How We Change: The Truth About Transformation

I’m in the business of change, professionally and personally. My entire career has been about supporting people through change in the toughest of circumstances. And over the last decade or so, I’ve worked just as consciously on my own process of change. Here’s what I’ve learned: People don’t change through willpower alone.

They change through relationship, regulation, and a deep knowing of the self.

I’m a practitioner who works at the messy intersection of trauma, transformation, and truth. My work doesn’t deal in quick fixes or surface-level tweaks. It’s rooted in the long-game of change, the kind that requires you to unlearn, feel what you’ve been avoiding, and slowly start to rewire your nervous system.

At the heart of it is this; so much of what drives us is unconscious and until we become aware of those patterns, they shape us more than we shape them.

Why We Say We Want to Change — But Don’t

People often say they want to change. They might even believe it. But change isn’t about intention, it’s about readiness. And often, we’re not ready in the way we think we are. Here’s why:

Protective behaviours – the parts we try to cut out once kept us safe. Letting go of them can feel like letting go of survival itself.
Real change involves loss of identity, beliefs, roles, even relationships. We grieve those, even when they no longer serve us.
Insight isn’t change. Insight without integration is like planting a seed and never watering it.
Unconscious loyalties to our families, our younger selves, our past roles can hold us back. Staying stuck can feel like staying connected.

The truth is that the barriers to change are rarely conscious. They are emotional, embodied, and often invisible.

What Real Change Actually Looks Like

In 25 years of this work, I’ve seen this time and again:

Change is rarely linear. It often begins in crisis, confusion, or burnout. You feel lost before you feel found.
The unconscious surfaces subtly in how someone tells their story differently, how they notice a familiar loop instead of reacting to it.
It’s slow and often mistaken for failure. But that moment you pause instead of react, that’s the shift.

Real change happens in micro-moments:

When you pause instead of push.
When you’re curious instead of critical.
When you allow an answer to emerge instead of forcing one.

The inner shift comes before the outer one.

The Cycle of Change — and the Loss It Brings

Prochaska and DiClemente’s (1983) Cycle of Change offers a useful map:

Pre-contemplation – No intention to change; unaware or minimising.
Contemplation – Awareness dawns, but ambivalence dominates.
Preparation – Readiness emerges; small plans take shape.
Action – Concrete change begins.
Maintenance – Holding steady.
Relapse – Old patterns return (not failure, but feedback).

Most of us circle through these phases again and again. And with each pass, we shed something, certainty, identity, the comfort of what’s known. To change is to lose even when what we’re losing was painful. Real change is a process of mourning. And relapse? It’s not the end. It’s just part of the process. You are never the same person twice.

Change Is Always Relational. No one changes in isolation

We are wired for connection. Our nervous systems regulate best in safe, attuned relationships. This is what makes relational work; coaching, therapy, or deep community so powerful.

In safe relationships:

Long-buried parts of us begin to surface.
Being heard, really heard helps us hear ourselves.
A relational mirror reflects what we can’t see alone.
Co-regulation softens our defences, making space for truths we were too frightened to feel before.

We change when we feel safe enough to change.

Barriers to Deep Change

Naming the obstacles isn’t about blame. It’s about compassion. Here’s what often gets in the way:

Shame that says “You should be further along by now.”
Urgency that rushes us past the real work.
Trauma that keeps our system locked in survival.
External systems (organisations, some therapy/coaching cultures) that reward performance, not truth.
Internalised narratives like “I always ruin things” or “I’m too much.”

Naming the pattern is the beginning of changing it. Because what we can see, we can shift.

Hope And A Truth To Hold Onto

This work is slow. It’s layered. It’s hard. But I believe in it deeply. Because I’ve watched people, terrified and vulnerable, take one step. And then another. Until one day, they are living lives that fit them with more truth, more kindness, more ease.

If you’re on the edge of change, scared, stuck, or exhausted, that doesn’t mean you’re failing. It might mean you’re just getting started.

Often, the moment before the shift is the moment we most want to run.

How We Change: The Truth About Transformation