When Every Solution Has an Excuse

A lesson that took me almost ten years to learn

The hardest thing to come to terms with in any space of service is that people cannot be saved. Even if you wanted to play the saviour, even if you came with all the solutions, all the tools, all the remedies and all the answers, people cannot be saved unless they have decided that they are ready to move forward. You cannot rescue someone who has not yet decided to leave the place they are in. In the wise words of Carl Jung, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” The obstacle people come up against is rarely a lack of information or resources, more often, it is simply an unwillingness to undergo the transformation that is required of them.

One of the driving reasons I stepped away from working one-to-one with clients, first in the health coaching space and then in the broader healing space, was because I realised I was seeing the same clients over and over again for the very same problems. Every now and then, however, someone would walk through the door who was genuinely ready. They wanted to heal, they were willing to take responsibility, they implemented what we discussed, and I rarely saw them again. Months or years later I would hear how well they were doing. Those people existed, but they were few and far between.

The majority, however, were people who had spent years on the merry-go-round of healing. Nothing works. I’ve tried everything. They were also, more often than not, the clients who would speak poorly of previous practitioners, different healing modalities and every solution that had crossed their path. Initially I felt terribly sorry for them, and believed they were incredibly unlucky. Eventually I realised they were geared to see the negative because, consciously or unconsciously, they wanted to see it. It not only perpetuated their cycle, but served it. Alfred Adler (big fan) wrote that human beings are purposive creatures - even our seemingly self-defeating behaviours often exist because they fulfil some hidden purpose. Whether that purpose is avoiding responsibility, preserving identity, attracting sympathy or protecting oneself from future disappointment, the behaviour remains because, in some way, it is working for or benefiting the person.