The Pain and Process of Change

“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.”

—Alexis Carrel. Nobel Prize Recipient for Physiology in 1912. 

Treatment for a behavioral health problem is dynamic. It is often a multifaceted program that addresses physical, cognitive, affective, and spiritual conditioning that has been in place for extended amounts of time, sometimes a lifetime. 

As a client/patient you are asked to do something that very few ever do successfully. 

You are asked to Change. 

Change everything about your life. 

Change your friends. Change your thinking. Change your diet. Change your language.

Change your living situation. Change your biochemistry. Change everything. Change you. 

How? 

How is fundamental and long lasting personal change done? What is the goal except to not be “Me” anymore? 

Change is very, very difficult, and the acts that entail this existential alchemy take determined effort and will. 

Change takes trust. Change takes hope. And most importantly, foundational change takes Time. 

I have changed. 

I have been sober since 1996. I have been symptom-free from my bipolar 1 disorder since 2000. Although my biological father tried to end my life, I am now a loving and attentive father. I have gone from 24 hours in restraints in a psychiatric hospital to being re-appointed as a volunteer faculty member in the psychiatry department of a medical school and hosting Grand Rounds from UCLA to Beth Israel Medical Center in NYC.   

I believe more people would be able to change with a more clear idea of the process. 

Expectations must be realistic. They must include the amount of time and effort it takes to change how one lives one’s life, as well as to overcome the tremendous pull—undertow—back to their known actions. Change will involve suffering, so a person will need clear goals outlining what they are working toward and working for by pursuing change. 

The act of changing your life is more sculpting than painting. It involves chiseling away at the “cemented” beliefs, biases and conditionings of your known identity. It is an existential negation of your “self”. You do not paint over your fears, shames and pain. You dig into them and past them to reveal your essence. 

In my life, I have experienced the enduring change created by both military boot-camp and 12-step programs. While the two places involve very different processes, they have many similarities. 

One of these similarities is the Group. 

The group serves many purposes as a tool for change. 

In a group you see others suffer and endure. You know you are not alone in your hell, and you can oftentimes find strength in seeing others persevere. You may not think you can do something, and you might fear attempting acts you have never tried, but seeing another succeed at them can give you the much-needed confidence to try for yourself. 

Patients need to see others who have shared our journey. Life seems out of control as many of us walk into treatment, and we need more than words to give us the courage to fight for our lives. 

Patients need to know the treatment provider is not simply guessing at what it will take to put our lives back together, to move step-by-step from this intense place of upheaval and shame to a full life. We might not be able to describe this full life to a clinician, but we know it when we see another person living it. 

You can Google “How to Change Your Life” and literally get over 2 billion hits, but a person can never replace a belief with an idea.  

It is imperative to see the Change firsthand, to experience it. As a person asked to change, I needed to hear how it was and is difficult but was still worth it. That way, you learn to believe in your heart before you believe in your mind that it is possible to chip away at the granite shell of your old ways and expose the light of who you are. 

To finally expose the beauty that has resided inside us for our entire lives. 

As clinicians, do you give the people you treat real-life examples of people overcoming adversity and changing their lives? 

At the beginning of treatment, do you prepare patients for the hard work of change by discussing expectations and the effort this life change will take? 

Can you think of a time in your own life when you have been asked to change so completely and been successful at it?

Eric Arauz, MLER, is an international behavior health consumer advocate, trainer, and inspirational keynote speaker. He is a faculty member at the Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Department of Psychiatry, the Vice-Chairman of the current New Jersey Task Force on Opiate Addiction in citizens 18 to 25 years old, and a person with the lived experience of bipolar I disorder, PTSD, addiction, and suicidality. He is the SAMHSA 2012 "Voice Award" Fellow and the author of An American's Resurrection: My Pilgrimage from Child Abuse and Mental Illness to Salvation. 

The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the blog post author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Psych Congress Network or other Psych Congress Network authors.