Letter 25: Why Is It So Hard to Change?

“You cannot heal what you cannot feel.”

— John Bradshaw

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Dear Future Human,

I am glad you are still with me. I don’t take you for granted—this work is not for the faint-hearted. It requires heroic measures, not only to stay in the conversation, but to remain open and engaged with it. Much of what I discussed in prior letters, cannot be consumed and digested by merely reading them. The words on the page may make sense, but their meaning can only be fully internalized when experienced through embodiment.

When I read an instructive book—on self-help, philosophy, or biology—I review the material for weeks, exploring tangible ways to understand the concepts. I’m clear that merely reading and resonating with it won’t give me the understanding needed to apply it. It’s not enough for my mind to know; my body needs to “know!”

This is why we turn to the body now. We’re moving together from understanding to transformation—from insight to embodiment. This isn’t a metaphor; it’s biology. It’s the slow, sacred work of rewiring the nervous system—dismantling old pathways of fear and adaptation and laying down new ones rooted in presence, courage, and authenticity.

To do this, you will need a way to make your inner world more visible. Think of it like shining a light into a cluttered room. Only once you can feel your sensations and see your triggers clearly, can you begin to understand the stories associated with them. Then you can begin to examine those stories with curiosity, from a place of objectivity, evaluating whether you are, in fact, reacting to something occurring in the present—or to something else based on old neural circuitry that reads meanings from the past into your adult life.

Just as we needed help organizing the external world, we must have help to organize our emotional interiors. We can assume that our internal worlds are just as chaotic as the external world was to us when we were young children—before we could even assign causes to our physical sensations.

But here is what is rarely discussed about transformation: your brain will fight you every step of the way—not because it wants to hurt you, but because it thinks it is protecting you.^¹

These outdated patterns operate like wearing danger-sensing goggles engineered when you were a helpless child, calibrated for threats that no longer exist. They are essentially archaic filters formed in response to early childhood experiences as you adapted to fit into your environment—not just behaviorally, but neurologically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually.² These filters still whisper: stay the same; it is safer.

We seek the familiar—even when it’s painful. Your nervous system tends to cling to the status quo even when change might be better for you. Your brain is wired to favor familiar patterns, and anticipate outcomes based on those patterns.³ The very adaptations that kept you alive as a child will resist the growth that could free you as an adult. This is not a flaw in the process—it is the process itself. Transformation happens not despite the resistance, but through learning to dance with it until its static softens and the Signal of who you truly are can come through.

What follows are the predictable ways this resistance will manifest. Knowing this won’t prevent these challenges, but it will prepare you to recognize them and respond rather than react.

Your brain is a pattern-making organ⁴, and those patterns don’t stay internal—they shape how you relate to family, partners, and colleagues. This means that much of each day, your mind operates on circuits imprinted when you were at your most helpless and least capable of impacting your environment.

Fear of who you are becoming runs deeper than simple discomfort with change. Beneath it lies the terror of losing the identity that has been your survival strategy, without having another self to step into.⁵ This isn’t just about comfort with the familiar—it is about protecting the psychological structure that kept you safe when you were powerless. Your survival identity may be limiting or painful, but it worked. It helped you navigate childhood, avoid abandonment, be cared for and maintain belonging.⁶

Your brain doesn’t recognize this “new you” and floods you with alarm signals, pulling you back toward the familiar. The voice that whispers “stay the same” is not just seeking comfort—it is protecting what it believes is your psychological survival kit. Be prepared for this and remember: your brain is not trying to sabotage you; it is desperately trying to preserve what it thinks keeps you alive and loved.

This anxiety is temporary. With support, you can reframe it into excitement, recognizing it as evidence that you are stretching beyond old limitations.

External friction occurs because the people around you are also operating from their own outdated patterns. Change will disrupt familiar dynamics, much as introducing a new element to an ecosystem creates ripple effects. People may try to tempt, coerce, or argue you into returning to old behaviors—even unhealthy ones. If you’ve ever announced you’re cutting back on sweets only to have family press cake on you, or tried drinking less only to face pressure from friends, you know this friction.⁷

The need to be right protects you from facing the possibility that your familiar ways of operating may have caused unintended harm. There is comfort in feeling that you understand your world and that you know what you are doing. As you begin acting differently, your ego may feel destabilized. If you have been “wrong” about your relationship choices or life decisions, how can you trust your judgment? What is your worth? This creates resistance that suggests it is safer to defend your existing worldview than risk the vulnerability of not knowing.

You need to release any regrets about believing you should have known better when you made past choices. Those choices don’t define you as a failure—they reveal you as human, doing the very best you could with the awareness and resources you had at the time.

Avoidance of discomfort is your primary survival strategy. Change inevitably brings discomfort because you are entering conversations and activities that challenge your view of the world. It is normal to feel resistance when facing painful memories or feel vulnerable as you begin to develop new patterns while the old ones still feel more familiar.⁸

Your inner critic becomes one of the most detrimental voices of resistance. As you stumble—and you will—that familiar voice will try to derail you through shame and self-condemnation. Over time, you have internalized judgments heard throughout your life, and they now echo as weapons turned against yourself.⁹

I have spent considerable time normalizing our predicament because I want us to stop blaming ourselves for how we were evolutionarily conditioned. Criticism hides the areas that need to grow. We cannot heal while beating ourselves up. Instead, cultivate a compassionate inner voice that says: “You are courageous, and you are worthy.”

Intolerance of not knowing reflects how these patterns work to keep you feeling “in control.” We often believe our power comes from having the answers and predicting outcomes. Not knowing threatens both our physical sense of safety and our social credibility.¹⁰ But in order to grow you necessarily need to go into uncharted territory. Over time, you will come to experience the rewards of learning and growing, and even welcome the confusion and excitement that accompany it.

Overwhelming feelings arise when you experience that change requires too much work. You already have responsibilities, and now you are asking yourself to intercept automatic reactions and choose conscious responses. But consider this, isn’t it more tiresome to keep repeating patterns that aren’t serving you, thereby depriving you of the life you really want? When you feel overwhelmed, ask for help—even if you are not comfortable doing so.

Feeling helpless may be triggered when old patterns feel intractable. Depending on the issue you are working on, it may take a great deal of consistent rewiring before you experience measurable change. You may feel your reactive brain is too powerful, leaving you defenseless against its messages. This triggers our childhood sense of helplessness—the “I can’t do it” state you felt when you truly were powerless.

But now you are an adult who can learn and grow. Real strength isn’t doing it alone—it’s supporting one another within a community that recognizes our need for interdependence.

Fear of failure protects you from pain and humiliation associated with not meeting expectations. We have developed the unreasonable belief that failure is bad, when it is actually necessary for learning.¹¹ Your subconscious childhood memories, filled with negative associations with trying and failing, can derail you before you discover what you are capable of. While frustrations and disappointments are not comfortable, they can’t truly hurt you.

Unrealistic expectations come from trying to maintain control over an inherently unpredictable process. To stay the course, you will need to release expectations and remain committed to the process itself. Remember, your reactive brain is going to be pretty tenacious so have a sense of humor and continue to put one foot in front of the other.

Hopelessness can feel like the ultimate obstacle—static that drowns out all signals entirely. You feel like this always happens, wondering why you bother trying to change. Most people hit a wall when working on painful personal issues. This feeling should signal that you need more support, not that you are broken. Ask for it.

If you experience persistent hopelessness that interferes with daily functioning, please consider speaking with a mental health professional who can provide appropriate support.

Limited capacity for self-love reflects evolutionary reality: you were wired to fit into your early environment over honoring your authentic self. Your brain developed pathways for seeking external approval and validation—from your family, friends, and social groups. Evolution hasn’t prioritized self-love—there’s been little evolutionary “space” for this until recently. Developing genuine self-love requires both releasing childhood drives to find parent-figures to care for you and working against adaptive drives that seek external approval. I will explore this essential work more deeply in a future letter.

The Deeper Truth

This resistance isn’t your fault—it is part of the human condition at this particular moment in history. We are caught between our animal instincts and our complex modern lives, and that creates friction. These challenges aren’t signs that you are broken or failing—they are proof that something important is shifting inside you.

When you feel this internal pushback, it means you are actually changing. The old patterns that kept you safe as a child are fighting to stay alive, but your authentic self is starting to break through. Every time you notice the resistance, every time you feel that uncomfortable stretch, you are literally rewiring your brain. These fears aren’t obstacles—they are transformation’s raw material. You will learn to meet fear, discomfort, and the unknown with curiosity and skillful action rather than avoidance.

Remember: the brain that created survival patterns in childhood has the capacity to rewire itself throughout life.¹² The interventions I will share aren’t merely theoretical—they’re proven methods for literally reshaping neural architecture.

The goal is not to eliminate resistance entirely—that’s impossible. The goal is applying practices that lower its volume so you can more clearly attune to signals for your authentic response. As you learn to welcome discomfort instead of fighting it, you discover that power doesn’t come from controlling outcomes, but from staying present with whatever arises.

In my next letter, I will explore the most fundamental barrier to integration: our relationship with fear itself. You will discover how the very fears that seem to protect us often become the prison walls that prevent us from accessing our authentic power and potential. But I will show you how fear can become our teacher—how the terror that may be keeping you small can actually become your greatest guide toward freedom.

Until then, sit with the resistance you have identified. Notice it without judgment. The awareness itself is already beginning to create the space for change.

With unwavering support,

Ronit

1. Lena Forsell and Jan Åström,  “An Analysis of Resistance to Change Exposed in Individuals’ Thoughts and Behaviours,” Comprehensive Psychology, Janurary 2012.

2. Norman Li et al, “The Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis: Implications for Psychological Science,” Singapore Management University, February 2018.

3. Patrick McElwaine, “Why We Fear Change, and Why It Might Be Exactly What We Need,” Psychology Today, April 2025.

4. Andy Clark,“Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, June 2013.

5. Thubten Chodron, “Parting from Our Self,” ThubtenChodron.org, December 2008.

6. Emilija Marković et al, “Attachment and Forming of Identity,” Science International Journal, September 2024.

7. Shane Parrish, “Homeostasis and Why We Backslide,” Farnam Street Blog, April 2024.

8. Jaimie Lusk, “Crossing Our Thresholds: Finding the Courage to Make Change,” Psychology Today, May  2025.

9. Barbara Barcaccia et al, “The More You Judge The Worse You Feel,” Personality and Individual Differences, February 2019.

10. James Langabeer, “Embracing Uncertainty in Decision‑Making: Making Peace with Not Knowing,” Psychology Today, September  2025.

11. SACAP Staff, The Fear of Failure: Understanding the Psychology Behind It,” The South African College of Applied Psychology, February  2024.

12. Jonathan Power & Bradley Schlaggar, “Neural plasticity across the lifespan,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, January 2017.

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