Behaviour Change Requires Depth

When we just try to manage behaviours based on external notions of what’s right and wrong, we miss the opportunity to understand our own inner environment that contributes to the behaviour and learn to tend to that. This leads to surface level behaviour change that requires willpower, rather than the deep work that transforms physiology at a root level.

Sometimes clients are afraid to bring up certain behaviours because they think I’m going to try to change them or take them away. There are other times, clients think I will judge them because they perceive the behaviour as wrong. First of all, I don’t have that kind of power but I do deeply understand these fears. Maybe the way behaviour change was reinforced in their family system was through force and power over tactics. The world is very black and white in the way it looks at behaviours these days. Social media contributes to that, where I prefer to take a more nuanced approach at understanding all the layers that contribute to a behaviour.

Let’s take a look at over exercising as an example. I’m not into managing the behaviour by telling you how much exercise is too much. I’d much rather explore the parts of you that drive the behaviour and teach you how to tend to them. From this place, you can then reassess the behaviour and explore what is really true for you. Sometimes this means we still do the behaviour (exercise), but it just comes from a completely different place.

Sometimes the thing that’s scary is we discover that part of our identity is wrapped up in the behaviour and to let it go means not knowing who we are. The work is actually a deeper exploration and excavation that involves uncoupling our identity from the behaviour. This means we’ll have to spend time in this space of unknown. The space of unknown and uncertainty can feel really uncomfortable.

When we go through this process though, we can actually develop a richer relationship with ourselves and in this example, a richer relationship with the way we move our body and why. When we move our bodies from the place of an emotional wound or the defences we developed to protect ourselves from feeling pain, we’ll inevitably end up over riding the body. When we can work through the layers and gain access to our most authentic self, our true self, a healthier relationship that nourishes and honours the body becomes available.