Coping With Change
There are few things in life that are certain, change is one of them. Change is inevitable, understanding how both you and other people deal with it is fundamental to living your best life.
Faced with the prospect of change, people experience a stream of emotions; some positive, but many negative. People question what they will have to lose in order for the change to occur. Negative emotions entwine themselves around negative thought patterns. People increasingly focus on the undesirable results or change, rather than what they could gain.
Left unchecked, resistance sets in, from simple foot dragging to full on rebellion. Effective leaders, guide, inspire and motivate people through the process of change. They join people as they negotiate their way through change.
The hardest changes to understand and adapt to are often those that are out of our control - a global pandemic, illness, recession, a major disaster. When faced with a change of this magnitude, the person going through it can find it particularly challenging to come to terms with. Often the way they respond to the change can be made considerably better or worse because of their reaction and attitude toward it.
How People Cope With Change
Faced with the prospect of change, people most often react in one of two ways:
Escape
Control
Escape coping is based on avoidance. Consider the ostrich, when an ostrich is threatened it buries its head in the sand. The ostrich believes, so the theory goes, that if it cannot see you, then you do not exist. When engaging in escape coping the person experiencing the change takes deliberate actions to avoid the difficulties of the change.
The other way people cope with change is Control Coping, in contrast to avoidance coping the person going through the change will do all in their power to be proactive and approach the change in a positive way. They refuse to be a “victim” of the change, they seek all available options to manage their feelings, to seek support and do whatever they can to be part of the change.
In reality, people seldom respond to change in only one way. Most of us will respond with a mixture of both escape and control coping. Generally speaking, it is coping that it is the better option. When we react through control coping, we take ownership and responsibility for how we react, recognising that we may not be able to control everything that happens to us, but we can control how we react to it.
No matter your method of coping, you will likely react to any significant change with a number of emotions. This emotional journey has been subject to a large body of work by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, where she considered how we respond to grief. The way in which we respond to change draws many parallels with the way in which we respond to grief. Kubler Ross presented four stages to the way in which we deal with grief:
Shock – Big changes can feel like a physical blow. You may feel numb, tired, even exhausted.
Anger and Fear – As the initial shock subsides, it is normal to feel angry or fearful about your future. You are in a period of inner turmoil.
Adjustment – You recognise that change is inevitable, and eventually you will need to commit to moving on from the past.
Acceptance – Finally in the acceptance stage you move on and adapt to your new circumstances.
People who can acknowledge their feelings, draw upon their support networks, exploring the facts, whilst remaining positive and giving themselves time to adapt are more likely to progress successfully through these stages.
When people can recognise that there will be an emotional journey as we go through any phase of changes in our life, we can consider how our state changes and what needs to happen for the change to occur.
Change State Indicator
The Change State Indicator was developed from the work of Professor Clare W Graves. Recognising that we go through a series of emotions in order to process any change we can consider the model based on Graves’s work and the differences that have to happen in order for change to occur. This cycle is true for individuals and organisations.
Change is a Process
Whether you’re moving home, starting a new career, coming to terms with illness, starting a new relationship, ending a relationship you are embarking upon a period of change. And wherever there is change you are going through a process.
The work developed by Graves provides a visual representation of how we progress through the process of change.
There are seldom occasions where we change instantaneously. When we change, we move from a state where everything is comfortable, where all is aligned in our life and where we can deal with any issues we face successfully into a state where what you are doing is no longer working for you. At this point you recognise that something is not right, you may not know what it is, you just know that something is wrong. There will be feelings of frustration, you may find that you have conflicts in your personal life, in your relationships, in your work etc.
The process of change has begun.
Point A:
Life is comfortable here, everything is aligned. Here you are in a time of stability and congruence when solutions match any problems that you face. You comfortably face any issues and deal with them successfully. Life is good.
Point B:
What once was comfortable becomes uncomfortable. What's been working no longer works for the individual or organisation, it may not be known what's wrong, just that something is!
At Point B you are entering a time of uncertainty and doubt. The problems you have previously faced comfortably now present a challenge to you. The problems you are facing are no longer easily resolved. Here you will experience frustration, conflicts appear in your life, either personally, in your relationships or in your work life. At point B there is an inclination to try and move back to Point A where life was comfortable. Here people think about what they can do at this point to improve what they are already doing:
Go back to how it worked in the past and do more of that
Clamp down on security, processes and rules
Implement what we 'didn't do enough of' to make things work again
They may also look for ways to keep the main function of what they have while adjusting how it works (also known as first order change):
Looking at the past believing it was better than now
Idealising how things were before
Knowing there were bad parts but at least there were resources there to deal with the issue.
Point C:
This stage is often the most frustrating part of transition to create change. Here a person will feel trapped, filled with negative emotions such as anger and fear. The attempts to make things work at point B have failed.
It is common for a person at Point C to enter into a state of anxiety, fear and considerable frustration.
The person at Point C recognises the problems that they are facing and the situation they are in, but there seems no way to do anything about it. The person lacks the resources to assist them in making the changes needed.
There may be many reasons and excuses about what happened to get them here but there will be few to no results at this stage of change.
At stage C of the cycle of change, a person will be exhibiting some or all of:
Feelings of Overwhelm - Lack of Control
A Lack of Purpose
Poor Relationships
Feelings of Isolation
Low Self-Esteem
Lack of Confidence
Inability to Express Oneself
Inability to Communicate Effectively
Holding onto Negative Emotions, e.g., Fear, Hurt, Negative Beliefs
Conflicting Self-talk
In order to effectively negotiate change there are key elements that can assist:
Developing coping strategies within behaviours and thinking in order to deal with the changing conditions
Overcome the obstacles that have been presented
During change and transition there will be uncertainty and conflict unearthed as part of the process
New ways of thinking MUST be established for effective change to take place
Negative emotions, internal conflicts, limiting beliefs and any limitations or blocks MUST be removed
Point D:
As the person moves toward Point D they go through a breakthrough as they experience new ways of thinking to address what had seemed insurmountable. Energy levels peak as they are excited about what they have learnt, there is a desire to share their success and new ways of thinking. The person detaches from the past and breaks through barriers. New strategies are developed which are now the new way of thinking.
Here, all negative emotions and limiting beliefs have been released and conflicts resolved. At this stage there will be bounds of energy which provoke imagination and commitment to the new, evolved way of doing things.
The complexities of thinking and the problems again come into alignment. Balance is restored.
Once again, the person will experience feelings of content, happiness and comfort in their life.
Results follow easily here.
Having gone through the stages of change they now move to point A1 which becomes their new norm.
Moving Forward
Change can be challenging, it can be uncomfortable, but when we recognise that it is just a process we are going through, we can better negotiate the changes we face in our lives.
The way in which we deal with change is the result of all of our experiences to date, each influenced by our thought patterns, our belief systems, our biases and assumptions that we make. Many of these will have been formed as far back as in our early childhood.
We create a series of strategies for everything we do in life, from buying a car, to choosing a partner. And just like these, we create a strategy for how we deal with change. The good news is that whilst we may have struggled with change in the past, it doesn’t mean always have to. The strategies which we have hard-wired into ourselves can be adapted; new strategies can be installed. And what was a challenge in the past need not be in the future.
Change is inevitable, how we deal with it is not.
I hope you have found this article interesting, if you would like to learn how you can make changes so that you can get the results you desire. Please get in contact for a free discovery call.