I’ve always been an admirer of Sigmund Freud. In my years of study in becoming a psychologist, people would evoke his name from time to time, but usually Freud was treated like the crazy uncle who lives in the basement. Yes, we’ll acknowledge that he lives somewhere within the house, but we won’t pay much attention to him or mention him to the outside world.
Sure, Dr. Freud wrote about penis envy, Oedipus complexes, and anal stages. Yes, his work is highly theoretical and no, many of his assertions do not sit well in today’s politically correct society. But read his stuff sometime. Whether or not you agree with his theories, my guess it that you will come to appreciate him as one of the keenest observers of humankind and most original thinkers of the 20th century.
So why do I invoke Freud this month?
Last week I was talking to a gentleman about his fear of not being able to create enough money in his life. He told me how afraid he was of never having enough. Yet, as I listened to him, my gut told me the real truth differed from the words he spoke.
He wasn’t afraid of not having money nearly so much as he was afraid of having money. As our discussion progressed, we discovered that it was his fear of attaining his desire that was keeping him in the status quo.
Go figure, huh? Yet Freud knew all about this phenomenon from his pioneering work in psychoanalysis — he called it “resistance.” And though resistance plays a powerful mitigating role in our spiritual growth and personal development, it fails to garner much attention. However, when we understand resistance and acknowledge its presence, we move more quickly to our desired states.
There’s the old saying, “you are your own worst enemy.” This describes the fact that for no logical reason we often work to sabotage our best efforts and thwart the attainment of our desires.
Why we would do that? Why would we (consciously or unconsciously) resist our desires?
Well, one answer is that our attaining our desires requires us to change. Let’s suppose we want love. Or prosperity. Or freedom. Or fun. Or peace. Hell, hopefully, we want all of the above.
No matter how appealing the objects of our desire sound – (who doesn’t want more peace, right?) — attaining those desires requires us to become different people.
For instance, if we were prosperous, what would happen to all that energy we’ve invested into struggle year after year? If we had all the love that we desired, what would become of that person that had come to define themselves by their loneliness? If we were truly free, what in the world would we do with all that freedom? You get the idea…
In dealing with people in the course of psychoanalysis to treat neuroses (that which did not make people feel good), Freud described resistance this way —
The patient wants to be cured — but he also wants not to be…. They [the patients] complain of their illness but exploit it with all their strength; and if someone tries to take it away from them they defend it like the proverbial lioness with her young.”
(The Question of Lay Analysis , 1926, Vol. XX, pp. 221-22)
I believe the same holds true for those of us walking the path of personal evolution. There have been many times in my own life where I’ve found myself feeling quite anxious after finally getting what I wanted. For instance, several times in the past after a relatively large sums of money came to me, an “accident” or an “unforeseen event” would occur. In turn, this event would end up costing me a significant amount of money.
An emergency vet bill. An accident in my truck (no, I don’t carry collision insurance). An unexpected request for money from someone in my past.
Did those events just happen? Or did I create them? You know me well enough to know I put my stock in the latter explanation.
Why?
There’s was still a part of me that was not used to money flowing to me. If you would have asked me whether attracting money effortlessly is something that I desired, I certainly would have answered, “Yes. Of course!” But underneath it all, there was the voice telling me, “That was too easy. You really don’t deserve it.”
In the process of making a major change, quite often we create events and situations that draw us back toward our “Old Selves.” For in the process of Change, there is not only the birth of the New Self, but the death of the Old Self as well.
And quite naturally, we tend to resist death. We resist change. We may not have liked the way things were in our life, but at least we knew how it worked. At least it was familiar. At least it existed within the realm of the known.
I have no magic elixir for making the process of resistance disappear from the process of change. Rather, I think it’s a natural part of any evolution and is to be expected. I write this in hopes of raising the awareness of the existence of resistance. Like it’s first proponent, Sigmund Freud, it’s not talked about too much these days.
Again, I’ll borrow Freud’s words —
How do we remove the resistance? … by discovering it and showing it to the patient…. If I say to you: “Look up at the sky! There’s a balloon there!” you will discover it much more easily than if I simply tell you to look up and see if you can see anything. In the same way, a student who is looking through a microscope for the first time is instructed by his teacher as to what he will see; otherwise he does not see it at all, though it is there and visible.
(Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis , 1917, Vol. XVI, pp. 437).
Take the time to reflect upon your deepest desires. Tell yourself the truth about how you are resisting and not allowing these desires to come into your life. Begin to know that enemy that breathes within you. Do not fight him. Respect him. And then move forward anyway.