Acceptance and Avoidance
One absolutely wide-spread form of avoiding change is wanting to improve yourself. If you are trying to improve yourself, you are fighting a ‘part’ of your soul, which you consider to be inadequate. Considering yourself to be bad, inadequate, wrong or too open, too soft, too vulnerable, too shy, too dumb, too nasty, too greedy, is often an impetus to seek counselling and, at the same time, it is the core of the problem. You can only really change that which you affirm. That which you negate and fight you make stronger and stabilise. The extent to which people are shaped by internal accusers, judges, persecutors, drivers, improvers, governesses, know-it-alls, ideals, and ‘this is how you ought to be’ statements, is always impressive, and it must be duly regarded in the coaching of managers as well as in the psychotherapy of husbands.