Changing Requires Letting Go

https://youtu.be/xBjdkOS195w

I’ve recently been thinking about what it means to grow and evolve and what it means to become a new iteration of yourself. When I came into this field, I really wanted to work really hard and become as good as I could be as a psychotherapist and specifically as a Solution Focused Brief Therapy professional. I wanted to be someone who did work at conferences, and I wanted to be someone who contributed to the field. And as I’ve grown, and I’ve written lots of books and I’ve traveled around the world, my aspirations are also changing. My talent is going in a different place. My projects are now different.

It’s got me thinking… there are now people that used to mean a lot to me, that I’m not very connected to anymore. And there are spaces that I used to really want to impact that now I’m in other areas and I’m not really focused on impacting those spaces anymore. And I’m just recently thinking about that.

Number one, sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard to see people that you used to be connected to and are no longer connected to. And it’s hard to see spaces that used to really want to be engaged in, but realize now that you’ve just kind of grown out of that and you’re no longer entering those spaces.

And it’s got me thinking about the impact of therapy. Because in essence, when a client wants the come and see you, they are also interested in growing and becoming a new iteration of themselves. They might come to you…

I’m thinking about one client who came to me, and he was drinking, and he would meet all his friends at the bar and at the club, and he got in some trouble due to drinking, and coming to therapy he was like, “I need to stop drinking.” Well, through that process, he lost friends because he was no longer engaged in the behavior where he was engaged with those friends. And now he’s no longer going to bars and clubs. He had to become a newer version of himself. And part of that process was hard for him. Cause he’s like, I’ve gotta let go of this thing that was so meaningful to me. And part of it was wonderful, this adventure as he gets to evolve and grow and become the person that he’s becoming.

I was thinking about that recently because things that are happening in my life right now are so exciting, like the TV project and speaking at much bigger conferences and speaking at events that I’ve dreamt about, and things just getting much bigger. It’s so exciting. It’s just this adventure associated with it, this discovery of “What’s this new thing going to lead me to?”

But there is a bit of sadness because I see there are other people and other spaces that I’ve had to let go of. And I just think that’s something important for us as therapists to think about, because your clients, as they grow, they’re in essence, letting go of certain things as they become the newer version of themselves.

So this is important because sometimes therapists are hard on clients who don’t want to “change”. And I say air quotes because “change” just happens. But clients sometimes struggle with change. And the reason they struggle with change is because oftentimes change comes with a hard part, and that’s okay. We just have to be aware that that’s there and then be able to engage in clients about the adventurous, exciting part of the change process.

So this was on my mind recently, and I think it’s just an important lesson for us as clinicians to remember that change, though great, means that you’re also letting go of certain things, even like, super positive change. If somebody came in right now and gave me $10 million, that would be great. I would be so excited. Someone just gave me $10 million. But it would probably impact my life in such a way that would lead to some bits of loss.

I have a lot of celebrity friends these days, and they often talk to me about how their job and the life they currently live makes them unrelatable to some of their friends that they grew up with, that they generally want to be connected to, but they don’t have that same ability to relate to them as they once did.

All change has that, these real positive aspects of the change, but then there’s a hardship associated with change, too. But that’s okay. Change is necessary, and we have to understand that there’s both parts of it.

So when your client is really struggling with change, it’s not because they don’t want to change, it’s not because they’re not ready for change, it’s not because they can’t change. It’s because all change has a difficulty associated with it, and we as professionals should never, ever forget that.