Can People Change?

I have just realised that the following applies both to my Chosen Man and Chosen Woman.

Why might change be so hard? It isn’t as if the change-resistant person is merely unsure what is amiss, and will manage to alter course once an issue is pointed out – as someone might if their attention were drawn to a strand of spinach in their teeth. The refusal to change is more tenacious and willed than this. A person’s entire character may be structured around an active aspiration not to know or feel particular things; the possibility of insight will be aggressively warded off through drink, compulsive work routines, or offended irritation with all those who attempt to spark it. In other words, the unchanging person doesn’t only lack knowledge, they are vigorously committed to not acquiring it. And they resist it because they are fleeing from something extraordinarily painful in their past that they were originally too weak or helpless to face – and still haven’t found the wherewithal to confront. One isn’t so much dealing with an unchanging person as, first and foremost, with a traumatised one. Part of the problem, when one is on the outside, is realising what one is up against. The lack of change can seem so frustrating because one can’t apprehend why it should be so hard. Couldn’t they simply move an inch or two in the right direction? But if we considered, at that moment, the full scale of what this person once faced, and the conditions in which their mind was formed (and certain of its doors bolted shut), we might be more realistic and more compassionate. ‘Couldn’t they just…’ would not longer quite make sense.