How We Can Change
Adele O’Hare
On any given day, some things may well prick at your pain points. Maybe someone lets you down, communicates poorly, or forgets about you. Perhaps your child uses that voice that tends to grate on you, your parent criticises you, your partner cries or yells: each of us will have certain kinds of stimuli that tend to trigger particular habitual responses.
Part of therapy is learning to recognise our own pain points, triggers, and habitual responses, and importantly, to bring an abundance of compassion to this recognition. Whatever your patterns are, they probably formed when you were very young, as adaptions, strategies or compromises in your efforts to maximise the likelihood that you would get your attachment needs met and minimise the likelihood that you would be harmed.
Now as an adult, your context, relationships and internal resources have changed and developed since childhood. You recognise that the old patterns no longer serve you and perhaps hold you back or damage your relationships. You want to change - but how?
There is wisdom in the words of Viktor Frankl:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
That space might not be very big, especially at first. In the Circle of Security approach to responding to children’s attachment needs, we quip that the first 1000 times of trying to change one’s patterns are the hardest. While old habits die hard, adults are actually very capable of learning and changing. It just takes lots of practice, reflection, and willingness to try again.
In parenting
In parenting, when your child’s need requires a response that is not comfortable for you, choosing to promote security in the relationship involves:
Recognising the discomfort, which might feel like being lonely, unsafe, rejected, abandoned, angry, controlled, or something else - known as “hearing Shark Music”
Honouring the discomfort, including how the child’s expression of need triggers your Shark Music
Responding to your child’s need
In adulting
In our interactions and relationships in general, the process is similar. Choosing security, or moving towards the growth and freedom that Frankl refers to, involves recognising and honouring our discomfort, and then choosing to self activate - to move towards what we know we need, even though we fear it.
Psychologist Rick Hanson calls this facing your dreaded experience. He explains it beautifully in this podcast episode and in a chapter from his book Just One Thing.
Many attempts
This is not an easy process. It is often a life’s work, and a good therapist can be a guide alongside you. I appreciate and often share a poem by Portia Nelson that explains the stages of psychological change with the metaphor of repeatedly falling into a deep hole in the footpath, before eventually learning to do differently. It is called Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.
If this resonates and you would like some support to change something that has become a habitual response, feel free to reach out. My contact details are below.
