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July: Melt-Down Kids

Getting Someone Else to Change

What’s a person to do?

You want your partner (or child) to change. You tell him (or her) what’s on your mind.  You give good reasons why he should change. And yet he doesn’t.

So you tell him again. And again. And again.  By this time, you don’t just tell him in a relaxed manner. You argue. You criticize. You yell. You cry. You are sarcastic. You are resentful. You accuse. You are hurt. You withdraw into bitter silence.

And still he doesn’t change. What is going on here?

I’m now going to tell you something that you already know. But since it appears to be  counterintuitive, you probably do not put it to good use.

People don’t change when you tell them they should. People change when they tell themselves they must.

Think about it. New Year’s resolution time is upon us. If you tell yourself you should lose weight, you should exercise more, you should be more patient, are you going to listen to yourself?  Fat chance! And this isn’t even somebody else telling you what you should do. You’re talking to yourself!

People change only when they realize they must!

But what makes somebody reach that position? There are no easy answers that I can give you.  I once worked with a young man who was addicted to heavy drugs. What made him stop? Nothing I would have predicted. After shooting up with a dirty needle, he almost had to have his arm amputated. That possibility threatened him much more than dying of an overdose. He told me, “I can barely deal with life with two arms. I’d rather be dead than have to go through life with only one.”

You see, it has to be something that the person feels in the gut. It has to pack a punch. Shock the hell out of you.

What????  I tipped the scale at 200 pounds!

What???? My spouse has threatened to leave me!

What????  My credit card balance is $10,000 plus!

What????  I totally lost my cool; I never want to behave like that again.

These are the shocks that often (but not always) get people motivated to change. Yet intuitively we do not want to accept this.

We want our partner (or child) to change now. So we continue to criticize, often upping the ante, and think it will make a difference. Or perhaps we feel so helpless and don’t know what else to do. And sometimes, miracle of miracles, the person does change...just like sometimes a slot machine pays off.  But slots don't pay off most of the time. Similarly, your partner will not change how he acts, what he does, how he feels, until he is ready — feeling in his gut that he must.

Copyright 2005