Today I begin a short series on change and transformation. One of the things I love about being a psychotherapist and educator is that I get a front row seat to witness my clients and students changing and growing.  Two of the most common questions my clients ask early on in therapy are: “how does this process work?”;  and “how long will it take?”  Often times, these questions betray an overwhelming fear that the process won’t work; that there is no hope for them to change. 

I think of a client I’ll call Jessica who was plagued by a deep sense of loss that impacted all her relationships, including her relationship with God.  Her gut level belief was that everyone, including God, would eventually leave her.  The overwhelming anxiety from this expectation contributed to a painful relational pattern in which Jessica relied heavily on others to manage her emotions and comfort her, contributing to them pulling away and leaving her, yet again.  Sadly, she helped create the very experience she most feared: abandonment.  Despite constant effort, Jessica couldn’t seem to change this pattern, and it continued for the first few years of therapy.  I can remember many sessions well into the therapy in which Jessica would tearfully ask me, “Do you think this will ever change for me?”  She didn’t know how to have a different kind of relationship.  And she was scared to give up the only thing she knew about how relationships worked for her.      

Just as it was for Jessica, change can be scary and confusing for all of us.  But understanding some key principles of change can help you stick with the process and prepare the way for change.  In his book, “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell applies the concept of tipping points to help us make sense of how ideas, trends, and products spread through our society like an epidemic. But the concept of tipping points can also be applied to spiritual transformation.  Spiritual tipping points reflect deep changes at the core of your soul and sense of self. 

There are two aspects to how deep change works: 1) little changes combine to produce big changes because they lay down new pathways; and 2) the visible effects of deep change (when your sense of self and ways of relating to others shift in a fundamental way) seem spontaneous, but they are the result of a certain structure and a lot of work going on behind the scenes.  That structure is emotional security that stems from experiencing love and connection with God and other important people in your life.  These relationships prepare the way for “spiritual tipping points” in which deep change occurs.  So even when you feel like nothing is changing despite a lot of effort, remember that there is a lot of processing going on behind the scenes paving the way for spiritual tipping points.

Let me return to Jessica’s story.  In the midst of Jessica’s despairing over whether she would ever change, somewhere deep down I had faith that our relational connection was growing deeper roots, and that this was preparing the way for change.  I just didn’t know how, and I couldn’t predict when we would see tangible change.  And then at one point in the therapy, seemingly out of the blue, Jessica experienced a tipping point.  In a way, nothing had changed in the way we working together. There was no dramatic event that happened, and we talked about the same issues, but all of a sudden, over a period of several months, I noticed that she was different. She still struggled, but Jessica had changed.  And I don’t mean change in a superficial way—this was deep change.  She felt differently about herself—more secure and confident. Her gut level expectations of others had changed. The walls came down, and she began to experience deep and meaningful connections with people and with God.       

Now, just because we have a concept to describe some small part of how this kind of change works doesn’t mean we can manufacture it or predict it. However, there are several kinds of experiences that can facilitate spiritual tipping points. These agents of change are all interrelated, like different facets of a diamond, and they all have to do with connection. Certain types of relational connections change the neural connections in our brains, which is the way our brains record new, gut level relational experiences with God and others.  These brain changes correspond to changes in the soul. Transformation, then, always happens in the context of relationships.

More to Come 

There are several different types of experiences that seem to be associated with tipping points, and in the next few blog posts, I will discuss two: mindfulness in the context of contemplative prayer, and moments of meeting.  

Question: What experiences have facilitated spiritual tipping points for you?