When your internal resistance is right
Sometimes the part of us blocking the way actually knows the score
Most of the time, when we’re trying to overcome internal resistance—that horrible thing where you are determined to take some action but somehow you just can’t —we’re being hampered by old learning that needs to be set aside.
Sometimes, however, the opposite is true. The part of our brain that won’t let us move forward has the right idea. It knows more about what will actually serve us than the part of us trying to move forward.
It’s easy to miss that second possibility, because we get so used to feeling like our resistance is our worst, most intimate enemy. It’s the thing in us that we can’t trust, that lets us down, that keeps us from our dreams.
But when resistance is right, in my experience, it’s usually right about something pretty damn important. So as rare as these instances may be, we definitely don’t want to miss them and the things they have to tell us.
To see what I mean, let’s look at two examples.
When internal resistance is wrong
We’ll start with the more common occurrence, where internal resistance is thwarting us to no good purpose. Let’s say I had an experience at a certain point that taught me attracting too much positive attention leads to terrible outcomes for me. Maybe when I succeeded too much, my mother reacted badly or bullies targeted me at school or an insecure boss drove me out of my job.
Whatever happened, the connection between positive attention and bad results wasn’t only stored as an episodic memory (the regular type where we remember what happened). It also got stored in implicit memory, a type of memory that holds key rules about how the world works. This type of memory is extremely powerful and lasting, and it only gets updated under certain conditions. In this case, the rule that got stored might be something like, If you attract too much attention, you will be made to pay in ways that you may not be able to survive.
If this rule gets activated—let’s say I’m up for a promotion that would make me much more visible in my company—my body will be flooded with fear, dread and hopelessness whenever I try to move toward the promotion. My brain’s goal is to drive me away from this danger, via the electric prod of these terrible emotions. And this electric prod will get activated even if I don’t think consciously about any of that stuff from my past. The promotion may be something I’ve wanted for years, but these feelings will make trying to go after it feel like dragging myself through mud toward my own doom. And I’ll likely have no idea why any of this is happening.
In this case, my internal resistance comes from a fundamental if understandable error. The rule stored in implicit memory means that my brain treats the possibility of increased visibility as dangerous to my emotional survival, rather than as normal work experience carrying some benefits and some costs, none of them probably life-altering. Because the implicit memory hasn’t been updated by any subsequent experience, any potential for increased attention feels like it carries the exact same threat level as whatever awful experience created the rule in the first place. My brain can’t distinguish between levels of risk, because anything that touches on the rule feels too risky, whatever its actual consequences in the present.
The lesson my brain stored in the past was reasonable, but now that lesson is both out of date and being applied wily-nily. The rule is doing the opposite of what it was meant to do. It’s hurting rather than helping me.
That’s where memory reconsolidation comes in. This is the brain mechanism that updates implicit memories. Although memory reconsolidation is an inbuilt process that is designed to occur on its own, it often fails to happen with the sort of rules that drive our internal resistance, for a variety of reasons.1 Happily, however, we can trigger this process on purpose. That means we can remove the oversized sense of threat entirely and permanently, so we no longer have to deal with it. In the scenario we’ve been looking at, this means my brain would be able to parse the difference between a few people at work being envious of me in the present and an overriding conviction that I am not safe in the world if too many people notice my presence. I would no longer feel I have to fight my own brain for every inch of progress I manage to make.
When internal resistance is right
Even when internal resistance is working against us, that’s never the intention. Implicit memories are only created in order to protect us. They’re our brains’ best attempt to keep us alive and safe, based on whatever seems relevant from our experience over time. The problem is usually that the rules have outlived their relevance to our lives.
In other instances, though, there is a wisdom to our resistance once we begin to look more closely. This is the case with a friend that I’ll call Melissa. Melissa recently left a high-ranking executive job in the tech industry with a serious case of burnout and a strong desire to do something different in the working years left before she retires. From the moment she chose to do a BS in computer science back in the 1980s to the day she left her last job, Melissa’s relationship to her profession has been that of an intentional, focused, relentless achiever. She loves the problem solving and team leadership, but she never mistook her high level of technical competence for a love of the industry itself. Now she has the chance and the desire to do something else.
This all sounds great, except it turns out that it’s not easy to let go of her executive self. This is the part of her that feels strong and trustworthy. It is used to and extremely good at control. To go after the other kinds of things she wants now means she can’t have the same degree of control, and that feels frightening and even foolhardy.
So her brain keeps trying to run back to safety. Time after time, it proposes plans that would have been great for the person she used to be. Safe ideas that would make her future look a lot like the past. Ways to guarantee that she has the same level of resources—and winds up in the same empty and dissatisfied place a few years down the road.
This is where the internal resistance comes in. Whenever she starts trying to activate one of these plans, she just can’t follow through. In fact, even as she’s trying to set them up, she can already feel that she isn’t going to do it.
These are the exact same kind of feelings and convictions we have when internal resistance is screwing our lives up in a major way. But here the result is the opposite. Melissa’s resistance is like a dog that growls and blocks its owner’s path, because there’s a danger ahead that the owner hasn’t seen yet. Her resistance won’t let her reboot Old Melissa, with her disproven ideas about how to be happy and fulfilled and safe in this phase of her life.
Because of that resistance, Melissa has wound up staying with a growth process that has been a lot more uncomfortable and extended than she wants. But she also knows that the part that won’t let her go back to the Old Melissa is right. It may not know what her ultimate path is going to look like, but it knows for damn sure what it’s not. And that’s the part she actually wants in charge, that has her true best interests at heart.
So how do you know which type of resistance you are dealing with?
Often it takes an outside guide. My friend is a banging coach in her own right and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and it’s taken the two of us working together in peer coaching to figure out what’s happening in her brain.
But you can get started by doing the following:
Imagine your internal resistance triumphing. You give in and it gets its way. You will likely feel both positive and negative things about this idea. You can get something from looking at both lists, but for this exercise focus on the negative ones.
If the negative elements would arise from you experiencing less movement toward the life you want to have and the person you want to be, then the resistance is likely coming from an outdated rule that needs to be updated. This was the case in the first scenario, where the resistance to being seen was keeping me from doing bigger things in the world. Deciding just to put it in charge would shrink my life in ways I don’t want. Changing the rule is better choice.
But if the negative consequences would arise from growing more into the person you most want to be, then the resistance may know something the rest of you doesn’t. For Melissa, for example, listening to the resistance means that she has to practice patience and sit with hard feelings, to keep saying no to a path that looks safe but she knows is a dead-end. It means giving herself the time and space to become a bigger and freer version of herself.
In my experience there is also a sense of alignment and relief in listening to the resistance when it has your highest good at heart. It’s not usually telling you to do something easy, but it will be telling you to do something that deep down feels right.
Let me know how it goes.
I really need to write a post about why this failure happens. It’s on my list. Probably in the next month or so.