will suffer for this unwillingness to change, and you will ultimately wish, perhaps only at death’s door, that you had given yourself over to the act of change, even if it meant giving up that which you held closest and that which you thought you could not live without. Many times that which you think you cannot live without is precisely that which you must give up to live.

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• August 21, 2005

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