Let me show you something amazing...
Psychologists long ago introduced what is now a common practice: analyzing the past for the cause of the problems that are happening now. Many people go to therapists to talk about their parents or their childhood because they believe that it somehow has an impact on what’s wrong with their lives now. There are only several problems with that, however. This causes people to look in the wrong place for the solution, make them less likely to change the problem, and makes the problem into something that should be there and just makes them more helpless to change.
First of all, if the cause of the problem lies in the past, does the solution fall there also? With all the time spend unwinding the events in the past that therapists do, one would think the answer would be yes. Except, how do you go back in time to change things? It’s just not possible. Therefore, the answer has to lie in the present. There’s just no other way to do it; the only possible point in your life in which you can begin changing is right now. If the future ever comes, then it’ll be right now as well—or not at all. So how much time really needs to be spent on the past when what’s more important is how to start changing things in the present?
The second problem that all this delving into the past creates is a sense of comfort and familiarity with the problem. People like to believe that if they can understand the problem, they can have control over it, but they’re really just settling into it. It’s like moving into a new home. It doesn’t fully feel like home until you’ve arranged your things the way you want them to and spent enough time there to really begin to feel comfortable.
This is how a lot of people treat their problems: they spend so much time with them that they become comfortable with them. They call that “dealing with” or “coping with” or, sometimes, “working through” their problems. But, just as a home is a safe place to retreat to after the challenges of daily life, those familiar problems become kind of a refuge because as long as you’re “working on” a challenge you’re familiar with, you don’t have to face any of the unknown or difficult-to-face ones. Personal change and trying new things can often be uncomfortable and stressful, but after you spend enough time with your problems, staying in the same place becomes easier than changing it.
If you’re the kind of person who does this, just think about it: how do you feel about knowing so much about your problem? Make a note of what’s there. Then, take a deep breath and relax your mind. Now, how does the thought of changing who you are and how you approach your problem right now feel to you? Make a note of what’s there. Which one feels better? Taking those feelings into account, which are you more likely to do?
There’s a third problem that this leads to. When someone’s so comfortable with their problem that they no longer even want to change, the reasons in the past actually validate the problem’s existence. What I mean by this is that after a while, someone believes that this problem is a rational and proper response to what came before and therefore, because it makes so much sense, the problem really isn’t truly seen as a problem. It’s something that they tend to trust implicitly as The Way Things Should Be and it tends to become even more difficult—and even impossible sometimes—to picture a life without the problem. That makes the idea of changing even more scary and confusing.
This way, people spend so much time making their problems and limitations real. Think about it. What’s the difference between technology and magic? Simple: you can explain how technology works (or learn about it if you don’t currently know), but magic is magic simply because you can’t explain it. Modern technology would be “magic” to someone living 500 years ago, after all. And, as such, technology is considered “real” while magic is just… magic. So all this effort people put into explaining why their problems exist the way they do just makes this problem more real to them, and it makes the possibility of changing and overcoming their problem seem more and more magical and impossible.
The net result of this is a cycle where the more they know about their problem, the more comfortable they feel living with it, the more real their problem becomes to them, and the more helpless they feel about actually being able to change it. Then, of course, to avoid that helpless feeling, people dig more into their past and try to learn more about it in order to reclaim that little feeling of power over their problem through understanding it and start the cycle back at the beginning. This is a very unhelpful feedback loop. So the question becomes, do you want to spend any time there?
Some is good. It’s important to know where you come from, but if you really want to “work on” your problems you have to first break the loop and focus on the present and the future instead of the past.
