The Destructive Power of Change

When I was getting my teaching certificate, an Education professor told me that in order for students to learn, they had to go from a place of discomfort to comfort.

Think about that for a moment.

Most of us are perfectly content to stay right where we are, thank you very much. We want to believe what we believe, think what we think and stay where we are. Changing our thoughts and minds is upsetting. If we’ve believed that the earth is flat and someone comes along and says it’s round, we’re bound to be confused. Our worldview has literally been disrupted.

Now we are uncomfortable and agitated. We need to right ourselves again. Perhaps we go to Google and see if we can confirm what we already believed, or discover more evidence for this new information. Or we need to talk about it. Process it. And once we’ve read enough, researched enough, and/or talked to enough people and processed our feelings about this new information, we either accept or reject it. We either learn something new or stay where we are. But in order to learn, we have to go through this discomfort.

It’s what I did in my classroom with my students. An English teacher challenges you about what you read. An English teacher asks questions, teases out thoughts and responses, pushes you to consider something you may not have seen or challenges your interpretation. This can be a jarring experience. Students can rebel, argue or just be plain confused. But no matter where the students wind up, a good teacher is disruptive. A good teacher will challenge the students and make them uncomfortable.

In order to learn, we must change. We must go from a state of discomfort (confusion, fear, pain) to a place of comfort (understanding, acceptance, enlightenment). I’d even go so far as to say that change is not only difficult, it's ugly.

Consider the butterfly. We talk about the caterpillar transforming into the beautiful butterfly. But what about the process of metamorphosis itself? Isn’t it ugly? Isn’t it disturbing? Just look at the word “pupa.” That is one ugly word. Consider the process of shedding one’s cocoon or skin. Molting? It’s the stuff of horror films. Whether it be humanoids encased in jellied eggs in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Jeff Goldblum’s face erupting into greasy insect skin in The Fly, metamorphosis is one ugly process.

It makes sense. In order to change from one thing into another, the prior self must be destroyed. Yes it is replaced with something far more beautiful and evolved, but the process of change itself can be violent and unpleasant.

I think it’s the main reason people avoid therapy. To change your inner self, to undergo the metamorphosis of the psyche requires addressing the ugly stuff that’s buried within that nice cocoon you’ve built. You’ve got to rip it apart. Chew your way out from within. Destroy everything you’ve known in order to be reborn.

Change is hard. We say those three little words as if it makes it easier. As though it’s easily summed up. Heck, I’ve used that phrase myself to help cope with it. For instance I’ve recently changed jobs. I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t know it would be this hard. Yes, it is good for me. Yes, I was stagnating after staying in the same place for seven years. But damn, it’s really hard! I wake up from anxiety dreams where everyone at a meeting speaks a foreign language or speaks so softly I can’t hear them. I grind my teeth at night and my jaw aches. It’s only my second week at the new gig, so it’s not the end of the world.

But I didn’t expect it to be quite this hard.

I’m also in therapy and I’m working on a memoir with a writing coach. Those are acts of transformation. And they are harder than I thought they would be. Facing the truth about what I’ve been through and who I've become is incredibly difficult. We bury our pain for a reason. And I’m one to pull my finger away from anger as though I’ve touched something hot.

But you can’t look at where you’ve been and what you’ve become—and not have to cope with whatever it is you were hiding from in the first place. In my case it's anger. I don't like to be angry and I don't like conflict. I'd rather shove it all deep within my belly and not deal with it. If you're familiar with that strategy of dealing with trauma, you'll know that it's not particularly effective. When you bury all the hurt and anger of being abused and neglected as a child, that sort of pain festers. You haven't eliminated it at all. Instead, you've let it metastasize within you and it will consume you. It will make you sick. If you root it out and deal with it in the light of day, no matter how painful that process, you've at least got a shot at healing. At transforming even.

And all of this is ugly. It is destructive. And it makes it difficult to write here. It makes it difficult to cope with the aftermath of writing about my eating disorder on the Huffington Post. When all you have ever done is work to hide such things, it is indeed difficult to reveal them.

It’s ugly.

It’s destructive.

And yet I want to fly.

On the Muscle.

Welcome to the gun show, suckers.

Yesterday I was at the gym in the free weight area. I sort of hate working out in the free weight area because it's all big burly dudes … and me. I try to be as inconspicuous as possible and not make any eye contact with anyone, but still, I'm uncomfortable.

Fortunately, I usually get one of the benches on the end of the row. Yesterday was no different. I picked the bench on the end. I selected a couple of sets of weights and put them by the bench. I commenced doing my sets. I stand to do the bicep curls, lateral raises, shoulder presses, etc. I sit on the bench while I do the triceps extensions, bench presses, etc. I do push ups, squats and lunges on the floor next to the bench. I repeat this three times. You get the drift.

In no way am I any different than the long row of big guys doing their exercises next to and on their benches. And mind you, mixed among the big guys are also empty benches. So there I was, completely minding my own business, trying to get my three sets out of the way so I could get the hell out of the free weight area as fast as humanly possible because I'm not entirely comfortable there.

And then some dude walks up to me.

"Are you using this bench?" he points at the bench that I am standing next to, on top of which rest my weights and my warm-up jacket.

"Yes," I say and smile. He gives me a disgusted look.

"I mean, are you using it for anything other than putting your weights on?" he is snide and looks at me as if I'm some addle-minded chick who doesn't know what I'm doing. What the hell, I think. Can't he see how ripped I am?

"I'm doing presses on it!" I say and smile, even though inside I feel like ripping into to him. He gives me another disgusted look and then marches off to another area of the gym. I have no idea why he's so pissed and I have no idea why he asked me of all the people in the long row of benches. Was it because I was the only woman? And why didn't he simply go to one of the empty benches?

I continue doing my exercises, but while I do, I feel myself getting madder and madder. I feel regret at covering up my anger with false joviality and friendliness. I mean, I couldn't even be curt and short with this guy. I covered it up with a smile and a friendly tone of voice. I suddenly realize that I am angry at myself.

I'm mad at myself for being mad in the first place. Why do I have such big emotions over such small stuff? And then I get mad at myself for faking being pleasant and nice to this guy when clearly he's an asshole.

So I'm torn.

Should I have put this guy in his place and shown him that it's not nice to pick on the only girl? Should I have pointed out that there were other empty benches for him to use? Should I have not felt offended to be singled out like that in the first place?

I mean, maybe he's writing his own blog post right now about how some dumb chick wasn't even using her bench other than to put her weights on it and it was so rude of her not to let him use it. Maybe he didn't want to work amongst the big burly guys either?

I know there's always another side to things, another perspective. But I'm still pissed.

I asked my therapist about it and she pointed out that it's not a problem that I have these emotions. It's a problem that these emotions feel so big and that I feel the need to conceal them. So in that regard, this little incident is useful. It reminds me that I still have some work to do on Big Emotions.

I'm not a Buddha quite yet. At least not at the gym.