Change, and working at Change

'With the necessary will and the necessary help, demons can be conquered. What is needed is the determination that leads to intense, deeply motivated effort. Promises and resolutions to do better in the future will inevitably be broken without doing the work to connect the dots and to understand why a person does what he does.

Yes, it takes time, and yes, it takes money. The time will pass, anyway: it’s better spent in therapy than in bed with a lover. On balance, psychotherapy can be enormously worthwhile, far more so than any material object – from a closetful of shoes to a powerful, flashy vehicle or a humongous-sized television screen. Many therapists offer sliding scales of fees to enable all to benefit. If you believe that a new thing (or person) will make you feel better, it or she won’t — except fleetingly. The benefits of psychotherapy will outlast anything else you can buy.

Nothing in life is more costly than the errors we make because of woeful ignorance of ourselves...

Each of our lives involves trial by that which “is contrary.” To win those trials and emerge stronger and better human beings, we must subject ourselves to the arduous task of self-understanding. Without that, all the tearful and abject apologies, all the confessions of guilt to one’s spouse and endless promises of change are just so much hot air.

To change is to work at change, not to believe that absolution or forgiveness is all it takes. It wasn’t in 1644, it isn’t now, and it never will be. '

– Belladonna Rogers, 'The Chastened Adulterer: How an Affair Is Like a Heart Attack and The Case for Psychotherapy.'

Comments

Anonymous said…
Should adopt...

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neetib said…
Interesting post and thanks for sharing. Some things in here I have not thought about before.
Regards,
Brand Solutions
Neeti Biz

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