Fear of Change
A young woman moves to another city where she plans to attend law school. A 35-year old man learns that the firm he works for is downsizing. A middle-aged woman becomes a widow after being married for 27 years. What do all these people have in common? If you answered that all three people are confronting change, you would only be partially correct. The complete answer needs to include that they are also confronting “uncertainty,” the greatest common denominator of all forms of change. It must also include that all three people are facing a challenge, which is the essence of all change. However, that might be where the commonality ends. That is because how each person deals with uncertainty and meets a particular challenge will determine whether each will complete a transformation process wherein he or she successfully acknowledges, embraces, and incorporates change it into their respective lives.
Our First Reaction
Uncertainty is the immediate psychological response every one of us experiences when confronted by any type of change. Although an individual’s personality, perspective, and self-esteem all play a role in how that person deals with change, even the strongest and most resilient of us are vulnerable to the sense of uncertainty it incites in us. This is because every instance or type of change indicates that some element of life as we knew it is over. We know that things will never be the same, but we do not know how this change will affect our lives and influence our future. Our uncertainty starts to provoke feelings of confusion, angst and self-doubt, but uncertainty alone will not derail the transformation process. It is when we fail to examine and come to terms with our uncertainty that it can quickly manifest into fear, and that is when the wheels start to come off the bus.
What Are We Thinking
Once fear intertwines with change, it does not take long for a downward spiral to occur. We start to focus only on our fear and we fail to focus on the challenge that change is presenting us: namely, whether or not we will use it as an opportunity to alter our own lives. The fact is every situation of change provides us an opportunity to either add a new and positive element to our lives or eliminate an element that has been or will soon be working against us. However, when we fail to address and eradicate our fear of change we practically guarantee that we will fail to meet its challenge. Instead, we engage in self-defeating behaviors, such as avoidance strategies, and we become caught up in additional negative emotions, such as hurt and anger. Our expectations about the future become impracticable, unfounded or exaggerated. Our stress levels soar and cause us to develop real, and sometimes serious, physical ailments. We feel hopeless and helpless, and we act accordingly.
Despite its origin, form, or nature, change is unavoidable and, one way or another, it is going to affect our lives. However, when we turn change into a fear factor, we not only fail its challenge, we torpedo the entire transformation process. We refuse to acknowledge the change, and we evade it instead of embracing it. We begin to dwell so much on the past that we mentally paralyze ourselves. By this time, there is no way we can incorporate the change into our lives because we are incapable of implementing the purposeful steps needed to do so. As a result, we miss any and every opportunity to use the change to our benefit. Instead, we fall victim to change and the most we can do now is hope for the best. Good luck with that.
Change comes in many forms. It can be anticipated or unexpected, initiated by an outside source, or we can initiate change ourselves. The ironic thing about change is that it is a constant part of life, but we still manage to struggle with it. At best, every one of us has an extremely limited, if any, ability to control change. What we all do have, however, is the complete ability to control our emotions and our behaviors when confronted by change. Being able to express openly your feelings and concerns about change, and finding a means of support for working through the transition process, is the best way to ensure that you will meet the challenge, seize the opportunity, and use change as a way to enhance your life.
Tags: behavior, challenge, emotions, fear, Managing Your Life, self-defeating behaviors, uncertainty