Understanding resistance to change through the lens of Process Oriented Psychology
Major life transitions can bring us to the limits of who we know ourselves to be. In Process Oriented Psychology, an edge describes the boundary between the experiences we identify with and those that feel “not me”. Meeting an edge does not necessarily mean we need to push through it. Sometimes it offers an opportunity to become curious about what is changing, what holds us back, and what new aspects of ourselves may be beginning to emerge.
The push and pull of change
When you’re adjusting to any type of change that has altered your life in some way, moving towards something new can feel surprisingly difficult.
Part of you may sense a direction, while another part pulls back. You think about it, you may even talk about it and imagine different possibilities. Then you find yourself returning to what you know, or hoping you could do so.
This hesitation is often interpreted as fear or indecision. But through the lens of Process Oriented Psychology, there is another possibility worth considering: you may have reached an edge.
What is an edge in Process Oriented Psychology?
In Process Oriented Psychology, an edge is the boundary between the identity and experiences that feel familiar to us and the experiences that sit outside our usual sense of who we are.
Process Oriented Psychology, also known as Process Work, was developed by Arnold Mindell from his Jungian background and his observations of dreams, body experiences and other subtle signals within human experience.
Process Oriented Psychology is one of the therapeutic modalities I am trained in. I draw on it extensively in my work with women navigating change. I particularly value the way it invites us to become curious about experiences that may initially feel uncomfortable or outside our familiar sense of self.
One way Process Work understands identity is through what it calls primary and secondary processes.
Our primary process includes the qualities, behaviours and experiences with which we readily identify. It is the version of ourselves that feels familiar: “I am capable.”; “I am reliable.”; “I am the one who holds things together.”; “I am easy-going.”; “I don’t need much.”
A secondary process involves experiences we identify with less easily. They may surprise us, irritate us, frighten us or feel inconsistent with the person we believe ourselves to be: “I need help.”; “I don’t want to do this anymore.”; “I am angry.”; “I want more space.”; “I don’t know.”; “I want something different.”
The edge sits between these experiences. It is not simply a barrier to overcome. It can tell us something about the limits of our known identity and also hint at the experiences trying to find a place within our lives. And we are bound to meet it often over the course of our life.
“Life is a whole journey of meeting your edge again and again.”
PEMA CHÖDRON
Why life transitions can bring our edges into view
Major life transitions often disturb the roles and reference points through which we have understood ourselves.
A separation may alter an identity built around being someone’s partner. Motherhood can bring parts of a woman into contact with needs, emotions and limits she has not previously encountered. A career transition may unsettle a sense of self organised around achievement or competence. Changes in health or family life may challenge an identity based on independence, caregiving or being the person others rely upon.
Sometimes the first part of a transition is simply recognising that something has changed within us, even when much of life still looks the same, an experience I wrote about in When Something Has Changed, But Life Keeps Moving.
This is one reason transitions can be so psychologically demanding. We are not only adjusting to a new circumstance. We are often also redefining who we understand ourselves to be.
It’s not that the familiar self necessarily disappears. But qualities and experiences that have previously sat outside of our conscious awareness may start asking for more room.
Sometimes the question isn’t “What should I do?” but “Who am I allowed to be?”
I often meet women in my practice who arrive at a threshold having already thought extensively about what they should do.
They are thoughtful women who have considered the practicalities. They may have spoken to friends, read books, listened to podcasts, written lists of advantages and disadvantages and replayed all kinds of scenarios in their minds. Yet they remain stuck.
Imagine, for example, a woman who knows that the pace at which she has been living is no longer sustainable. She wants more space in her life and perhaps a different relationship with work. Yet every possibility she considers is followed almost immediately by reasons she cannot pursue it.
In Process Work, rather than rushing to solve the dilemma, we might become curious about what makes moving forward feel so difficult. As we explore this together, we may begin to see that the decision itself is only part of what is happening.
She has spent much of her life being the capable one: the person who can be relied upon, who doesn’t let people down, who usually knows what she is doing. Not knowing what comes next challenges that familiar sense of herself.
This is where we begin to see the edge more clearly. The difficulty may not simply be choosing between one career path and another. The unfamiliar territory might be allowing herself to say, “I don’t know what comes next.” It might mean disappointing someone, valuing something other than achievement, or allowing herself to want a life she cannot yet clearly explain.
What looks like indecision from the outside may therefore contain a deeper tension: between the woman she has learned to be and aspects of herself that have not yet had much room to be expressed.
How do you know when you are at an edge?
An edge often appears through small moments of hesitation, contradiction or discomfort.
For example, you might notice yourself approaching the same subject again and again and then changing direction. Or you may say something important and immediately laugh it off. Maybe you imagine setting a boundary and hear an internal voice telling you that you are selfish. You might know that you need help but find yourself saying, “I’m fine.” Or you feel a flash of anger and dismiss it because “I’m not an angry person.”
Process Work encourages us to pay attention to these subtle signals. What happened just then? What did you almost say? What would feel uncomfortable about saying it? Who would you be if you allowed yourself to feel that?
The purpose isn’t to find meaning in every hesitation or discomfort. It is to notice where our experience seems to encounter the boundary of what feels familiar or possible.
The beliefs that can live at our edges
Edges are often held in place by beliefs about who we are, who we should be, and what is acceptable.
Some of those beliefs are personal. Others have been shaped by family, culture, gender and the environments in which we have evolved.
A woman may have learned early that being accommodating maintains connection. Another may have learned through her career that coping under pressure is valued and rewarded. Someone else may have absorbed the idea that a good mother places everyone else’s needs before her own.
These ways of being may have served important purposes. They may have helped us belong, succeed, stay safe or maintain relationships. This is why I don’t think of an edge as an enemy. The part of us that hesitates may have very good reasons for doing so.
And yet, during a transition, an identity that once served us well may become too narrow for everything we are now experiencing. So, the question becomes less, “How do I get rid of this resistance?” and more, “Can I understand what this resistance is protecting and what exists on the other side of it?”
Meeting an edge does not mean forcing yourself across it
In Process Work, an edge is something to approach with gentle awareness rather than something we need to conquer.
This is one place where my understanding has evolved from the way I once thought about personal growth. It can be tempting to imagine courage as pushing beyond fear: identify the limiting belief, take the action, move forward. Therapeutic work has taught me to be more interested in the relationship we have with the edge itself.
Resistance may contain fear and it may also contain wisdom. Crossing an edge before we are ready can simply become another way of overriding ourselves. Instead, we can stay near it, notice it and become interested in the voices on either side. Perhaps we can experiment gently with the unfamiliar experience. There is an interesting parallel here with research on psychological flexibility, which describes our capacity to remain open to experience and adapt to changing circumstances in ways that stay connected to what matters to us.
We do not need certainty before we can become curious.
What might be waiting beyond an edge?
What lies beyond an edge may simply be more of you. Whether it’s assertiveness alongside your capacity to accommodate, receiving alongside giving, anger alongside kindness, or uncertainty alongside competence, none of these “other sides of the coin” has to replace the identity you already know.
I like to think of human development as expanding the range of who we can be. This feels highly relevant during major life transitions, when the ways we have organised ourselves around an old life may no longer be enough for what comes next.
What if meeting an edge was not so much about becoming someone different, but allowing more of who we are to become available to us?
Learning to stay curious at the edge
You don’t need to cross every edge you meet. And you don’t need to know immediately what an unfamiliar feeling or possibility means.
Life transitions often include a period where the old no longer feels right, but what comes next is unclear. I think of this as the space in between, a time that can feel messy and uncertain, and one I’ve written about in Embracing the Space in Between Transitions.
You could simply begin by noticing:
What feels difficult for me to imagine doing, saying or feeling here?
What do I believe would happen if I allowed myself to do that?
Does this feel like something I genuinely don’t want or something that feels unfamiliar to the person I’ve learned to be?
What part of me wants to move towards this?
What part wants to stay exactly where I am?
Both sides deserve attention.
Movement often happens not when we silence one side, but when we become able to listen to the tension between them.
When a transition brings you to the edge of who you’ve been
Life transitions can introduce us to parts of ourselves we did not expect to meet.
Perhaps the part of you that keeps appearing isn’t asking you to make an immediate decision. For now, it is simply asking to be included in the conversation.
This is one of the reasons I draw on Process Oriented Psychology in my therapeutic work. Rather than assuming that resistance is something to overcome, we can slow the process down, become curious about the signals around an edge, and explore both what draws you towards change and what makes you hesitate.
If you are navigating a major life transition and would value a steady place to explore what is emerging, you are welcome to learn more about my work supporting women through major life transitions.
Ideas that have informed this reflection
Process Oriented Psychology has been an important influence on the way I understand and work with change. If you’re curious about Process Work and the concept of the edge, the Process Work Institute is a helpful place to begin.
Pema Chödrön’s writing has also influenced the way I think about meeting the uncomfortable and unfamiliar parts of our experience. Her book The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness includes the reflection on meeting our edges that I quote above.
Psychological flexibility considers how we remain open and responsive to our experience while continuing to orient towards what matters to us. For those interested in going deeper, Kashdan and Rottenberg’s Psychological Flexibility as a Fundamental Aspect of Health is a useful starting point.
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