I used to work in politics and was acquainted with the old Lord Montegue, a member of the British Parliament. I often remember his favorite phrase. "People can change," he would say with a sly twinkle in his eye, and after a pause he would add, "Five percent and five minutes.
This thought - cynical, of course - sounded natural in the mouth of a man in whose midst pretending was the order of the day. But when I decided to change into a therapist and began my practice, I thought about these words more than once. What if he's right? Are we deluded about our own flexibility?
My experience tells me no. I think back to when I was young. I dabbled in drugs and led a wild life and had lingering depressions. Now my life has changed. Percentage-wise, 75% in the last five years.
I see changes in patients. They can show up in as little as a week or they can take years. Sometimes you can see progress in the first session, and that's great luck. But more often these processes are slower. After all, we are trying to run when there are heavy weights hanging from our feet. We don't have a hacksaw or a key to the shackles, and only time and hard work can help us throw them off. The five years in which I have been able to reinvent my life are the result of the previous five years of hard work on myself.
Sometimes someone has to remind us of the truth: There are some things we can't fix.
But sometimes change doesn't come. When I fail to make progress with a client, I ask myself a thousand questions. Have I failed? Do I need to tell him straight up? Maybe I'm not cut out for this job? Sometimes I want to tweak reality a bit, to make the picture more positive: well, at least now he can see what the problem is and where to go next. Maybe he'll come back to therapy a little later.
But it's always better to live with the truth. And that means admitting that you can't always know if therapy will work. And you can't even understand why it didn't work. And mistakes need to be recognized, despite the gravity of them, rather than trying to mitigate them with rationalization.
One of the wisest sayings I have ever read comes from the excellent psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. A woman once came to him for help. She wrote that her young son had died, she was desperate and didn't know what to do. He answered her with a short handwritten letter, "I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do. It's a tragedy."
I don't know how she took it, but I like to think she was relieved. Sometimes someone has to remind us of the truth: There are things we can't fix. Good therapy gives you a chance to make a difference. But it also provides a safe space where we can admit defeat. This applies to both the client and the therapist.
Once we realize that change is impossible, we need to switch to another task: acceptance
This idea is best articulated in the 12-step program, although they borrowed it from the famous "prayer for peace of mind" (whoever the author was): "Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, give me the courage to change the things I can change, and give me the wisdom to distinguish one from the other."
Wise old Lord Montague, who died of cardiac arrest, must have been addressing his words to those who never grasped this distinction. But it seems to me that he was only half right. I don't want to part with the idea that change is possible. Maybe not 95 percent, but we are still capable of profound and lasting change. But once we realize that change is not possible, we need to switch to another task: acceptance.
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