People don't change? I tested it on myself on reactions that switch on without us, and where change hits its limit

Reaction before thought

People usually say "people don't change" calmly, like a weather forecast. I would put the question differently: what if a person can outgrow their unconscious animal nature? I've tested this on myself and seen it in others.

Let me start with what really doesn't change in us. A doctor taps a little hammer just below the knee, and the leg jerks. The signal from the knee reaches the spinal cord and goes straight back to the thigh muscle; the brain doesn't have to take part. A reflex like this is built into the body, and there's no reason to rewrite it: it doesn't bother anyone.

But there are other reactions that fire just as fast and just as unbidden. Someone disagrees with me, and I defend myself. Someone pushes, and I attack back. Someone "thinks wrong", and I rush to change their mind. From the inside it feels just like the jerking leg: it happens by itself.

Except that these reactions I learned. Over a lifetime my psyche remembered that disagreement is dangerous, and now it switches on the defense before I have time to work out whether there's any real danger. If a reaction is learned, you can notice it and learn another one.

The better I understood how I work, the more often I saw my body defending itself on its own: against a simple "you're wrong", against an opinion that differs from mine. There was no threat. There was a program that took someone else's point of view for an attack.

Why it seems that people don't change

I talk with a lot of people, and few of them say "people don't change" out loud. More often you see it in what a person never stops to think about: that you can change yourself at all.

I think a person is fused with their perception of themselves and the world. Their reactions aren't reactions to them, they are who they are: "I'm hot-tempered", "that's just how I am". If you are your reaction, changing it is like changing your height. The picture "people don't change" looks not like an opinion but like a fact, and a person lives inside it without changing. The picture confirms itself.

This isn't stupidity or laziness. It's how perception works: from inside your habit you can't see it, just as you stop seeing glasses you've worn for a long time.

Researchers have tested this. In 2017 the psychologist Brent Roberts and his colleagues gathered 207 studies in which personality traits were measured before and after therapy or training. On average, over about six months, traits shifted noticeably, emotional stability grew the most, and the shift held after the sessions ended Source 1. A caveat: people rated themselves, and some of the change may have been a return to themselves after a difficult period. But these data don't support "the way you're born is the way you'll stay".

The brain itself changes too. In 2004 German neuroscientists taught adults to juggle three balls and scanned their brains. Within a few months the learners' gray matter grew in areas that track movement, and after a break the gain partly faded Source 2. The brain adapts to what we do again and again. This is what's called neuroplasticity.

Where you can stop defending yourself

It's hard to notice your reaction on your own: it fires quickly, and then the brain explains it after the fact — I wasn't defending myself, I was simply right. Two things helped me, both to do with the people around me.

The first: an agreement not to attack. At some point I found myself among people with whom we explicitly agreed that we were not a danger to each other. In conversation you didn't have to be on guard: no one was looking for a way to hurt you, and disagreement was simply a different opinion. When there's no threat by agreement, you can consciously lower your defenses and watch how they still try to switch on.

The second: feedback. There were people nearby who could calmly say something like "you're defending yourself right now". Without reproach, the way you'd mention an undone button. From the inside a reaction is hard to see; from the outside it's obvious at once. When it's pointed out to you again and again, you start noticing it yourself, and then you manage to catch it before it unfolds.

In an environment like this, change happens fast. I saw people around me change deep beliefs and reactions, and how that changed their attitude to what was happening and to others.

The story of a rescuer

One example has stayed with me especially well.

I knew a man who lived in the role of a rescuer. As soon as he saw that someone, in his opinion, was thinking wrong, the same thing switched on: change their mind. It didn't matter whether anyone had asked him to. He didn't notice it himself. He thought he was simply helping.

We worked through it together and showed him this reaction from the outside. After that he had a choice. He could rescue or not rescue, depending on the situation. Before, there had been no such choice: the reaction decided for him.

I think this is the most accurate description of change. The man didn't become someone else. He can still try to change people's minds, and sometimes that's appropriate. It's just that now he decides, not the program.

What I use

Here's what helps me. This is my experience, not a prescription and not treatment. If you're dealing with anxiety, depression or another condition that's hard to live with, that's a question for a professional.

Meditation and observing the mind. I sit and simply watch what thoughts and reactions arise, without interfering. This trains that very pause in which a reaction can be seen.

Re-living personal history. I go back to episodes from the past in which a reaction seems to have formed, and live them through again with adult eyes. Sometimes a defense that made sense back then hasn't been needed for a long time.

Integrating parts. Inside, several "I"s often argue: one wants to rest, another demands work. I don't suppress either of them; I try to understand what each one wants and find a solution for both.

Working with projection. Projection is when you see in another person what you don't accept in yourself. If someone's behavior irritates me, I ask myself not "what's wrong with them" but "why does this get to me". Usually it turns out that at some point I suppressed the same trait in myself, having decided that being like that was unsafe. Say I'm irritated by someone who rejoices loudly in public: it's worth checking whether I once forbade myself that kind of joy. As I gradually allow myself to be like that too, the reaction evens out. People like that stop getting on my nerves and getting to me.

NLP. Neuro-linguistic programming is a set of techniques for working with habits and beliefs, devised in the 1970s. At first I thought it didn't work. I was expecting quick miracles: one technique and the habit is gone. In practice some imprints went away easily, while others, deeply rooted and hard to notice, took a long time to change.

I should be honest: the scientific basis for NLP is weak. The psychologist Tomasz Witkowski reviewed thirty-five years of research and found that most tests did not support its claims Source 3. So I treat NLP as a set of techniques I test on myself, not as proven science. Some of them help me; others turned out to be empty.

The Buddhist tradition. I've gained a lot from the practice of observing the mind and disidentification. Disidentification is the ability to say "anger has arisen in me" instead of "I'm angry": the anger is there, but I am not equal to it. The tradition has a metaphor: the mind is waves on the surface of water. They can be calmed, and when the surface is calm, everything else is calm too.

Disidentifying from the body. I do the same with discomfort in the body, for example a tightness in the chest: it's a reaction, not me, and you can look for its cause. In my experience, tension that arises in a conversation or with a certain thought often rests on a learned reaction of the psyche. But pain and symptoms that don't go away are a reason to see a doctor, not to meditate.

Where the limit is

It would be dishonest to say that everything can be rewritten. The body remains the body.

Hormonal cycles, food, cold and heat change the body's chemistry, and with it the way we perceive the world. A hungry person is more irritable than a well-fed one. Meditation won't cancel what happens to the body in intense heat. Here we're limited by how the biological body is built.

There's also what evolution has laid down: the instinct to dominate, the instinct to protect one's own. They're older than any beliefs. But they too can be noticed. When I see that I want to steamroll the person I'm talking to, it's no longer a blind instinct but an impulse I can decide what to do with.

And some reactions stay almost unchanged. But in my experience they don't threaten the people around you: they're reactions like that same knee reflex. Attacking, defending, the urge to win people over and make them submit — that is, what destroys relationships — belongs to a different category, the one that can be rewritten.

What follows from this

For me this is the main point. If the reactions that keep people from getting along can be noticed and rewritten, then a group of people is capable of reaching agreement. Not perfectly and not forever, but for real. People can live side by side in mutual understanding, give each other feedback and together clear away what gets in the way of cooperation.

The most common objection I hear when I talk about people with shared values living together: "That's a utopia, people will always be people." I think behind this objection stands that same picture of "people don't change". Remove it, and the utopia becomes an engineering problem: what agreements are needed, what feedback, how much time.

I write about how such a life might work in practice in A Home Where It's Safe to Tell the Truth. And about how to look at your own mind from the outside in The Mind as an Interface.

1. 1

   The body's reflexes don't change, and they don't need to. Psychological reactions like defense and attack are learned, which means they can be rewritten.

2. 2

   It seems that people don't change because a person is fused with their reactions and doesn't see them.

3. 3

   Reactions change fastest where no one attacks and where you're calmly shown yourself from the outside.

4. 4

   Change doesn't make a person someone else. It gives the reaction a choice.

5. 5

   There is a limit: the body and its chemistry. But it lies further out than it seems, and what can change is enough for people to reach agreement.

In place of a conclusion

I don't believe you can remake yourself entirely, and I don't promise that to anyone. Something else is enough for me: every time I notice a reaction before it has decided for me, I gain a little more freedom.

I'm interested in people who want to change in the same way: without miracles, with an honest look at themselves and curiosity about how they work. I'll keep writing about the nature of mind, about how people reach agreement, and about what comes of it in life. If that interests you, subscribe to new pieces.

And in the meantime, a question for you. Which of your reactions switches on by itself, and would you like it to have a choice?