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The habits that saved you as a child are often the same ones trapping you now. This lecture from Academy of Ideas explores resistance — the strange force that keeps us stuck long after a pattern has stopped helping. It shows how early coping strategies harden into self-handicapping, and why we cling to them even when they cost us dearly. The surprising twist: our stubborn refusal to change is also what keeps us coherent and sane. Change is still possible, but as Fitzjames Stephen put it, every real step requires a leap in the dark.
Full Video Transcript
To be human, wrote Soren Kierkegaard, is not a fact, but a task.
As Kierkegaard and many others have long realized, life is a continual series of challenges.
While some people from an early age develop personality traits and behavior patterns,
which help them boldly navigate the complexities of life,
many more are hindered in this respect by maladaptive ways of being.
Rather than facing up to the inevitable challenges that cross their path,
such people gravitate towards avoidance and recede into a passive existence which, in the end,
only produces a profound regret for a life not lived.
What differentiates the resilient among us from the more fragile individuals?
Why are some people seemingly cursed by neurotic thought and behavior patterns,
while others are relatively free of these burdensome chains?
And most importantly, why is it so difficult to rid ourselves of
personality traits which are a hindrance to our well-being?
In this video, we will explore these issues by focusing on the psychological phenomenon
known as resistance, or in other words, the inability of many people to positively change
their lives.
To understand why significant change can prove so difficult, we must discuss the role that
our youth plays in our psychological development.
For while vigorous debate characterizes most areas of the field of psychology, few deny
the massive impact that our childhood and adolescent years have on our functioning as
adults.
The beginning, wrote Plato, is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of
a young and tender thing.
for that is the time at which the character is being formed, and the desired impression is more readily taken.
William Wordsworth echoed this sentiment thousands of years later with his famous remark,
The child is the father of man.
The roots of many of the thought and behavior patterns which characterize us as adults reach back to our childhood days.
What is important to recognize, however, is that the patterns that prove harmful in our later years
often served an adaptive function when we first adopted them,
helping us to cope with the less than ideal situations of our youth.
In other words, very often our current problems are the solutions we devised to previous life problems.
This phenomenon of solutions becoming problems, or as Sigmund Freud characterized it,
as self-defensive patterns becoming self-handicapping,
is extremely pervasive and can help explain why we adopt behaviors and personality traits
which, over time, greatly inhibit our ability to flourish.
For example, an inability to assert ourself or a crippling degree of shyness may have been an adaptive trait in our childhood
helping us to avoid confrontations with abusive caregivers.
This trait only becomes maladaptive if we hold on to it into adulthood and
generalize its application to situations where the potential for abuse is absent.
It is often the case, therefore, that those who suffer most from neurotic or even some forms of psychotic functioning are not so much flawed
in any innate sense, but rather are the victims of unfortunate circumstances over which they had little control.
Look at almost any form of chronic psychological distress and dysfunction, wrote the psychologist Michael Mahoney.
Addiction, agoraphobia, anorexia, anxious avoidance, bulimia, depression, obesity, paranoia, obsession, compulsion, and even schizophrenia.
All can be viewed as costly and painful solutions.
They tend to be short-term solutions to problems of pain and meaning.
The solution becomes a pattern, a well-entrenched pattern, and immediate benefits are offset by long-range costs.
But while this can help explain why we adopt such behavior patterns in the first place,
why do we hold on to them long after they have lost any adaptive coping value?
Why, in other words, are we so resistant to change?
The topic of resistance has long been debated, with some viewing it as the most important problem in the field of psychology.
Freud, for example, who early in his career was fascinated by the potential of hypnosis to treat his patients,
ultimately abandoned this technique, and in explaining why, he wrote the following,
Hypnosis does not permit us to recognize the resistance with which the patient clings to his disease,
and thus even fights against his own recovery.
Yet it is this phenomenon of resistance which alone makes it possible to comprehend his behavior in daily life.
Freud believed that this tendency to cling to one’s diseased psychological states was driven by an innate death wish.
Not all who have studied the phenomenon of resistance, however, have shared Freud’s pessimistic view of human nature.
Over the past several decades, there has been a growing realization that our resistance to change is not maladaptive,
but instead reflects an important mechanism for our survival.
For just as our physical organs are resistant to dramatic changes in their functioning,
so too, according to the self-protective theory of resistance,
is our sense of self protected against a dramatic change and for important reasons.
We need a coherent sense of self to properly function,
and while we may at times wish we could change our personality as easily as we could change our clothes,
this would in fact prove to be a curse, not a blessing.
Having such a weak sense of self would make it very difficult for us to properly function in the world,
and in fact, many psychological disorders, such as borderline personality disorder,
are the result of an inability to maintain a coherent sense of self.
The fact that changing core elements of our personality is a difficult task
is therefore seen, in this respect, as an adaptive feature of human nature,
or as Mahoney explains,
Many people do not change, or do not change much,
because we are fundamentally conservative creatures.
This is not our fault, it is our life form.
Coherence and continuity are built into life support,
and it should not be surprising that these themes are expressed in our psychological life as well.
We not only seek order, but we also need it.
We are organized by systems of activities, and are often very protective of our own patterns.
While our resistance to change serves a self-protective function,
this does not preclude our ability to change, and often in dramatic ways.
We are not the prisoners of our childhood, and our capacity for change exists throughout our adult years.
What the self-protective theory of resistance emphasizes, however,
is that change is not easy and often requires sustained effort over prolonged periods of time.
Furthermore, in our attempts to change it is natural to experience periods of intense emotions
such as anxiety, fear, depression, and doubt. These feelings, however, should not be viewed
as signs that we are necessarily on the wrong path, nor that our attempts at change are doomed
to fail. Rather, we should recognize them for what they are, a natural expression of the need
for order and coherence in our psychological life.
But while change is not easy, very often not changing,
not facing up to the challenges of life, only produces more suffering in the long run.
We may wish there was an easy path through life,
but holding on to such a hope is likely to end in disappointment.
Rather, we would be wise to view life for what it is,
a journey that is sometimes exciting, sometimes dangerous, and very often uncertain.
Or as Fitzjames Stephen poetically put it,
In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark.
If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice.
If we waver in our answer, that too is a choice.
But whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril.
We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist,
through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive.
If we stand still, we shall be frozen to death.
If we take the wrong road, we shall be dashed to pieces.
We do not certainly know whether there is any right one.
What must we do? Be strong and of a good courage.
Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes.
If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.
Source: Academy of Ideas