Why Can’t I Follow Through, even When I Want to Change?
- Jamie Cromer Grue
- 8 hours ago
- 5 min read
Understanding Resistance, Ambivalence, and the Protective Side of Staying the Same
Have you ever made a sincere decision to change and then found yourself doing almost anything except taking the next step?
You plan to set a boundary but postpone the conversation.
You want to begin a creative project but remain too busy.
You decide to rest, yet fill the open time with more work.
You intend to apply for something meaningful, only to miss the deadline.
It is tempting to call this laziness, lack of discipline, or self-sabotage.
Sometimes practical barriers, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, attention difficulties, illness, caregiving, or inadequate resources interfere with follow-through. Not every obstacle is psychological or unconscious.
But sometimes another force is present: resistance.
What Is Resistance?
Resistance refers to the ways we protect ourselves from experiences, awareness, or changes that feel threatening.
Some resistance is conscious. We may know that we do not want to have a difficult conversation or tolerate temporary discomfort.
Other resistance operates outside awareness. It may appear as forgetting, delaying, becoming distracted, losing motivation, arriving late, feeling suddenly tired, or finding endless reasons why now is not the right time.
Resistance is not the enemy of change.
It is information about what change may represent.
We Can Want and Resist the Same Thing
Human beings are ambivalent.
One part of us may want greater intimacy while another fears dependency or loss. We may long for success while fearing visibility, competition, responsibility, or the possibility of surpassing someone we love.
We may want rest but equate productivity with worth. We may want help but experience the need for others as dangerous or shameful.
Both sides can be real.
When we treat one side as the truth and the other as sabotage, we lose the opportunity to understand the conflict.
Change Can Threaten an Established Identity
Even a desired change can unsettle our sense of who we are.
If I stop rescuing others, who am I?
If I am no longer the endlessly capable one, will people still value me?
If I become more successful, will I still belong?
If I set a boundary, will I become selfish?
If I leave a familiar role, what will replace it?
Old roles may be painful, but they are also known. They organize relationships and give us a recognizable place within them.
Resistance may help preserve an identity until we feel ready to imagine another.
Change Affects Relationships
We do not change in isolation.
When one person changes, relationships must adjust. A new boundary may inconvenience someone. Greater independence may alter a partnership. Success may activate competition. Accepting support may challenge a family role built around self-sufficiency.
We may carry unconscious loyalties to people we love:
I should not have more than they had.
I must remain available.
I cannot become too different.
If I heal, I may leave someone behind.
If I stop suffering, perhaps my pain was not real.
Resistance may protect a sense of belonging, even at considerable personal cost.
Familiar Suffering Can Feel Safer Than Unfamiliar Freedom
The familiar is predictable.
A person who expects rejection may repeatedly choose unavailable relationships, not because they want pain, but because distance feels recognizable. Someone who fears criticism may often fail to finish a project, preserving the fantasy of what it could have been.
Remaining stuck can protect us from disappointment, exposure, grief, responsibility, and the loss of possibility.
Sometimes not choosing allows every imagined future to remain intact.
Understanding Resistance Creates More Choice
We do not need to shame resistance or let it make every decision.
We can approach it through curiosity:
What am I afraid might happen if I follow through?
What might I lose?
Who could be affected by my change?
What identity or relationship am I protecting?
What feeling would action require me to tolerate?
Is this resistance—or important discernment?
What practical support is missing?
What is the smallest honest step available?
The purpose is not to overpower the resisting part. It is to understand enough that change becomes safer and more possible.
From Awareness to Embodied Change
Awareness creates an opening, but change usually requires repetition.
We practice the boundary more than once. We tolerate guilt, then find ourselves tempted to reverse course. We return to the project after avoiding it. We ask for help, retreat from the vulnerability, reflect on what happened, and try again.
Over time, a new response becomes less foreign.
The path is rarely:
Decision → immediate transformation
It may begin more like this:
Awareness → ambivalence → experimentation → resistance → reflection → another choice
But even that is not a straight line. Another choice may evoke new feelings, reveal a deeper conflict, or activate resistance in a different form:
Another choice → new feelings → renewed resistance → deeper reflection → another experiment
We may circle back to the same conflict many times. At first, we recognize it only afterward. Later, we notice it as it happens. Eventually, we may be able to pause before it automatically repeats. Even then, stress, loss, or transition may return us to an older response.
This does not mean that the earlier work was lost.
Each return can offer another opportunity to understand the pattern, tolerate more of the underlying feeling, and practice a response that once felt unavailable. Psychoanalysis refers to this ongoing process as working through.
Change may therefore be less like climbing a straight path and more like moving through a spiral. We revisit familiar territory, but ideally with greater awareness, more compassion, and an expanding capacity to choose.
That is still change.
Looking Through This Window
Think of something you have been unable to begin, continue, or complete.
Ask:
What do I consciously want?
What does another part of me want?
What might success change?
What might failure protect me from?
What relationship or identity is involved?
What practical barrier needs to be addressed?
What feeling would I need to tolerate?
What is one small step that respects both my desire and my fear?
Resistance does not necessarily mean you are moving in the wrong direction.
Sometimes it appears because the change matters.
Continue Exploring
Why Is It So Hard to Hold Mixed Feelings? Understand why wanting and resisting the same change is part of emotional complexity.
What Is the Unconscious Mind—and How Does It Shape Everyday Life? Explore the hidden expectations and protective patterns that influence choice.
How Does Psychoanalytic Therapy Create Lasting Change? Learn why insight, relationship, repetition, and working through all matter.
About Jamie Cromer Grue
Jamie Cromer Grue (Jamie Cromer, LCSW, ACSW, FABP) is a licensed clinical social worker, board-certified psychoanalyst, and Training and Supervising Analyst. She is also a Certified Ayurvedic lifestyle instructor and the founder of Windows to Wisdom.
Jamie brings more than 30 years of clinical experience to an integrated approach drawing from psychoanalysis, holistic wellness, contemplative practice, creativity, and the wisdom of everyday life. Through Windows to Wisdom, she makes complex ideas about the inner life more accessible, inviting people to listen more deeply to themselves, recognize meaningful patterns, and develop greater self-awareness, resilience, and freedom.
Jamie’s psychoanalytic knowledge and clinical experience inform the public education offered through Windows to Wisdom. Windows to Wisdom is separate from her clinical practice; reading these materials or participating in its programs does not constitute therapy or establish a therapist–patient relationship.
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