Change, it seems to happen everywhere. Stoplights change from green to yellow to red. Seasons change from summer to fall, then winter. Weather we like it or not things change right? Well for everything but the weather things do change but for a reason. We control them. The light turns green because a sensor in the light tells it there is a car parked so it triggers a timer. You can change the flavor of your meal by adding garlic. This change happened because you made it happen.
Do people change? Yes I’m not going to bark up that tree. I am not a doctor and I do not claim to be. I am just a guy that likes to do research and come up with a compelling story. The line people change really gets to me. If anyone has ever been in love and lost that relationship, friends, family, maybe even the significant other as way to somehow make you feel better will say, “well people change.” To me this doesn’t make sense. If you changed then change back. What makes you want to be this way we were happier before. So if you changed then change back and it will be alright.
In my research I came across some really interesting studies being preformed. Now none of the studies that I came across had anything to do about love or any relationship for that matter. Weather it be a marriage or a friendship or just your average run of the mill relationship. No all of the studies I came across were on the behavior of the human being. I know these seem really boring right? Well not really and I will tell you why. According to Gillihan (2017) “Thus what looks like an increase in emotional stability due to treatment could actually bean effect of treatment on depression, which subsequently restores the person’s pre-depression emotional stability. This explanation cannot be ruled out based on existing data.”(Para 12)
Okay so what does that mean? It means that their study that showed any “positive” change whatsoever on that person was basically rendered useless. So the person changed went to the psychologist and went back to normal. There was no actual change but more of a reset. Okay so, so what? Well after reading around fifty articles today I noticed a big common denominator. People went to these psychologists.
Yeah Cameron, that’s pretty obvious, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a test. That is my point exactly. The stoplight changes because we tell it too. Our behavior changes because we tell it too. Change as a person does not happen without a reason. Something bad happens to you, you get depressed. Your depression comes from you telling yourself that you are sad. You are hurt and there is nothing wrong with that. You don’t like being unhappy so you tell yourself I am going to change. The change happened because you wanted it to happen. What’s actually really surprising is that most psychologists claim that change happens relatively quickly. Right around four weeks. So within a month you can be depressed on the first and back to normal by the thirtieth.
Now if you look at all the studies and read the articles about things like depression, which is rapidly increasing in our country people suffer with this for years. For years! Now I am not the smartest guy in the world but if I was feeling depressed and down like many of all have felt at least once in our life. If I would’ve known that there was a way I could not only be perfectly fine in just four weeks, but actually a better person. I would be the first person in line! Who wants to be depressed? I have battled with this. I have had a crappy year. Depression seems like it’s an eye blink away. There are thousands of pills out there to fix this. But they are not really fixing anything. People change for a reason. That reason is because they wanted to change. If you change one way and you don’t like it you can change back. If that girlfriend says “people change” can change back. She just doesn’t want too. She or he has made a conscious decision to change. Our country is leading in divorce. People are accepting this as something that is okay and normal. Well everyone is eating ice cream so it must be okay to eat ice cream right? This to me and in my own opinion is absurd. People get divorced because they gave up. People tell themselves I don’t want to be this person anymore. We classify that as change, when the only change that has happened is what you told yourself to do. People do not naturally change. Everything happens for a reason. If your kid is acting up its because he is choosing to act up. If you rob a bank tomorrow is because you told yourself to rob that bank. You don’t get to go on auto-pilot and sit back and see what “nature brings.” Thousands of articles like mine are on the web. Hundreds and hundreds of studies have been done on a daily basis. How do we solve this problem? How do we fix it? My question to you is what is there to fix? Just stop, stop you don’t have to make that decision. If you cheat on someone it’s because you chose to cheat on that person. You didn’t have to. There is nothing natural about that. You say that person has just changed. Well ask him to change back. If he says no then that’s the decision. The decision he already made to change. Get it?
Gillihan,S.( 2017 January 06) Do People Really Change? Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/think-act-be/201701/do-people-really-change
