S2 EP207 – Can We Influence Others to Want to Change?

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today I’m talking about how you might be able to influence your partner or others to change, and what you have control over and what you don’t have control over regarding getting others to change.

My client, Andrew, is new to Inner Bonding, and he is very enthusiastic about what he is learning. Naturally, he wants to share his experience with his wife, children, other family members, and friends. Yet he finds himself time and again coming up against their resistance. They don’t want to be converted to Inner Bonding or anything else. They don’t want new words and concepts imposed upon them. They don’t want anyone trying to change them.

Andrew is intent on getting his friends and loved ones into Inner Bonding because he feels lonely when they don’t understand his experience and don’t want to join him in it. It is always lonely when we opt for growth and the people important to us are not on the same path. Andrew wants his changes to bring him closer to the people he loves, not farther away, yet his family and friends seem threatened, not only by his attempting to convert them, but by his changes as well.

Andrew needs to use the Inner Bonding process to embrace and release his loneliness, rather than protect against it by trying to get others to change. If Andrew has a chance of influencing his loved ones to change, it is not going to be because of anything he says.

The way we can influence others to want to change is when they see changes in us that they like and value.

Often, when I give lectures and teach workshops, the feedback I get from others is that what prompted them to want to further pursue Inner Bonding is not anything I said or taught. Usually they say things like, “You seem to have a lot of peace and joy. I want that too.” “You seem to feel secure within yourself. That’s what I want.” “I want to be able to access wisdom the way you do.”

Andrew came to this realization and wrote to me, stating, (quote) “it may take many loving encounters and setting a good example before we should expect our friends and loved ones to understand, and want to understand, our new experience in healing, and how we are doing it. It can not only be threatening to others to see us change, but also threatening to them when they feel we are trying to change them or their thinking or their vocabulary.” (unquote)

He realized that he needed to share and reach out to others without (quote)”unnecessarily trying to convert them to Inner Bonding or trying to impose words and concepts on them when they are not ready or interested to hear them. I think as new ‘converts,’ whether with respect to religion or Inner Bonding, in our enthusiasm we try to impose our new thinking and new vocabulary on others.”(unquote) 

This does not mean that you can’t share your excitement and learning, but the key is – what is your intent in sharing?

If you are sharing with the agenda of getting the other person to want to do what you are doing or believe what you believe, then your sharing is controlling, and the other person will likely resist. It can be loving to yourself and others if you are sharing with no agenda other than to share yourself and your joy, but it is not loving to share with an agenda to get others to change.

We can influence others with our love, peace and joy that can result from practicing Inner Bonding, but that does not give us control. A major part of the Inner Bonding process is learning to accept our lack of control over others’ intent to learn or to control and avoid. While it is very lonely when the people we love are not open to learning, we have to accept our lack of control over other people’s choices. The best we can do is to continue doing our own inner work, so that we can become a beacon of light that influences others to want what we have.

How much energy do you spend trying to get what you want from your partner, or from others? Think about it for a moment – how much of your thinking time is spent on what to say to your partner or others to get them to be the way you want?

How much of your thinking time is spent on figuring out how to get them to open up, be more caring, see you, love you, pay attention to you, spend time with you, understand your point of view, have sex with you, and so on. Do you spend a lot of energy thinking about this because you believe that if you can just do it “right” – behave right or say the right thing – you can have control over getting your partner or others to change? This illusion of having control over getting another to change may be keeping you stuck in behavior that not only is ineffective in getting you what you want, but drains you of the energy you could be using to learn to take loving care of yourself.

It’s often hard to accept that we can’t “get” others to do what we want them to do, even if it would be good for them and for the relationship. In my work with people, I frequently hear:

“How can I get my partner to read your books?’

“How can I get my wife to be more sexual?”

“How can I get my husband away from the TV to spend time with me?”

“How can I get my partner to be on time?”

“How can I get my husband to talk with me about our problems?”

“How can I get my wife to spend less money and write the checks into the checkbook?”

“How can I get my partner to clean up after himself or herself?”

“How can I get my partner, or parent, or child, to stop being angry?”

“How can I get my partner, or parent, or child, to stop blaming me for everything?”

Many people want to know, “How can I get my partner, my mother, my father, my child, or my friend to change?” The truth is, you can’t.

What you can do is take your eyes off your partner or others and put them on yourself. You have total control over changing yourself, and no control over changing others. The question you need to be asking yourself is, “What do I need to do for my own well-being if my partner or others don’t change?”

• Ask yourself: “Do I need to stop reacting to my partner or others with compliance, resistance, withdrawal, blame, lectures, explanations, nagging or anger?”

These protective, controlling ways of responding to conflict may exacerbate the conflict and make you feel badly within. The wounded self likely believes you can get love and avoid pain with these protective behaviors, but in reality, it is often these very behaviors that are causing much of your pain. None of these behaviors is loving to yourself or to others, nor are you taking personal responsibility for your own feelings and wellbeing when you behave in these controlling ways.

• Ask yourself: “In what ways do I need to be more loving, caring, understanding and attentive to myself – to my own feelings, as well as with my partner or others?”

Do you project onto your partner or others the inner unhappiness that results from not taking loving care of yourself? Instead of trying to get your partner or others to be more loving, open, and attentive, you need to focus on being open, loving, kind, and attentive with yourself and with others.

• Ask yourself: “Do I need to take specific actions with my partner, such as changing the way we handle money, or the way we deal with getting places on time? How can I take care of myself in these kinds of conflicts so that I don’t feel like a victim?”

Anytime you blame another for your unhappiness, you are being a victim. Moving out of being a victim means taking loving action for yourself so you are no longer frustrated with the situation.

• Ask yourself: “Do I need to be willing to explore with my partner the underlying reasons for a lack of intimacy or sexuality? Am I willing to be open to learning with my partner, or am I stuck in just trying to control?”

Opening to learning with your partner can be magical regarding creating intimacy and resolving conflict. While you can’t make your partner be open to learning, if you open to learning yourself, you might discover the power you have to change your relationship.

When you start a consistent Inner Bonding practice and move out of seeing yourself as a victim of your partner’s or others’ behavior, and into taking loving action on your own behalf, you may be surprised at the changes that occur in your relationships. Most conflict is rooted in power struggles that result from each person trying to control with some form blame, anger, resistance, withdrawal, or compliance. When, through the practice of Inner Bonding, you stop your end of the power struggle and start to take care of yourself, as well as open to learning with your partner, the possibility opens for great change to occur.

Are you addicted to fixing others and trying to get them to change?

If you find yourself often focused on healing others or hoping you can get others to change, it is likely that you don’t think of this as an addiction. I define an addiction as anything we do to avoid taking responsibility for our own feelings. When you are focused on getting others to change, or hoping others will change, is this a way for you to avoid taking loving care of yourself? Are you trying to fix others and get them to change so that you don’t have to learn to take responsibility for your own feelings?

Judy finds herself caught in this addiction:

(quote)”What do you do when you are so focused on a partner’s growth? You can see they are in pain, but they are not willing to look at themselves. How do I stop having hope they will?”(unquote)

Judy needs to ask herself what she will have to deal with if her partner doesn’t change. What might she be avoiding feeling by being focused on her partner? What will she be faced with if her partner never changes?

These are the questions to ask herself. She needs to come to terms with what is true for her. She only has two choices:

• Can she accept that, since her partner is not interested in personal growth and is willing to stay in pain rather than face himself or herself, that her partner is not likely to change?
• If she cannot accept this, is she willing to leave?

These are the only two choices available to her. Getting her partner to change is not a choice that is available to her.

If she decides to accept her partner, then she needs to focus on taking loving care of her own feelings of sadness, loneliness, and heartbreak when she sees her partner in pain – without saying anything to try to get her partner to change. And she can continue to change herself, which might influence her partner to change, but she needs to give up that hope, otherwise changing herself is another form of control.

If she decides she cannot accept this, then she needs to leave and take loving care of her feelings of sadness, loneliness, and heartbreak over the end of the relationship.

As you can see, in both situations she needs to learn to take care of her own painful feelings. This is likely what she is avoiding by focusing on her partner’s growth.

I suggested to Judy that she practice shifting her compassion from her partner’s pain to her own pain. When she is focused on her partner’s pain but not on her pain in seeing her partner in pain and being unwilling to do anything about it, she is abandoning herself. She is rejecting her feelings by focusing on her hope for her partner to change. The pain caused by her own self-abandonment is likely the underlying issue of her unwillingness to let go of her hope. If she lets go of hope, then she needs to face her own self-abandonment that may be causing much more pain than her partner’s pain.

I know how very hard this is, as I used to do the same thing. It seemed so much easier for me to try to get my husband to change than to face the reality that his unwillingness to learn and grow was not acceptable to me. It seemed like there was no good choice. I either needed to accept something that was not acceptable to me, or I needed to leave, which I REALLY didn’t want to do. So I kept putting off knowing that I needed to leave by focusing on trying to get him to change.

I finally did leave, and I can’t tell you what a relief it was to no longer be a witness to the pain he was causing himself by his lack of loving himself. At the time it seemed to be the lesser of two bad choices, but it turned out to be a very loving choice for me.

Only Judy can decide what is the most loving choice for her.

My client, Sharon, was in the process of ending her 4-year marriage with her covertly abusive husband, who was emotionally incestuous with his adult daughter.

(quote)”There is no physical involvement, but the only person my husband feels safe with is his daughter. He has used her to ‘dump’ about our marriage and about his problems. So his daughter is his caretaker, getting the only kind of closeness she can, by being there for him but never getting what she really needs.” (unquote) 

As a result, his daughter is now a very angry adult who has many problems in relationships.

I asked Sharon to describe to me her experience of the emotional incest.

(quote) “Neither of them take responsibility for themselves or their behavior, so when I came along, I suddenly became the one who was at the core of EVERY problem in their lives. Everything became my fault.  It was my fault the daughter became angry, and it was my fault he withdraws.  

“If I had understood the depth of this ‘sickness’ and that the likelihood of him even wanting to work through any of it was nil, I would have said ‘next’ immediately. Any parent is going to be protective of their child, but to cling to a child to meet your emotional needs is just not something most people (that I know) realize even exists.  We all hear and read about incest with sexual involvement, but nothing about this. It’s like incest without the sex.”(unquote)

Throughout her marriage, Sharon hoped that, through therapy, her husband would see what was happening and change. It took her 4 years to realize that he was completely uninterested in changing.

Sharon had read an article I wrote about abuse, both covert and overt, and in the last paragraph I said that abusers rarely change, or something to that effect.  Sharon told me, (quote) “That’s the part that people need to understand – that abuse is like a tumor with tentacles that are very difficult to detach, and that abusers really don’t want to ‘deal with it’ and typically don’t, because their whole world and identity will crumble.”

Sharon wishes she had known that it was unrealistic to expect her husband to change. “I would love to help someone not endure the emotional pain I did for as long as I did,” she said.

Abuse has many faces – verbal, physical, sexual, and emotional. Abusers are often experts at appearing open to learning and changing, which is part of their covert abuse. It is vitally important for people at the other end of abuse to give up expecting an abuser to change. Even attending therapy, as Sharon’s husband did with her, is not an indication that they are willing to change. Often, attending therapy is just another form of manipulation to get you to stay in the abusive relationship – and another way to point the finger at you as being the cause of the problems.

If someone says they are going to change but no change actually occurs, then you need to accept that the appearance of openness is a form of crazymaking, a form of abuse. You need to accept that there may be nothing you can do to get them to change. Sometimes we can influence others to want to change by our own changes, but not always. You either need to accept the situation as it is or leave it. Expecting change and trying to bring about change will only cause you more pain.

As I’ve said, what you can control is changing yourself, and that’s the very best way of influencing others to change. And the practice of Inner Bonding is an amazing way of healing your wounded self and becoming a strong loving adult. The practice of Inner Bonding actually changes your brain.

Some years ago, I read a wonderful book called “Mindsight,” by Daniel Siegel, M.D. One of the reasons I love this book is because it validates, through extensive research, the power of practicing Inner Bonding.

Step One of Inner Bonding is a mindfulness practice that requires us to tune into ourselves – to our feelings. Here is what Dr. Siegel says on page 86:

(Quote) “As researchers have defined it, mindfulness requires paying attention to the present moment from a stance that is nonjudgmental and nonreactive. It teaches self-observation; practitioners are able to describe with words the internal seascape of the mind. At the heart of this process, I believe, is a form of internal ‘tuning in’ to oneself that enables people to become ‘their own best friend.’ And just as our attunement to our children promotes a healthy, secure attachment, tuning in to self also promotes a foundation for resilience and flexibility… internal and interpersonal forms of attunement each lead to the growth of the regulatory circuits of the brain. When we have attunement – either interpersonally or internally – we become more balanced and regulated.” (unquote)

This is exactly my experience with Inner Bonding: that staying tuned in to yourself, developing your loving adult and ‘becoming your own best friend,’ actually creates new circuits in the brain – in the prefrontal cortex – which didn’t fully develop if you didn’t receive the love you needed as a child. 

One of the heartening things that recent research shows is that the brain can always learn and create new neural pathways.

This is called neuroplasticity, and it is very good news. Just because we didn’t receive the love we needed as children to feel whole, safe, and secure, and to fully express our love to others, doesn’t mean we are doomed. In ‘Mindsight’, Dr. Siegel gives an example of a ninety-two-year-old man who was completely shut down and unable to express love to his wife of many years. Within less than a year of inner work, this man experienced love for her and others and was able to fully express it. It brought tears to my eyes to read scientific validation that it is never too late to heal.

In Inner Bonding terms, becoming your own best friend means learning how to mindfully connect with your feelings, and to want responsibility for learning from them and lovingly managing them.
 
Caring about your own feelings is what makes you feel safe, loved, and valued. As you become open to learning from your feelings about what you might be doing to cause your pain, and as you learn with your spiritual guidance about the truth regarding your false beliefs, and as you learn to take loving actions on your own behalf, you gradually learn to love yourself and become your own best friend.

Loving yourself and becoming your own best friend is so powerful, not only in terms of creating inner peace and joy and in healing addictions, but in creating loving relationships. The more you learn to love yourself, the better you will be treated by others as well. This is the best chance you have of influencing others to change.

To illustrate this, I want to share an email that was written to me by Leslie (not her real name), after a five-day Intensive. I received permission from her to share this powerful statement regarding how, by changing yourself, you can change your relationships with others.

“How can I possibly describe the impact the Intensive has had on me and the people around me? It’s beyond words. My life now doesn’t even resemble my life before the Intensive. I feel alive and free and new, like I’ve been given a “do-over” in this world. I am less afraid and less judgmental. And that gives me more space to be open and loving to myself and others. I find myself curious instead of defensive. I used to feel anxious most of the time, and now I find myself comfortable most of the time….

“The energy in our home is finally relaxed. We are a blended family of six, which has not been easy. Before the Intensive I would have told you plenty of stories pointing the blame on everybody else. Interestingly, as I’ve relaxed and become less controlling and less blaming, our family life feels fun and upbeat and comfortable.

“Perhaps the biggest miracle has been my relationship with my partner. At the Intensive, I thought that we would very likely need to lovingly end our relationship. Instead, quite the opposite has occurred. He has become wide open and more loving than I ever thought possible. We started talking [right after the Intensive] and haven’t stopped since. He loves the person I’ve become and is now reading ‘Inner Bonding’ and looking forward to experiencing his own Intensive at some point. He said he can’t wait to meet you so he can thank you. I have always loved his essence, and now he is open and sharing his lovely essence with me in abundance. I think I’m the luckiest person on the planet.

“My 16-year-old daughter may have summed it up best this evening when she told me, ‘Mom, you are living proof that we can’t change other people, but we can change ourselves. You sure have.’

“Margaret, my cup runneth over. From the deepest part of me, I thank you.”

I was deeply moved by this letter, since this is why I do the work I do.

You can take your eyes off others and do your own inner work to become the loving person – with yourself and others – you know you want to be in your heart and soul.

What changed so much for Leslie is that she got connected – with her feelings and her guidance. She was able to feel, for the first time, the love, warmth, peace, joy, comfort, and grace of her guidance. She was able to know and experience that she is never alone – that her guidance is always with her. She was able to experience that fully opening her heart – through letting go of control and opening to learning about loving herself – opens her to the bliss and joy of connection with her loved ones and with her source of love.

While she will not likely be able to always maintain the profound connection she had right after the Intensive, she now knows that she can experience this. She knows that when she doesn’t feel this way, there is a way back through the Six Steps of Inner Bonding. And she knows that when she can’t find her way back herself, she can reach out for help.

And she now knows that by changing herself instead of trying to control her partner, she has been able to influence, with her love for herself and her loved ones, her partner to change.

If you enjoyed this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you tell your friends about it, and if you give it a review wherever you heard it.

And I invite you join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership.

I invite you to join me for my 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my recent books and from our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

If you want to do individual work with me or with one of our many trained Inner Bonding facilitators, please go to innerbonding.com and look under Facilitators -> Find a Facilitator, or call my office, the number is on the website.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.