When considering change, one of the most difficult things to see is the reason for personal preferences. Personal preference is so culturally normal to us that it doesn't feel like change, yet preference is the reason why we changed and why we have difficulty with changing. Being aware of personal preferences in times of change can be exactly what is needed, but cannot see for looking. Preferences can also be the force against us that we've become so used to, they can render us powerless and unable to achieve emancipation. This is because preference is expressed or not expressed in accordance to distal forces that most of us have forgotten, or are not aware of. Identifying the truth of personal preferences can be difficult to do when strong distal forces are in power. Distal forces are so much a part of our psychology that the messages they have imprinted into us feel normal. It's who we are. It's the lens through which we express our personality. It's the way we talk to ourselves at night. When present circumstances are nagging, even begging us to change direction, distal forces have the power to keep us in the past. Distal forces represent early childhood conditioning, cultural and sub-cultural re-enforcement, the influential behaviourism of others and our responses to it, and the way our personalities mould our internal worlds in order to survive the beliefs of others. In career development it may be that Fred always wanted to be a Fireman but for some reason he can't bring himself to realise this ambition. He longingly wants to serve others and he's spent most of his life doing exactly that. He's 'served' his parents, his teachers, his friends, his wife, his children... in fact it might be fair to say that Fred is a peace keeper. Yet for all of his harmonious intentions, nothing he does seems to bring him joy. He says he's not big enough, strong enough, tall enough and now he's saying he's not young enough to be the fireman of his dreams. Fred's career counselor, being paid for by the company who recently made him redundant, notes that Fred is fearfully resisting change: Yet is he? Psychologist David Smail would say that Fred is yet another 'victim' of distal forces and it's not so much fear that is preventing him from moving forward, but ingrained practices arising from the messengers of his past. Fred has not only lost his job, but his identity. He feels like he is experiencing ageism in the workplace as well as empty nest syndrome. There is no more future in that ground hog career he suffered every day for the last forty years, and he's missing the sufferance. Fred has been set free yet he feels lost.
Psychologist David Smail says that "psychological distress arises not from illness or personal failure, but as a response to damaging influences from the outside world." He says " the help offered by counsellors and therapists too often stresses the need to change ourselves, but what is needed is not the will to become different but the clarity to see where the true cause of the problem lies"
Although Fred has lost his sufferance, he is so used to depending on it for his sense of identity, the ease he is experiencing feels more like a disease. Plus, not forgetting, he still has bills to pay and he is familiar with the way he has always achieved this in the past.
The complexity of personal change is one where diagnosing others as simply being afraid of change is not taking into consideration that there are distal psychological forces in everyone's head. Those old messages stimulate emotion during times of change, irrespective of what new skills have to be learned. Emotion that even Fred, even as the Fireman he has always wanted to be, would have difficulty bringing under control because of past enacted preferences. Due to the fact that we all live in societies and have survived up until this point, means we all have the distal forces of our own experiences in our heads, whether we're aware of their preferences or not. More info: http://www.davidsmail.info/introfra.htm
© Chris Tyne 31/01/2016
Psychologist David Smail says that "psychological distress arises not from illness or personal failure, but as a response to damaging influences from the outside world." He says " the help offered by counsellors and therapists too often stresses the need to change ourselves, but what is needed is not the will to become different but the clarity to see where the true cause of the problem lies"
Although Fred has lost his sufferance, he is so used to depending on it for his sense of identity, the ease he is experiencing feels more like a disease. Plus, not forgetting, he still has bills to pay and he is familiar with the way he has always achieved this in the past.
The complexity of personal change is one where diagnosing others as simply being afraid of change is not taking into consideration that there are distal psychological forces in everyone's head. Those old messages stimulate emotion during times of change, irrespective of what new skills have to be learned. Emotion that even Fred, even as the Fireman he has always wanted to be, would have difficulty bringing under control because of past enacted preferences. Due to the fact that we all live in societies and have survived up until this point, means we all have the distal forces of our own experiences in our heads, whether we're aware of their preferences or not. More info: http://www.davidsmail.info/introfra.htm
© Chris Tyne 31/01/2016
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