Exaggerated Fears of Change Paralyze Action

It looks like I have a steady reader in Iva Agnes. My blog has been running less than a week and she's already written twice. This time Iva asks:


Thanks for talking about my comments!!! I want to ask you about a friend of mine who was also reading your book. She wants to change a couple of important family relationships but she's afraid to because she thinks it will turn people against her. She says she doesn't want to talk about the book anymore because it is too frustrating and she can't really do anything about what upsets her. I don't know what to say to her. What do you think?


First let me say you sound like a really caring friend who reaches out to help others. The support of caring friends like you really helps when a person is struggling with a family problem, as your friend is. Obviously you cannot force my book on her, or nag her into changing how she acts.

Perhaps it might help if you share a couple of ideas with her. One idea is that having strong feelings that tell us we cannot make a change without dire consequences, is actually a pretty common experience. Fortunately, such feelings are not facts. So if we can get ourselves to take a closer look at what awful thing we think would happen if we act differently towards someone, it helps get a more realistic grip on the problem. What usually becomes obvious to the person is that what they dread is highly unlikely to happen.

For example, let's say your friend's problem is with her sister and your friend tells herself, "If I confront the issue with my sister she'll never speak to me again!" She needs to take a closer look and ask herself, "What is the real chance of that happening?" That's not to say the sister might not be unhappy to be confronted with whatever the issue is. She might even be unpleasant about it, but that doesn't mean the end of the relationship. It does mean your friend needs to learn that although it isn't pleasant to do, she can indeed tolerate the discomfort of discussing the issue and move ahead with doing it.

In the book I discuss various techniques for helping yourself take some needed action even when your thoughts and feelings are resisting. You might want to read Chapter 7, which begins on page 70. It describes a specific exercise for putting exaggerated fears of disaster--which is what I guess is holding your friend back from acting--into a more realistic perspective. Even though she doesn't want to read the book, perhaps hearing some of those ideas from you would help.