The Paradoxical Theory of Change
Following my previous post, a friend shared an image it evoked. “There was a wild storm blowing, while I clung desperately to an iron bar. Eventually I realised I could let go, and found myself flying free in the wind.”
At the same time, my super-ego has been surprisingly quiet over the last few days. After such brutal attacks in the days before, it has been a little unnerving to now be sitting with this internal stillness.
For me, these are both examples of how The Paradoxical Theory of Change plays out.
The Paradox
I was immediately drawn to the theory when I first heard it, which was during some early work in Gestalt therapy in London. It states:
Change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not.¹
In other words, change does not happen when we strive to be different, it happens when we truly accept how we are now.
For me that was magical, and closely aligned with my experience. It seemed that all of the big changes in my life didn’t happen because I was trying to make them happen, they happened at a time when the change felt effortless.
The paradox is that trying to become a different version of myself, to become what I am not, rarely yields results. Instead, when I bring awareness to how I am, accept it and embrace it, then somehow that aspect of myself relaxes and shifts into something new. Of course the acceptance needs to authentic and cannot be conditional:
- It doesn’t work to say “I accept that I keep people at a distance — now please change”.
- I need to find “I accept that I keep people at a distance — and that’s who I am”.
Action and Reaction
I make sense of the Paradoxical Theory of Change using the principle of action and reaction. The more I push for growth through action, the more my resistance pushes back in reaction. It is the energy of my push which energises the resistance.
When I bring awareness to how I am, then I bring awareness to my resistance. Most of my resistance comes from emotional wounds which weren’t able to heal when I was younger. When I now bring kindness to those wounds, with my increased level of capacity and maturity, then they can heal and my resistance is able to soften and dissolve.
In Contrast To Common Thinking
A lot of writing and training on change focuses on becoming what I am not. They tell me how to be a better person, by pushing against my resistance. If previous efforts haven’t worked, then it was because I didn’t push hard enough.
I believe that I always have energy to grow — the action is already there. What keeps me stagnant is the reaction which opposes it. Through the Paradoxical Theory of Change, I reduce the reaction and the energy of growth is able to flow freely.
Finally
I think the message in my friend’s story is obvious. We don’t need to focus on changing the storm; we need to pay attention to the hand that is holding the iron bar and discern if it is still serving us. As for my super-ego, it seems that naming it has been enough to de-energise it (for this week).
- Beisser, A. (1970) The Paradoxical Theory of Change. In: Fagan, J. and Shepherd, I.L., Eds., Gestalt Therapy Now, Harper & Row, New York, 77–80.
