How's your relationship with change?

I was in conversation with a good friend, Jolene, from Joy Ethic recently when she asked me whether I would talk to her about change for a podcast. For a moment, I was thrown. “What do I know about change?” I said. She laughed kindly and told me I talked to people about change all the time. She asked me if I could say a bit about the kinds of changes that people talk to me about, and what we can do to adjust or adapt to change.

So here goes…

What kinds of change do I talk to people about?

I specialise in relationships. Family relationships, romantic relationships, platonic relationships. There are differences between these types of relationships, but there are also commonalities: beginnings, endings and the connections and disconnections that happen in between. These are major life changes — new relationships, becoming parents, relationship challenges, break ups, infidelities, conflict, children leaving home, reunifications, loss, and living well after loss. When I put it this way, it seems like life is one long set of changes — when it comes to people, things cannot possibly stay the same!

We have also been experiencing a very strange, different and complicated time with COVID-19. This has come with huge changes to people’s lives. We haven’t been able to socialise as easily, anxieties have been high, people have experienced a great deal of loss — not limited to loved ones in our lives, but also huge changes to people’s jobs, finances, houses, security and more. Families have been hit hard by these changes, with unpredictable schooling, parents working from home, spaces have changed, boundaries have changed. Unsurprisingly, relationship distress, conflict and family violence, has been on the rise. Some people are also experiencing changes to their health, with long COVID affecting many, and many people have taken on more caring duties as a result. There has been a significant impact on people’s wellbeing and I’m seeing and hearing this in my conversations with people.

On a broader level, we have also seen changes in our society. Brexit and the pandemic have occurred in an increasingly polarised political landscape. More people are struggling financially while others are incredibly wealthy; the government is under scrutiny for its decision making processes. These things might not be completely new, but there is a certain sense that the political landscape is changing in a way that is affecting many people’s lives. So I’m having quite a few conversations about that with people too.

What can we do about change?

Well, as I have a focus on relationships, it’s probably no surprise that I talk to people about their relationship to change. I do this quite often — I encourage people to think about their relationship to concepts, events, feelings, by externalising those things and exploring people’s thoughts, beliefs and feelings about those things. So, thinking about change in particular, I might explore with someone what their relationship with the idea of change is like. Are they afraid of it? Might they try to avoid it, push it away or deny it? Does it bring up feelings of anger? Sometimes I might encourage someone to speak to it or the part of them that is feeling a certain way about it — maybe to put it on a chair, imagine it, and tell it how they feel about it. Sometimes I might get them to answer back from the other position, and get a conversation going, to clarify some of these processes and their feelings and often ambivalence about change. If you’re interested in the idea of chair work you can read a good article about it here if you’d like.

This process often helps people to make meaning out of what often seem like senseless or meaningless events. When I mentioned this to Jolene, she said that she had spoken with Laurence Hughes, a philosopher, who had talked to her about Victor Frankl’s Search for Meaning. You can read a bit more about this work here if you’d like. I also talk to people about how to take action in line with their values so that they are moving towards being the person they want to be with every decision or action they take.

I am also a big believer in the power of people, particularly people who are connected and engaged with each other in meaningful ways. So if you are experiencing a significant change and you’d like to think about ways to help to steady yourself as you go, I would recommend developing your support network (have a meeting with loved ones, let them into your world a little, take a risk and reach out for a bit of support in ways that would be helpful for you). Sometimes collective action in line with shared values is even more empowering than action taken in isolation.

So in summary, some changes bring up bigger feelings and more challenges than others. Some might come with waves of grief, fear, anger, denial and many other feelings, defences or stages. Here are some of the things you can do:

• Do what you can to reach out to loved ones for support.
• Try to slow down and allow yourself to feel what your body needs you to feel.
• Consider talking out some of your inner conflict about the change or how you feel about the change.
• Take some time (and sometimes talking space) to work out how to make meaning out of the events that is helpful to you.
• Take action in line with your values, with other people if possible, but independently if not.

Sometimes it helps to read around a topic. I have given a couple of links in the article but I’m finding it a challenge to give more specific links because most reading will be linked to a particular type of change. So I’ll keep an eye on the comments and if you have a specific type of reading that might be helpful, please ask and I will see what I can do.

You can listen to the podcast that Jolene made here: https://www.mixcloud.com/JoyEthic/

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