Change

My aversion to change is long held. 

I was the kid who cried at the end of a book because she was already missing her ‘new friends’! 

The kid who hated the end of each school year because it meant new classmates and new teachers. 

The woman who stayed in an unhealthy marriage for 30+ years because family was everything and marriage was for ‘life’.

And an employee who despite everything, finds herself in an organization which has now had 3 CEO and 4 acting CEOs in the last 10 years. 

So my question is why? 

Why have I and countless others like me, not been able to embrace change with expectation, excitement and glee? Why is it that we struggle so deeply with change when it is forced upon us and find ourselves so often leaning into cup half empty scenarios? 

Because tenaciously ‘holding on’ to relationships, healthy or otherwise no matter what, has been our lifeline, our survival mechanism, our plan A for doing life. 

And because Christian or not, many of us have a gaping hole inside that feels un-fillable; a wound so deep it seems un-healable; a bottomless pit, like a well that goes on and beyond the very centre of the earth that makes the thought of detaching from others unimaginable. 

Why? Because insecure attachment in our formative years, literally wired our brains that way. 

Connection is a core human needs; as humans we were created for connection. 

We were also designed to develop through dependence and independence to interdependence, with healthy attachments to others and ourselves. 

The issue for those of us who were raised with an insecure attachment style is that life was too emotionally chaotic, bereft,  and / or physically unsafe, to develop as other infants do. It wasn’t ok for us to create a healthy sense of separation from others or learn the skills and abilities needed to self soothe. 

With recent scientific discoveries, we now understand that these ‘once misunderstood’, thought to be ‘defective’ ways of being, are actually neural imprints, from survival mechanisms created by the body’s autonomic nervous system at a chemical, cellular level, to protect our existence. Automatic responses that happen within us, before cognitive thoughts can be formed. 

Some of these changes may have been made at a molecular level before we were even born. 

Scientists have shown that stressed mother release hormones / chemicals that cross the placental blood barrier, which have the ability to physically change the neural development of the Foetus. 

The good news is that science has also discovered that these changes are not set in stone. 

We can learn, grow and make changes to our internal chemistry and neural pathways, rewire our brains, so these once automatically encoded, trauma ladened, survival mechanisms that have shaped our lives, coloured our emotions and been held in our physical bodies can be embraced and released. 

Knowledge and understanding brings opportunity for change. A healthy, moving forward, taking over the reigns of my life kind of change. I encourage you to step up, learn all you can and choose to implement change. 

If you need help along the way, feel free to reach out. 

Until next time 

Liz