Jeffrey Kottler says he saved the most difficult subject for last in his book, “Change”, and it is addressed by Chapter 13, “Soliciting Support and Resolving Conflicts in Relationships”. He isn’t kidding. There are some really tough things in this chapter, often dealing with abusive spouses, parents with addictions, and family problems out the wazoo. It is both a problem in and of itself as well as an obstacle to other changes being accomplished. A list he includes of the types of changes you would like to make in relationships is an extremely powerful one, simply put:
Changing the patterns of those that are frustrating, unsatisfying, or unfulfilling;
Setting boundaries for relationships that aren’t meeting your needs or are taking a bite out of your soul;
Reducing the level and intensity of conflicts with others, especially those locked into repetitive patterns;
Ending relationships that don’t seem amenable to necessary changes;
Enhancing intimacy with friends and loved ones;
Feeling and expressing more love and caring in current relationships;
Initiating and broadening new relationships that meet interests and needs that are currently unsatisfied;
Experiencing more authentic, caring, honest, respectful, and fun exchanges with people on a daily basis;
Processing and recovering from perceived slights and relational difficulties in the past;
Practicing forgiveness to let some things go and move forward without lingering resentment; and,
Learning from past mistakes, misjudgements, and relationship breaches in order to enhance future connections. [pp. 276-277]
If you’ve done any past soul-searching about relationships, you could likely read the above list and think, “Yes, please”. All of them sound good. I’ve certainly faced hard truths in the first four. In the end, it led me to one of my greatest insights and freedom from some avoidable pain…
I trust people to be who they are. Not who I want them to be, nor who I unrealistically expect they should be, but rather that they will be who they are. It’s stupid, I know, but it reminds me of a scene in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Small geek diversion…Data is about to do a war game against Riker, and is trying to postulate what Riker will do. He starts to tie himself into knots to wondering if Data thinks that Riker will do X, then Riker could change his behaviour by knowing that Data thinks what he’ll do (X) and therefore Riker will do Y. Except if Riker knows that Data knows that Riker knows, etc…In the end, Troi counsels him that Riker can’t avoid being who he is at the heart (a risk taker with a penchant for innovative solutions). A stupid geeky reminder, but one that I find strangely comforting.
And from that “truth bomb”, that I should expect people to be who they are, I found the basis for a much different relationship with my mother when I set some clear boundaries (such as games I would not let myself be tricked into playing) and changed the pattern of expectation and disappointment from what I thought/hoped she would do to simply what she did do. I expected (and loved) her to be herself for her last ten years, not the mother I wanted her to be or expected she should be. Just who she was. By contrast, another relationship had passed its healthy expiry date and had become consistently toxic, so I ended it. And with #6, I make sure that I tell my son every day how much I love him.
I’m still working on many of the other ideas from #5-11.
I am not sure how to review Chapter 12 of Jeffrey Kottler’s book “Change”. The chapter isn’t bad, and it focuses quite well on “Changing People’s Lives While Transforming Your Own”. The problem is that it is a bit narrowly-focused.
If the change you are looking for in life is that you are unhappy, I suspect it is a decent chapter. It deals with altruism vs. reciprocity, the “helper’s high”, being part of something bigger than yourself, paying back (altruism born of similar suffering), or even “my life is my message”. Namely living according to your principles, transformation through service. All laudable, good elements.
But if you are dealing with a problem like weightloss, or a specific addiction, but you are generally happy in your life, or you are already in a service mindset, it wouldn’t be a very helpful chapter. I’m not sure it is even worthy of being a separate chapter. I guess it depends if you are having more of an all-around existential crisis about your life or just want to change something specific.
Overall, I thought it was okay, just long and not very specific.
Chapter 11 of Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change” is titled “Creating Meaning and Happiness” and I admit that it starts off pretty strong.
You don’t findhappiness, but rather, you create it a little bit at a time. This is an active process of invention as much as discovery, one in which you shape the meaning of your own experiences in such a way that they inspire you to continue along the transformative path. […] It is estimated that about 50% of reported happiness is the result of genetics, and another 10% is influenced by particular situations and contexts. The good news is that this means that as much as 40% can be shaped, influenced, and controlled by strategic intentional actions. [pp. 235-236]
I’m not as thrilled a few pages later though when he shifts into the concept of those who move away from “happiness” as being too hard to define. I don’t disagree that it’s challenging, but I think most people understand intuitively what it means to be unhappy rather easily, and even what it means to be extremely happy. It’s just the whole middle ground. My real problem is that while difficult, I think happiness is WAY better than the counterpart terms “well-being” or “flourishing”. I think people start to throw stuff in there that are more “foundations for happiness”, not actual happiness. I suspect in part it is because true happiness is more an emotional or spiritual state (or both) than something that can be quantified.
Although I like his list of what social scientists have found that contributes to happiness i.e. the roots:
Focus on positive feelings and try to make the best of those that are unpleasant;
Hold onto an optimistic perspective, looking at the best in people and things whenever possible;
Live in the present and honor those moments when you can;
Do good work for which you feel proud;
Spend quality time with those you love the most;
Forgive those who have hurt you and let those resentments go;
After you figure out what you love, make a habit of doing those things as often as possible. [pg. 244]
I find the list both compelling and repulsive. In the first instance, you could take any one of those phrases and, without turning a critical eye to what it says, think it is extremely profound. Optimism in the face of adversity, for instance, is an extremely powerful mental perspective. Living in the present, equally solid. Serving others. And so on.
But if you turn a truly critical eye towards the list, it all starts to run into, “If you want to be happy, be happy”, or more simply, “Don’t worry, be happy.”
On the worst days, does anyone really think “be positive” changes the outcomes? Will it drag the poor out of poverty? Will it put food on the table? Will it cure disease? It’s about as facile as saying, “Don’t worry, everything will be all right” to someone on the Titanic. No, everything will NOT be all right. Being positive doesn’t change your situation. It only changes your interpretation by being blind to reality, or being too simple-minded to understand what is really going on. I’d go so far as to say that might work for about 10% of the population and that’s about it. But, then again, being negative or pessimistic never helped anyone either. I think there’s a small piece in there, but exceedingly minor.
My favorite is the last one…on a classic note, it is the same as “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life”. Instead, the framing here is about the equivalent of “find things that make you happy and do that.” Really? That’s considered a profound element? Do more things that make you happy than make you sad and you’ll end up happier? Wow, let me write that down.
I’m also less thrilled when he talks about how it is all about relationships…great, more social capital stuff?
I’m okay though with thoughts about finding things to do that seem more meaningful or socially useful — it is a good way to feel a purpose in life, that you are contributing to society or at least a positive outcome for someone, and thus to feel better about your role in the universe (and thus be “happier”).
It’s at least a start towards something resembling “being happier”. And more therapeutic than the kindergarten advice, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
People usually assume that if you have a goal that you’re not achieving, even though it should be achievable in theory, then there are only three things stopping you from achieving it:
You’re lazy;
You’re procrastinating; and/or,
It’s not really that important to you.
However, for those who have done some reading on cognitive behaviour therapy, change, addiction, etc., there are often three other things that hold you back:
Triggers / old patterns of behaviour that cause you to backslide;
Lack of support / inadequate resources to achieve the goal on your own; and/or,
Benefits from the old situation that sabotage your commitment and progress.
I’ve said previously that I have wanted to commit to losing weight as a goal but have never felt able to do so realistically — sure, I could have committed, but I didn’t think it would be anything other than a paper commitment. I wasn’t psychologically, intellectually, emotionally, physically, or spiritually ready to make the changes needed. And if I don’t see a probability or even a good possibility of success, I don’t waste my time committing to such a goal as one of my annual goals.
In my previous post (#50by50ish #50 – Lose weight – Part 3, the costs of being fat), I published the first half of my inventory — the costs of being fat throughout my life and hence the underlying motivations to change. But reading Kottler’s book on Change, I realized that the other side of the coin was equally important…what are the benefits of being fat that I would be giving up? It’s a radical concept, isn’t it? That there could be anything good about it.
The example that led me to it was the idea of the guy with anger management issues. Kottler described a guy who frequently was “angry” at work, unreasonable in his reactions, and it caused him grief with coworkers, his boss, HR, etc. Clear costs that should/could motivate change. And yet there was a benefit to him — because he was prone to strong outbursts, and could get angry, people let him have his way. It was a source of power for him, both in being able to express himself stronger than others did, but also to have his views carry the day, just because others wanted to avoid conflict with him. It made him a work-place bully to always win. Which gave him a lot of satisfaction, i.e. to win. And if someone called him on it, he could always blame his temper as the problem, not him.
Alternatively, you can approach it as the fact that losing weight is a multi-billion dollar industry and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions (literally and figuratively). So why not? If it is just food and eating and willpower, why isn’t there a solution and why are people always trying different techniques to bust their belly? Because there are other things going on “besides food and eating” (I’m paraphrasing a Psychology Today article).
But I confess that I don’t find the various headings above from the classic literature on the psychology of being fat very helpful. I think instead that resistance simply comes down to varying forms of the most debilitating counter-energy known to man.
Fear.
Fear of change. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of intimacy. Fear of loneliness. Fear of conflict.
Fear.
Fear of change
The biggest fear, and this may be one of the few that is universal for fat people, is a fear of change. Regardless of whether you succeed or fail in your goal, something will change. You try “x” and it doesn’t work; or you try “y” and it does. Now you have to keep doing “y” and not do “x”. But that isn’t very definitive, is it? Let’s be specific about something that I can do while fat that I won’t be able to do later.
How about eat whatever I want? Not everything I want, that’s just stupid, but if I am at a family dinner, and someone has made a nice turkey, with mashed potatoes, carrots, gravy, buns, etc., that’s something I’m going to enjoy because I don’t have it very often. Once or twice a year, we have a big meal like that. So I can indulge myself with seconds of potatoes and turkey, maybe even thirds. Without feeling like, “OMG, how many carbs is that? how many calories?”. I don’t go insane and eat a whole gallon of chocolate ice cream, but I didn’t worry too much if I want a slightly larger helping of something. I enjoyed food the way some people enjoy a new bottle of wine. They might indulge a bit more a few times a year, and I did.
If I go out to a restaurant, I can order almost anything on the menu without worrying about my waistline because I wasn’t worrying about my waistline before I went. Sure, I might worry about heartburn, or avoiding really spicy foods because I like a mouth that isn’t on fire, but I’m not whipping out my phone to check how many calories there are in a Big Mac and what I should eat instead. If I want fries with my dinner, I would have fries. If I was running late for somewhere, and there was a fast food truck, BAM, I’ve got a place to eat. I don’t have to run around and find someone that has salad instead of fries.
Food, in short, is simpler when you’re fat and not trying to change it. If you’re at a friend’s place and he asks if you want something to drink, you don’t have to worry that they don’t have any diet soda. You have what’s available and you’re not asking for a menu of choices. You take what’s there, and say thank you. And do so without looking like a high-maintenance diva.
Food is a source of enjoyment, not a chore. Yeah, yeah, you can say, “Oh, no, eating like a bird is fun, you just have to choose tasty birdseed” (or whatever food metaphor you prefer), but the reality is that it is not as much fun or enjoyable as eating whatever you want. On the other hand, death isn’t fun either, but we’re talking things that hold you back, not the balancing act, that comes later.
Fear of failure
Every fat person has said, in some form or another, “Oh, I’ll do that when I’ve lost weight.” More subconsciously, less obviously, what they’re saying is that “I don’t have to do that because I’m fat, and you can’t blame me for not doing it because I’m fat”. Being fat excuses you from a lot of responsibilities. But you always have the “potential” to lose weight and change, as long as you never try. I’ve always believed I *could* do it, eventually, just “not right now”.
But if you try, and fail, then you’ve got a REAL psychological problem. You CAN’T change in that scenario. This is it, this is your life, and you ate your way into this mess. Sure, lots of other things might be going on, including mental health, physical disability, whatever, but you did it, you gained the weight. And you will feel trapped with no light at the end of the tunnel because you always told yourself you could undo it, but now you’ve tried and you’ve failed. You’re stuck.
Fear of success
Equally, you’re afraid of success. That sounds whacked, doesn’t it? You commit to losing weight, you lose the weight, but you’re afraid of the result? Absolutely.
Because it means, by definition, the only thing making you fat was personal choice. After all, you changed your choices and lost the weight. Ergo, it was all your fault to begin with. That is a huge fear. You can’t blame your parents. You can’t blame your metabolism. You can’t blame your partner who bakes every week. You can’t blame the soft drink company. Or the potato chip company. Or the delicious look of a Dairy Queen cone, dipped in chocolate, frosting mist coming off it as it cools, with the proper swirl on top. Sigh.
It’s. Just. You.
And more importantly, or perhaps just more whacked, post loss, you would then have no excuse not to do stuff. I mentioned previously that I feel intimidated in groups when they start doing sports, and I frequently vote with my feet to not participate. And people will nod, and say to themselves, “I get it, no problem, I understand your reluctance”. But if I lose the weight, and I still don’t want to do the socially physical stuff, then I’ll just be an introverted jerk who apparently just doesn’t like people.
But the excuse of being fat is an all powerful internal voice. “Paul, you don’t have to go hiking, it’s too hard for you, do something smaller. Paul, you don’t have to go kayaking, you’re over the weight limit and it will just capsize. Paul, you don’t have to give up your snowblower and just use a shovel, that’s a heart attack waiting to happen.”
If I lose the weight, I lose my excuses to avoid doing things I don’t want to do. I don’t want to shovel the snow, I just want to use my snowblower for the really small driveway that I have. And when it dies, I’ll buy another one. Because fat me would need it. Thin me will likely still buy it, but feel like a lazy ass when I do.
While this sounds like a cop-out, I don’t mean it that way. This is one of the biggest elements of a change, i.e. what are you giving up? And your brain isn’t itemizing this type of thing in a long list of “pros and cons”, it just niggles at you in the background, a small internal voice that stops you from changing because change might be bad. You lose your buffer zone.
There is nothing more scary though for fat people than losing the weight excuse when it comes to unsuccessful dating. It is a huge “saviour” of your ego to think other people are just shallow and can’t see the “real you”. That if you lost the weight, they’d all come flocking to your door. But what if you lose the weight and they don’t? If you’re single, and getting older, being fat is a great excuse for why you don’t have someone in your life. But if you lose that excuse, at some point, you’d kind of have to accept that it might be you. I’m not saying that is true, I’m saying it is the lessons learned from people who lost the weight, and expected their whole life would change for the better. Instead, they found out that weight was only part of who they were, and they are then just starting the journey of change … they had changed their body, but not their mind and soul.
It works similarly for friendship. Some people tell themselves that their friends are TRUE friends because they are friends with them even when they’re fat. They’ve seen other people who have dropped them as friends, only hanging out with attractive thin people. If they lose the weight, they worry that they won’t know if someone likes them for them or how they look (don’t get me started on just how messed up this is as an excuse, I’m just saying it happens).
Usually, the solution is to focus on what being fat means to someone…a source / tool to help with safety, anger, withdrawal? And then substitute other things in place of being fat / eating unhealthy foods / living unhealthy that still meets that need. Not unlike there being different sources of carbs or proteins, there are different tools to allow you to withdraw if need be that are not likely to kill you in 20 years.
Fear of conflict
Make no mistake, my commitment to change represents huge conflict. I have declared war on my body. Not just the physical side, the emotional and psychological side too. Over the last few weeks, as I’ve started blogging, my whole psyche is in active revolt. Every self-sabotaging behaviour is popping up to try and defeat me. There are some days, or perhaps times within a day rather than whole days, where I’m barely keeping it together. I picked up a drink the one day downstairs at work and was back at my desk, sipping away, and suddenly realized that the person had given me a Coke, not a diet Coke. And I just about lost my sh**. I felt so demoralized, I crashed. Angry, afraid, ashamed, and it was all about some stupid f***ing drink. Except, of course, it’s not. I’m unravelling 40 years of bad body health, and as I do, some of the psych stuff comes up. I’m not freaking out at the bottle of Coke, I’m freaking out about the last 40 years of eating and letting myself do it. Because food was a source of comfort to me. And a way to insulate myself from the world, literally an extra layer of protection. Something I didn’t worry about, and now I have to in order to accomplish my goal.
Emotionally, I’m a wreck. I’ve watched a few shows on TV in the last 2 months, and emotional scenes — weddings, funerals, hugging kids — are wiping me out every time. I’ve got tears running every damn time. You know the phrase, “I’m not crying. You’re crying.”? Nope, it’s me.
I’ve mentioned before that I have a big scary post coming up. Next week I talk about what changed to overcome this balancing act between the forces propelling me forward and the resistors holding me back. That post will be fine, actually a fun one to contemplate. But the one after that is scary as hell for me. Bigger than just blogging about stuff. And the other day, I found myself thinking of other topics I could write about in the future related to my journey, and I was like, “oh, oh, oh, there’s a GOOD one, I should do that before the scary one”. Not because I need to do it then, but just because I was trying to delay things. I’ve already delayed it enough. I could have gone with it when I started, but I wasn’t ready. So my inner voice said, “No, bore them with the rabbit hole full of your stupid-ass brain farts first because then they’ll already know you’re crazy, and it will postpone it for several weeks in the meantime”.
And I’m going through this battle even though I’m not doing this alone. I have professional support, both on the physical and mental side, plus emotional resources to draw upon. And I’m still at war.
It is a war between two sides of my life. The forward looking, do what’s good for me, rational side vs. the side that is now saying “leave me the f*** alone, you douchebag, we had a deal…you eat what you want, and I don’t mess with your head.” Well, the deal’s off, and it is definitely messing with my head. Even with all my forces marshaled against it.
It’s one of the reasons I’m blogging about the journey. Fear hides in the shadows, it can’t stand the harsh light of day. And while it is fighting back, I am hoping it will lose its power long enough for me to break the chains that are holding me in place.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself
I may have nothing else to fear but fear itself, but it has consistently kicked my ass over the last 40 years. If you read through the above list, it doesn’t sound like equal weight to the costs that should motivate me to change. Yet for 40 years, it has held me in its grip, unable to reliably commit to a new way of life.
Will alone wasn’t enough. Combatting dysfunctional beliefs and excuses wasn’t enough.
I needed something new to tip the balance. I found it in a very unlikely source.
Chapter 10 of Jeffrey Kottler’s “Change” has the title of “Reducing Stress and Facing Fears” and talks about stress as both a catalyst and resistor to change. On the stress side, it isn’t the focus of the book, and I’ve read better materials. However, I do really like a quote when he’s talking about the benefits or costs of stress:
The key, then, is to kick in just enough of a stress reaction to help you perform at peak levels, but not enough to override the off switch once the crisis or events is over. [pg. 213]
Kind of “stress when you need it, peace when you don’t”. By contrast, if you can’t switch off, you start shifting towards maladaptive stress responses:
Turning a blind eye;
Deceiving yourself;
Self-soothing;
Self-medicating,
Fears and phobias;
Over-reliance on rituals to manage the day;
Chronic anxiety;
And if you ask people how they manage the stress that surrounds change or that they use as the excuse to not change (i.e. I’m already too busy/stressed), the list they give is interesting too:
Music — fully agree with this one;
Exercise — I don’t get the highs that other people seem to get, but maybe I’m just not at that level yet;
Spending time with family — wait, I thought we were supposed to REDUCE stress??? Oh, my immediate family, sure, okay; 🙂
Reading — absolutely, but for me, this is more avoidance…I do this addictively when I’m stressed, almost binging my way into ignoring the problem;
Watching TV — yes and no for me, as it is already an entertainment activity given that I like serialized story-telling generally (part of the reason I read series);
Praying — nope;
Playing video games — yes and no, it doesn’t distract me for long usually, and can actually be another source of addiction/binging;
Taking a nap — ah, naps. I remember those;
Enjoying a hobby — mostly writing for me, or already covered;
Eating — obviously a problem cycle;
Attending religious services — nope;
Drinking alcohol — no, not by taste and just as well given family histories;
Shopping — not really, although it is appealing at times to do some retail therapy;
Smoking — nope;
Getting a massage — usually, I am doing it more therapeutically than as relaxation;
Playing sports — not really;
Meditating — not well.
The part that I found interesting, and was flagged by Kottler, is that very few identified seeing a counsellor or therapist in that list. I have someone that I see, often when the stress has overwhelmed me and I just want to talk it through with someone who is professionally trained — a shortcut to a mental tune-up. I find her very helpful and have used her three times over the last six years.
Yet I also like the fact that Kottler identifies many of the barriers/constraints to change:
There are still many constraints placed on us by our culture, gender, socioeconomic class, geographic region, physical features, religion, race and sexual orientation. The culture of poverty presents a whole different set of stressors that are quite different from those who are privileged, including increased risk of violence, crime, overcrowding, chaos, and feelings of oppression and lack of choices. In so many ways, the change options available to us are programmed by the earliest training we received at home, school, and through media in our culture. [pg. 221]
But he also talks about common excuses, like “not having time” and that often we believe it when it isn’t really true. We feel stuck but it is more that the big parameters around our life seem “set”. For example, if you were worried you didn’t have enough free time, how many of us would consider quitting our full-time job to do something else? Seriously consider it, not just notionally. Yet that change might free up a lot of time. Instead, most of us will think something along the lines of, “Well, I work 9-5, and the commute pushes that to 8-6. I get up at 6:30, get ready, have breakfast, so no free time there, and when I get home, I have to get the kids dinner, ready for bed, clean up, and it’s 9:30. I need 8 hours of sleep, so I have to be in bed by 10:30 at the latest. This leaves me max an hour a day to clean the house, say hello to my spouse, walk the dog, pay bills, make lunches, etc. If I could only have two more hours each day, I’d come out even.”
Often that kind of time management leads to ridiculous compromises…for example, the writer who decides to get up earlier (Writer’s Block, Time Management, and Other Unicorns) to get that extra hour or two hours in the day, without really thinking about what the impact will be. You can’t just “add hours” to your day, regardless of what any time management system advertises. The only way is to make different choices about your priorities. If your day is full and you add something, something else has to drop as a result.
I’ve blogged before about time management and the Harvard case study. Basically the premise of the story was seeing a jar as a metaphor for time management. The professor fills it with rocks and asks if it is full, students say yes, but the professor adds smaller stones and asks again, students say yes it’s full, and professor adds sand. So on with silt and water. Finally, the professor asks what this says about time management and students incorrectly suggest it means no matter how full your schedule is, you can add more. In reality, and the correct answer provided by the professor is that if you don’t put the rocks in first, they don’t go in. So, decide what your rocks are and schedule them first.
Some people sacrifice fresh lunches several times a week for pre-prepared lunches that are easier to assemble, or they eat out once a week and free up some time that way. They’re substituting purchased fast food over meal prep time. You don’t want to do that all the time of course. Others might substitute having groceries delivered for going for groceries or getting a dishwasher over washing by hand. Others cut back their work hours.
For me, I’m pretty aware of my “time sucks” and where I have some free time in my schedule that I can substitute or shift. Some things I am willing to shift, others I’m not. But I know what most of my rocks are at any given time.
As I’m focusing on weight loss currently in my personal life, I was interested in a quote that Kottler had about the challenges for some to commit to regular exercise:
For one thing, you have to want this really, really badly — so much that you are willing to make it as much a habit as brushing your teeth every day. No missed promises. No negotiation. No excuses. You just “do it” as the Nike slogan says, without a single reason to avoid it. No matter what. Sure, it helps to have external structures in place — companions to join you, a class to attend with a regular schedule, a pattern that you follow without exception. But deep down inside you have to believe that it is so important to your health, welfare, and peace of mind, that you couldn’t possibly consider any other option except following through. [pg. 229]
It’s a pretty hard-core quote, and mostly I think he’s full of crap on it. After going through all the other bits, talking about how hard it is, how many obstacles there are, and the summation is “Just do it”? Really?
It’s not quite what he is saying, or at least, not all of what he is saying, but it undermines the real message — you have to want it and you have to commit. But I’m more of a Seinfeld method than Nike slogan carrier…with the Seinfeld method, the idea is that you commit to doing it for one day. And on day 2, you try to keep the chain going. Similarly for day 3. However, if you fail on day 3, you start on day 1 again. And start building your chain. Gamifying your journey to see if you can “beat your high score” of two days of success. Your commitment is to today, not to all the days that follow. You just need to do it today. And if you fail, you start over. Often the “just do it” crowd fail and their whole commitment can collapse — they were committed to every day for the rest of their life and on day 3, they blew it. Oh well, might as well give up.
While that approach isn’t awesome, I could deal with it. And up until the end of this chapter, I was totally in love with the approach and elements. I was “all in”, as they say. Right up until the conclusion at the end of chapter 10 that there is something that determines your success or failure, a would-be panacea for everyone. Social capital, which Kottler defines in this instance as:
…the sum total of your close connections to family, friends and community.
In other words, if you are a socially-isolated introvert, you’re screwed. It’s also a frequently-hyped solution that is seen (as Kottler says) as a panacea that cures all ills. If you build up social capital, you’ll have more support to rely on, and you can make your change.
And I don’t doubt that it is a contributing factor for some changes, particularly if part of your concern is that you are socially isolated. For example, if you are doing drugs and alcohol to escape loneliness, and you build (or rebuild) social connections, you’ll be directly targeting your triggers. But if social connectedness has little to do with your problem, it’s hardly a solution.
I will accept that you can USE your capital, just like any other resource, but I feel like it is more individualized than that…I am an introvert by nature. Opening up about my problems to social connections is also a bit detrimental — it drastically increases my stress. Previously the same social capital would have been a barrier. For some people, as it did for me, that connectedness would hold them back out of fear of abandonment/shame. It is certainly present for me, but I’m choosing to ignore it. Instead, I’m using that added stress to propel me forward.
So social capital as presented doesn’t work for me. It’s not a panacea, it’s just one other resource available to you if you can use it.
