CAN people really change? If they want to? How?

[WillfSelll]

I'm gonna post this in the spirituality topic also because I've been thinking about it a lot.

I have a 'way of being' that causes me a LOT of anguish, yet I never seem able to change it, despite being fully aware of its costs. I would like to change but I guess I have to realise it is a long, slow process.

Has anyone re-learnt how to be themselves here? How do you start the process, and keep it going?

I know I'm being very vague here, but that's because I supposed I'm interested in the big issue of changing oneself, rather than getting bogged down in the details. But I am talking about chronic disorganisation!

Ooo, this really interests me as I am on a hamster wheel of making the same mistakes over and over again even though I know it is a bad idea and it will hurt me.

I am interested in made up CBT cure type things.

I've changed from someone unable to have normal feelings, frozen, unable to trust and have deep relationships to someone who is still shocked at how much things can hurt and is now able to trust a few very special people.

So yes I have really changed.

I have changed from 10 years of not being able to cry to begin to express emotion. Also learning to be kind to myself. So yes, changed and am changing .

Thanks. Had to go out. I do see the benefits of therapeutic intervention, which it sounds like people responding have used. But I have had LOTS of therapy on myself, including CBT (although not for this).

I don't know that it is an issue located in emotional stuff, though maybe... Like you Lenin, procrastination seems fundamental. But it doesn't work well enough for us all at home. The kids and house are too neglected. Sure, I do enough, but I'd like to feel comfortable, at home, and in the moment. And I never, ever do. Not that I'm always busy, but I'm certainly always worrying instead of doing. It's that I'd like to change: to plan something ahead of time, to do it (and understand what mylimits are) and so not having to waste time catching up, or worrying about it, instead of properly 'being' at home, with my family.

I will be following this with much interest. And it is interesting that you post it in mental health and in spirituality, because for me it is an issue that dogs me and one that I think of precisely under those two headings.

Every day I feel the only thing that stands between me and happiness is the failure at every moment to do what I know I want to do. There is so much to be said here, spiritually, psychologically, philosophically, but all I feel up to doing now is registering the sense of despair and paralysis that is so so sabotaging.

I'll have a look in your spirituality posting too.

Hi. I've reached that position recently, Len: a kind of acceptance that I am just like this and there's bugger all to do except accept it. But the costs are getting too high. I/We are just not enjoying and cherishing things enough and I am fed up of constantly feeling like I haven't done enough. Life is too short (as I realised when I heard one of my peers who I hadn't seen for years had died recently, leaving a young family).

I want to make more pleasure, and peace, and 'stop and stare' and all that cliched nonsense. Yet I simply cannot enforce boundaries between home and work, or discipline my time enough to enable this. This is the problem with any kind of 'self-employment' (which in a sense academia is because most of the time, outside teaching and meetings, is self-determined).

I long to be the kind of person who decides that 9-10 is for writing, 10-12 is for thinking, 1-3 is for teaching and 3-5 is for filing etc. But I fear I will only EVER be the person who does it all at 23.55 before the deadline...

And it is hurting too many other people who also have lots of important things in their lives. If I was the only 'striver' it wouldn't matter, but there's 5 of them in our family. And my family and friends get equally dumped and picked up again, according to my deadlines. As I get older, I realise (and see, in my mother's generation) how very important those people come to be. If I give up putting in the effort, what future?

Argh. But thanks, as always, for your thoughtful responses...

As I've aged, (now in my forties) I've learnt a lot more self-acceptance, and with that increased degree of 'comfort in my own skin', I think it has increased my ability to agree only to do the things I comfortably can.

It can help to scale down your expectations of yourself. And have some boundaries with others (ie consider whether others' expectations of you are realistic). Have you somehow made an agreement to do too much?

Stillness is good.

I also recommend doing something away from the home and family at least once a week that is perhaps a bit vacuous/lots of fun. I don't see 'fun' mentioned in your description of your life anywhere.. sing/dance/paint/sculpt, etc. These kinds of things feed the soul.