A Sense of Doubt blog post #3761 - Therapy Question: Are People Powerless to Change?

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3761 - Therapy Question: Are People Powerless to Change?

I may have mentioned that I am back in graduate school for a third Master's degree, this time in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

I write things all the time for school, and I have posted a couple here on the blog, though many have not been posted.

Here's one:

Saturday, August 3, 2024

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3455 - Writing in Counseling Studies - Part One

And I guess that's the only one so far. I thought I had posted some of my writings on theory.

Oh, well, I did post about my grade point (4.0) and my experience at the Dharma Rain Zen Buddhism Center, too. 

But not others. Perhaps I will share more. I like a lot of my essays on theory.

So, this quarter, in week one of the class on human development or Life Span, we were asked to respond as to whether or not we felt people were powerless to change.

It's a strange question because it is commonly believed that people enter into a therapeutic relationship seeking change.

Perhaps those who do not seek out therapy are powerless to change, though a better conceptualization should be that they are unwilling to change.

Others face great difficulties in changing aspects of their life, aspects of themselves. Trauma roots deep within the psyche and makes change difficult. In some cases, people are unaware of the full extent of their trauma. I should have written in my post about EMDR, especially as I know someone well who does EMDR with clients in mental health service.

There's a lot of repression out there that can be uprooted to heal people and help them change and move forward.

Also, an unwillingness to change may result from denial that a change is needed. I am told often about my deeply embedded white male privilege, and I listen and try to improve whereas others deny that such a thing even exists let alone resulting in toxic masculinity or patriarchy.

We all love to rationalize. As was stated in one of the best movies ever made, The Big Chill: 

"Rationalizations are more important than sex."

At which point, someone balked and the retort was:

"Have you ever tried to go a week with a rationalization?"

It's very true.

And people use rationalizations to deny that change is needed or to believe that they have changed sufficiently.

We love to trick ourselves.

Kicking a drug or alcohol habit is very difficult.

Healing from the trauma of abuse is also extremely painful and a very long process for some people who have suffered greatly. In some cases, unearthing repressed memories so the person even knows what trauma they are holding is just the first step.

I didn't write about most of those things.

I kept it general, and I wrote about Jung, one of my favorite topics.

My short essay is below.

Thanks for tuning in.

I have used this image above so many times that I created a category for it just so I could find it and use it again.

I did not take this picture (at least I don't think I did), but I might have.

I believe it is a picture from the UK somewhere, but it's hard to verify that with what we see in the photo. I do not know what those Q signs are, and although the parking payment kiosk looks like those out here, I am pretty sure this is a picture from the UK. I can't really zoom into the picture, and my quick Internet search did turn up this image.

I did an image search (uploading the image), and though I could not find this picture, all the results were from the UK and most from locations in Scotland; however, my image file does not date from the last time I was in Scotland, so I am pretty sure I didn't take it.

All of that analysis is more for me than for you, but I hope you found it interesting if you read it.

Week One Discussion MAIN POST

COUN-6215-18 - Lifespan

I lived a lot of my life not being a friend of change. I moved out west in 2017; I didn’t want to. I had lived in Michigan my entire life, and I had built strong communities and great comfort in my home town of Kalamazoo. I had spent years avoiding or even actively resisting change in many aspects of my life. We moved our west in 2017. At first, I was deeply depressed and besieged by home-sickness; however, within a little over a year, I fell in love with my new home and decided it was one of the best decisions I ever made. We now live in a little town called Kalama, Washington, which seems fated to be given it’s similarity in name to my long-time home of Kalamazoo.

I am a lifelong Jungian, ever since my first-year college religion courses introduced me to the writing of Carl Jung. Though Freud is a good starting point for understanding the development of personality across the life span, one flaw of the first chapter of the Broderick & Blewitt (2025) text is the omission of Jung’s ideas on the development of the personality that are a bridge of more deeply developed ideas between Freudian ideology and comprehensive work of Erickson and Piaget (pp. 7-11). Other than leaving out Jung, I like our textbook very much.

People are innately oriented to change whether they feel empowered to change or not. Conscious effort to make changes that benefit a person have more dramatic results. Therapists can aid the change clients desire with proper application of theoretical frameworks, treatments, and keeping abreast of scholarly and non-scholarly writings in psychology and counseling. Some changes like developing greater empathy, allowing more laughter and smiles, and integrating unconscious contents into consciousness can be encouraged with clients in alignment with the client’s personal goals.

Are People Powerless to Change?

Throughout their lives, people can always change if they are willing to change and are willing to examine the aspects of themselves preventing them from changing or interfering with their ability to even identify that a change may be needed. The use of the word “powerless” in this assignment prompt seems strange to ask of counselors-in-training. Are we not to believe that people are never “powerless” in regards to their lives? If so, what would be the point of therapy? And so, yes, change is always possible, though it may be difficult to achieve, and people may often resist what changes would most benefit them, much like my own experience of moving west. Left to my own devices, I would still be living in Michigan and continue to rationalize that where one lives is less important than what one is doing with one’s time. Though I still believe that rationalization ion some ways, moving has transformed my life in many positive respects, proving the validity of making changes to improve one’s life.

A central axiom for therapy may be “growth mindset” in regards to the development of the individual. Carl Jung referred to the developmental concept of the personality as the process of individuation and claims that effective psychotherapy is always directed toward growth. There can be no growth without change. Jung argued that unconscious or repressed aspects of the personality need to be made conscious and integrated into the unified whole of the personality (Hall & Nordby, 1973, pp. 81-85). Jung believed that a person is naturally directed toward wholeness and balance, as such all of his structures of the personality are yin-yang type dualities with which balance can be achieved by making unconscious contents conscious. Possibly the most important of these is the ego-shadow dualism. Jung posited that a shadow (the unconscious side) that remains repressed weakens the ego and leads a person to “collapse into helplessness” (Hall & Nordby, 1973, pp. 51), very much the idea of “powerlessness” named in the assignment prompt. However, integration of the shadow into consciousness leads to vitality, creativity, and vigor. Similarly, if introverts integrate their unconscious extravert side, they grow and make progress in the lifelong process of individuation. However, people can only employ growth mindset in regards to their unconscious if they believe it exists and if they accept the need to evolve in this way. Without the commitment to change, there can be no growth.

Though early childhood was integral to Freud’s theories of personality and Erickson equalized development through the life span, Jung believed that middle age was the “second half of life” and a stage most marked by the desire for self-examination and in-depth psychoanalysis (Haley et al., 2022, pp. 75). However, Jung’s view of growth differed from those of other psychological theorists. Jung ascribed to the etymological meaning of “education” as something that draws out, molds, or brings up something inside of a person, not as a process of people as empty containers being filled with knowledge. He believed that the structures of personality exist in wholeness from the start and are in a nascent state throughout life, waiting to emerge. The middle years were the time Jung individuated the most, especially after the “dark night of the soul” he experienced serving in combat in World War One, and thus identified it as the most latent time in a person’s life for change. Jung’s beliefs about individuation, especially during middle age, align with what Broderick and Blewit (2025) describe as incremental models for development as change does not usually happen all at once but in steady ways or in key stages (pp. 11-12). Integrating Jung into my practice along with many other people’s ideas fits Broderick and Blewit’s (2025) definition of “reflective practice,” a creative and person-focused hypothesis method (p.3), one which can be argued has its origins in Jungian Analytical Psychology.

Influence on Future Work as a Counselor

Change cannot be forced. People cannot change until they are ready. I talk with my own therapist about this issue a great deal because I am curious about clients who never change and just return to therapy again and again with no progress, no growth. How do we help them? For instance, I might think a client is in an abusive relationship, and if it were my relationship, I would end it. However, it will not be my job to convince the client to end a relationship unless they say that they want to end it (or there’s some great harm at work mandating a different approach). Granted, the abused often make excuses to stay with an abuser. But it’s not my place to convince but rather to listen, to reflect, to validate as needed, and to support with unconditional positive regard. Or what if someone lacks spiritual expression in their lives, which has been shown to have significant influence on mental health? Or what if someone always dwells on the negative and never sees the positive, also a mindset that has detrimental effects? These questions provide good starting points for a therapist to uncover ways to help clients to grow and change if they are open to such changes.

My future work as counselor will be strongly influenced by current research in the field. As someone who believes as strongly in the nature side of the nature-nurture debate and agrees with Broderick and Blewit’s (2025) reminder of the “complex interdependence” (p. 20) of these two forces. Something that demonstrates this interdependence can be seen in Davila-Ross & Dezecache’s (2021) study of the phylogenetic continuity of laughter and smiles in hominids that evolved in frequent social interactions among humans. They argued that laughter and smiles “promote social cohesion and the development of cognitive and socio-emotional skills” and are expressions of “positive affect deeply grounded in human biology” (pp. 1-2). The authors concluded the evolutionary foundation of such expressions in the ancestral species dating as far back as 10-16 million years. Collecting data via brain scans, the authors confirmed the beneficial effects of such joyful outbursts and how they strengthen social relationships (p.5). However, too often stress and anxiety interfere with the ability of humans to enjoy their lives and these moments of mirthful happiness. Jung would approve of the hard-wired nature of this human trait as strong evidence on the nature side of the nature-nurture debate. Laughter swaps the anxiety-produced cortisol flooding humans with dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins, which have many positive effects from enhanced learning to empathy (NLI Staff, 2020). As Jung suggested that people work in therapy to bring out what is already within, the nascent propensity for joy through laughter and smiling is an easy change to encourage in clients without trying to leverage a more dramatic change that might not be a therapist’s place to promote.

Like joyful laughter, empathy plays a critical role in human development and can be stunted in adolescence by use of tobacco. Goering et al. (2025) investigated substance use’s effects on empathy and epigenetic aging and the GrimAge clock finding that lower (or no) tobacco use was associated with better health outcomes, higher empathy, and slower epigenetic aging, promoting health and longevity across the life span (p. 723). Though Goering et al. (2025) grounded their conclusions in data-collection and analysis, others such as Petersen (2024) warned those in the fields of psychology from errant assumptions “of continuity in behavior form, function, and/or mechanism” that lead to faulty inferences about behavior and development (p. 1992). Petersen (2024) argued that paying attention to continuity and discontinuity across the life span will lead to more accurate identification of personality constructs and their causes (p. 2004). All these articles and others I am always seeking will serve to help me best focus my efforts in helping clients to help themselves.

Circling back to the initial prompt for this assignment, when I have heard people admit to being “powerless” to change, it sounds like a cop out. I have a friend who has been in and out of therapy their entire life, hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and their reason for stopping therapy was “this is as good as it gets.” My reaction to that statement mirrors my reaction to people when they say “it is what it is,” a phrase I dislike very much. Sure, some things are unchangeable, and they are what they are, like the earth orbiting the sun... no wait, that could change. Humans needing oxygen? We could probably change that one. I am sure there’s something. But when it comes to human, anyone can change. The ultimate end of this analysis is that as therapists our goal will be to empower clients not reinforce their surrender to not growing, not evolving. I hope to empower myself in all the ways described in this post to encourage clients to have a growth mindset.

Thanks for reading.

~ peace, chris tower, your friend in learning!

“Always look on the bright side” - from THE LIFE OF BRIAN

"Please don't tear this world asunder

Please take back this fear we're under

I demand a better future" ~ David Bowie

References

Broderick, P. C., & Blewitt, P. (2025). The life span: Human development for helping professionals (6th ed.). Pearson Education.

Davila-Ross, M., & Dezecache, G. (2021). The complexity and phylogenetic continuity of laughter and smiles in hominids. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648497.

Goering, M., Moore, A., Barker-Kamps, M., Patki, A., Tiwari, H. K., & Mrug, S. (2025). Adolescent empathy and epigenetic aging in adulthood: Substance use as a mediator. Developmental Psychology, 61(4), 714–725. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001893.

Haley, M., Riley, P. G., & Greenan, G. (2022). Jungian Analytical Theory. In D. Capuzzi & M. D. Stauffer (Eds.), Counseling and psychotherapy: Theories and interventions (7th ed., pp. 165-192). American Counseling Association.

Hall, C. & Nordby, V. (1973). A Primer of Jungian Psychology. Meridian. New York, New York. 

NLI Staff. (2020, September 17). “The Neuroscience of Laughter, and How to Inspire More of It at Work.” Neuroleadership Institute. https://neuroleadership.com/your-brain-at-work/neuroscience-laughter-at-work/

Petersen, I. T. (2024). Reexamining developmental continuity and discontinuity in the 21st century: Better aligning behaviors, functions, and mechanisms. Developmental Psychology, 60(11), 1992–2007. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001657.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2506.05 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3626 days ago & DAD = 280 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.