Patience and the Pursuit of Change

Sometimes we know we need to change, but we doubt we can – and we don't know how to do it even if it were possible. We feel that someone else has got to come in, take charge, and help us before it's too late because we can't help ourselves. There is a deep part of us that lies sleeping, hoping to be awakened and brought back to life. How can we stay in pursuit of change?

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Feeling like you are beyond help

To be in a state like this is frustrating, confusing and saddening. Perhaps others – even mental health professionals – have tried to help before, but they've never really connected to us. When others have tried to help, we have slipped away from them and somehow avoided the help that we deeply and desperately feel we need – making the help seem even less possible but even more deeply necessary.

We can start to get the frightening idea that there might be something really wrong with us, and, more worryingly, than no one really understands and no-one can really help. We are so broken that we are outside human experience. This is a desperately lonely and horrible experience, but perhaps is all too common. The pursuit of change can seem too hard, a bad joke.

Coming back

If you feel this describes you, you might benefit from longer term psychotherapy. You perhaps need time to become comfortable in a therapeutic relationship, to patiently work through all of the more surface-level problems. This can allow you to eventually express your deep despair, frustration and desperation for change. It is only when this core belief is expressed and we take the time to work through it together, that we can we understand where it's come from.

It's at this point we start to see beyond it; you realise that you might not be totally helpless and hopeless, and begin to wake.

Tell me what you think in the comments.

– Tim Hill

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