NAvigating Change

Navigating Change

by Peggy Haymes, M.Div, MA

One of the contributions that family therapist Virginia Satir made was in helping us understand the process of change. Instead of viewing our lives as a progression of stages that we march through in unbroken progression from birth and childhood to death and old age, she saw our lives as cycles of change, with each cycle carrying the potential for greater growth and possibility.

The first stage is what Satir called the Status Quo. It’s where we are when the change begins to take place. It’s a place that is familiar, and in that familiarity, safe. Whether it is a good place or a difficult one, that sense of familiarity and safety provides a powerful motivation for remaining there. For an individual, it may mean having settled into a routine for the daily demands of life or having settled into a set of beliefs about the way that life works. For a family system, the status quo many mean having defined roles for the members and for the ways in which they interact with each other.

However powerful the motivation for remaining in the status quo, the introduction of a foreign element makes it impossible to keep things as they once were. The foreign element is stage two in Satir’s process. It may be an external element, such as the loss of a job or a relationship. Or it may be an internal event; for example, someone beginning to question their long-held beliefs about the way that the world works or the way their own lives should be ordered. Sometimes it is reaching the point where it is too painful to remain in the status quo.

The foreign element doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative event. The birth of a child can be a joyous occasion but it nonetheless disrupts the status quo of the family. Or a person may become aware of new possibilities for his or her life and the awareness of that possibility is what disrupts the status quo. Whether the event is internal or external, positive or negative, or some mix of all of the above, it means that the way things have been is not the way things are now.

At this point, the person or family is in a no-man’s land between what once was (a place that is familiar but now inaccessible) and what will be (a place that is as of yet unknown). It’s this stage that Satir called chaos, and it may be the stage that we most associate with change. It’s that feeling of not quite knowing where to go next or what to do now. It’s no longer being sure of what the rules are or how the routine flows, if indeed, there is any routine at all.

This sense of "not-knowing" that chaos brings can be enormously threatening and scary. It feels like being out on the road, lost, and not quite sure if you’re headed in the right direction. But Satir understood chaos to be a natural and important part of the change process. It is the place in which healing begins to happen as people begin to discard old ways that no longer work for them. Relationships can be renegotiated and reconstructed in ways that better serve all persons involved. New possibilities can emerge in the spaces created by the release of old thought patterns and beliefs, the release of old ways of relating and of viewing the world and one’s place in it.

If we are able to resist the temptation to flee from chaos and instead move through it, we move into a place of integration. In this fourth stage, we begin integrating new ways of thinking, behaving and relating that now better serve our lives. For example, if the foreign element was the loss of a relationship or a job, integration means claiming a new sense of identity apart from that person or work.

Following the integration comes a time of practice. We like to think that we can learn new things, put them into place, and that would be that. But the reality is that like learning a new skill, we have to practice. We may have to remind ourselves of new truths we have learned about ourselves, perhaps even to the point of leaving a note on the bathroom mirror. At first it may seem awkward to have to consciously replace old self images with new ones. New ways of relating may seem a little clumsy. But with time, the new becomes as automatic as the old once was. When this happens, we have reached a new status quo. In this new place, we may function more fully and freely, living out of a greater sense of ourselves.

One of the benefits of understanding these stages of change is that it provides us hope as we move through them. We can lessen our anxiety while in the midst of the chaos stage simply by recognizing that this is where we are. And knowing that, we realize that feeling so unsettled is just a part of the process. When we feel the pull of the old status quo, we can look forward with anticipation to the new status quo that is yet to emerge.

We cannot avoid change in our lives. But if we understand its process and enter into the journey, we can emerge from each cycle with lives that are richer, deeper and more fully alive.

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