The Challenges of Positive Change

Why is positive change so difficult?  It doesn’t make sense.  You would think that once we have tasted the results of an amazing spiritual experience at a meditation retreat or renewed energy from an exercise or healthy eating commitment, we would joyfully and easily follow through with the habits that make those results possible.  But very often we don’t.

I see the same thing in my work with complex trauma healing as well.  I meet with a client who has a powerful insight in a way that has the potential to significantly change their lives.  But when we meet the next week, it is as if the insight has slipped away.

So what’s the use?  Why is it so hard to harness the goodness of our growth and build on it?  It can be very discouraging.

R. Nahman of Breslov knew a thing or two about this non-linear path and the places we get stuck.  He looked at growth through the frame of teshuvah, of returning to our most spiritual self.  He taught we shouldn’t expect positive change to be a steady, upward process.  When a person wants to walk on the “paths of teshuvah,” they need to know what to expect.  They need to develop expertise in both the growth and the contraction.  (Likkutei Mohoran 6:4). 

R. Nahman’s beloved disciple, R. Nathan, expanded on what this means.  “In the beginning, they make it easy for you,” he explained.  But later, it becomes more difficult.  Crucially, this is not a moral or spiritual failing.  This is the nature of the path.  When we know that the paths of teshuvah have ups and downs, we can strengthen ourselves as much as we can so that we don’t let ourselves fall completely.  In this way, the “going down” is for the purpose of “going up” so that we can attain an even higher level of holiness.

So according to R. Nahman, it is completely normal for a positive step to be followed by slipping back.  When we don’t beat ourselves up for it, we can actually see the slipping back as part of a process that helps us grow even more. 

What is fascinating is that the field of complex trauma healing supports this teaching.  In complex trauma, children instinctively shut off parts of themselves in order to survive in a difficult environment.  The healing process takes place through a kind of teshuvah, or returning and reconnecting to those shut down emotions in the body. 

But just as the spiritual path often presents a “going down” after a “going up,” so too the healing path.  After more fully connecting to ourselves, the survival strategy of shutting down parts of ourselves gets retriggered.  “Uh oh,” it says.  “This level of connection was too much for us.  We have to shut it down again before we get overwhelmed.”  So there is a contraction; the insight is “lost;” we return to undesirable habits.   

But this too is the path of teshuvah, of growth and healing, of going down for the sake of going up.  Each time we can connect more honestly to our feelings and our needs, we are developing our capacity, little by little, to be more present, so that the next time, the contraction isn’t as strong. 

The trick, as R. Nahman teaches us, is to know that this is the path.  It includes growth and slipping back.  When we know that, we can strengthen ourselves for the journey.  We can be less discouraged when we find ourselves not following through on our original intention.  We might even be able to notice some compassion for ourselves – and that is a moment of growth and healing in itself.

(The image above is a sculpture by John Van Alstine, photographed at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY.)