Why We Retreat From the Things We Want Most
Sometimes the closer we get to something we really want, the more frightened we become.
This has always interested me.
We tend to imagine change in quite a straightforward way. There is where I am now, and there is where I want to be. If I want the new thing badly enough, surely moving towards it should feel good. Perhaps difficult, yes. Perhaps uncertain. But fundamentally good.
And yet sometimes the opposite happens.
We spend months, sometimes years, wanting something. We imagine another life, another relationship, another career, another version of ourselves. We work towards it. And then, just as it begins to become possible, something strange happens.
We hesitate.
We procrastinate. We suddenly find reasons why perhaps this isn't the right time. We question whether we really wanted it in the first place. Sometimes we even retreat towards the very life we had been trying so hard to leave.
Why?
I think part of the answer is that we misunderstand what change asks of us.
We think change means gaining something new.
But change also means losing something old.
To become B, I have to stop being A
Years ago, I wrote a sentence in my notes:
“Change means killing a part within you. Scary.”
It sounds dramatic. Perhaps it is dramatic.
But there is something in it that I still believe.
When we talk about becoming a different person, we usually focus on what that new person will gain. More confidence. A different career. A healthier relationship. More independence. A different way of living.
What we speak about much less is the person who has to disappear for that new person to exist.
If I am A and desperately want to become B, I cannot completely preserve A while becoming B.
Something has to move.
Perhaps A has habits that once kept me safe. Perhaps A knows exactly what is expected of her. Perhaps A has relationships built around being a particular kind of person. Perhaps A has explanations for why her life looks the way it does. Perhaps other people know A too.
Even an identity we don't particularly like has one enormous psychological advantage:
we know how to be it.
There is familiarity in it.
And familiarity can feel remarkably similar to safety.
The old identity may have protected you
This is why I don't think our resistance to change should always be treated as laziness, lack of motivation or self-sabotage.
Sometimes the part pulling us backwards has a history.
Maybe being quiet protected you.
Maybe not trying protected you from discovering that you could fail.
Maybe being the person who takes care of everybody else gave you a place in your family.
Maybe saying “I'm just not a confident person” meant you never had to risk behaving confidently and then being rejected.
Maybe staying where you are has been painful, but predictable.
Then one day you decide you want something different.
And suddenly you are asking an old psychological system to give up strategies it may have spent years constructing.
Of course there can be resistance.
The strange thing is that the resistance can become strongest precisely when the change starts becoming real.
A dream in the distance doesn't require you to give anything up yet.
A possibility does.
Sometimes getting what we want creates grief
There can therefore be something surprisingly sad about positive change.
We rarely talk about that.
We celebrate the new job, the move, the relationship, the achievement, the boundary finally set, the new beginning.
But beginnings contain endings.
And sometimes we need to grieve versions of ourselves even when we no longer want to live as them.
The old version may have struggled. She may have made mistakes. She may even have kept us trapped in places for much longer than we wish she had.
But she also got us here.
There is something quite cruel about looking backwards and despising her simply because we now know things she didn't.
Perhaps leaving an old identity does not require rejecting it.
Perhaps we can say: I understand why you existed. I understand what you were trying to do. But I don't need you to run everything anymore.
And then continue walking.
“I cannot step into the future with an old mind”
This was another sentence I once wrote to myself.
“I cannot step into the future with an old mind.”
At the time, I was changing quickly and felt almost as though I couldn't psychologically keep up with my own life.
I think we sometimes expect external change and internal change to happen at exactly the same speed.
They don't.
Your circumstances may have changed before your mind has caught up.
You may have become more capable while still thinking of yourself as incapable.
You may be safe while part of you is still organised around danger.
You may be loved while still expecting abandonment.
You may finally have the opportunity you wanted while still carrying the identity of someone for whom that opportunity was impossible.
Perhaps that strange discomfort doesn't necessarily mean you have made the wrong decision.
Sometimes it means your life has moved before your identity has.
And now your mind needs time to meet you there.
The closer we get, the greater the resistance can become
This changed the way I think about fear around change.
Fear isn't always evidence that we should stop.
Sometimes fear appears because something matters.
Sometimes it appears because uncertainty has increased.
And sometimes it appears because the thing in front of us threatens an identity behind us.
The more we want something, the more we potentially have to lose by reaching for it.
Not only if we fail.
Also if we succeed.
Because success may ask:
Who are you going to be now?
And perhaps an even more frightening question:
Who are you no longer going to be?
I don't think the answer is to force ourselves forward without looking back.
Maybe it is to understand what is pulling us backwards.
To become curious about the old identity rather than ashamed of it.
To recognise what it gave us, what it protected us from, and why leaving it might hurt.
And then to make room for the grief that sometimes accompanies growth.
Because something does have to end for something new to start.
Perhaps that is one of the quiet truths about change:
becoming someone new does not always feel like finding yourself.
Sometimes, for a while, it feels like losing yourself.
And maybe that doesn't mean you're going the wrong way.
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About the author
Anita Toze is a Clinical Psychologist (HCPC registered in the UK) with a background in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy. She works online and in person with adults and young people aged 11 and over.
Cover photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash
