Why Change Is Hard: The Terrible Dilemma of Growth

Change is rarely easy. In psychotherapy, we often see the struggle between growth and the pull to remain the same—a tension that can feel overwhelming. Psychoanalyst Betty Joseph described this phenomenon as the negative therapeutic reaction: moments when people unconsciously resist progress, not out of stubbornness, but because change itself feels dangerous to the emotional strategies and relationship patterns they have relied on to get through life.

The Safety of What Is Familiar

In simple terms, our minds depend on familiar ways of thinking, feeling, and relating in order to feel safe. Even when these patterns cause pain, they are known. They organize experience, provide predictability, and help us manage anxiety.

To change them is to step into uncertainty. It means loosening habits, roles, and loyalties that once made life feel manageable. This can feel deeply destabilizing—as if the ground beneath one’s feet is shifting—because the old ways, however imperfect, once worked.

Why Growth Can Feel Risky

Growth is not only difficult; it can feel emotionally risky. Change may require stepping out of long-held role or loosening unspoken loyalties that once helped families or relationships hold together. Someone who grew up in a family shaped by struggle may feel an unspoken pull to remain overwhelmed, as if doing well would mean leaving others behind. A person who learned to stay quiet to keep the peace may experience speaking up as a violation of a long-standing family rule. Others may feel guilty for setting boundaries when being the caretaker once gave them a place and a purpose. Even when these roles become constraining, stepping out of them can feel like a betrayal—not of specific people, but of shared histories, values, and ways of belonging that once mattered deeply.

Progress, in other words, can come with a cost—and that cost is often felt as worry, guilt, or fear that we are betraying others or leaving old roles behind, even before we consciously understand why.

When Improvement Feels Forbidden

Joseph observed that when therapy begins to touch on genuine change, people may unconsciously act in ways that undermine it. This is not resistance for its own sake. It reflects a powerful internal conflict: improvement itself can feel forbidden.

For example, a person from a difficult family background may work hard in therapy to improve their life circumstances and eventually secure a better job. Objectively, this represents progress. Yet just before their first day, they find themselves drinking heavily, staying out all night, or otherwise behaving in ways that put the opportunity at risk. From the outside, this can appear baffling. From a psychodynamic perspective, it may reflect an unconscious sense that having a better life is not permitted—that doing better than one’s family feels disloyal or emotionally dangerous. The pull back toward familiar patterns can outweigh the wish to move forward.

When Therapy Itself Becomes the Target

A similar process can unfold within the therapy itself. A patient may have a particularly meaningful session—an emotional breakthrough, a new understanding, or a moment of genuine connection. At the following session, however, they arrive late, express anger toward the therapist, or announce that therapy is not helping and they may stop altogether.

When something important happens, it can stir anxiety about vulnerability or relying too much on the therapist. Pulling back, dismissing the work, or turning against the treatment can become a way to restore emotional balance. In this sense, the resistance is not to therapy as such, but to the change that therapy is making possible.

The Mind’s Need for Balance

At the heart of this dilemma is the mind’s need for equilibrium. Just as the body resists sudden changes in temperature, the mind resists abrupt shifts in feelings, roles, and relationships. Familiar patterns—even painful ones—are predictable. New ways of being introduce uncertainty, and uncertainty can feel threatening.

Understanding this dynamic allows therapists—and anyone facing change—to approach the process with greater compassion. Resistance is not a sign that therapy is failing; it is often a sign that something meaningful is taking place. Growth is rarely linear. It unfolds through a gradual negotiation between the wish for relief and the fear of what improvement might cost.

Living With the Dilemma

Change is hard because it confronts us with a central human dilemma: remain as we are and continue to suffer, or grow and risk loss, guilt, and uncertainty. This tension is not a problem to be eliminated, but a condition to be understood.

When it can be recognized and tolerated, it becomes the ground on which real transformation is possible.

References

Joseph, B. (1985). Transference: The total situation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66, 447–454.

Riviere, J. (1936). The negative therapeutic reaction. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 17, 304–320.