How to overcome the trap of high insight low change

Some individuals can clearly identify their various problems while finding themselves unable to do anything about them.

Taking to Instagram on Tuesday, Jeff Guenther, a licensed professional counsellor based in Portland, revealed that therapists call this the "high insight, low change" person.

“I want to acknowledge how incredibly painful and crazy this is because there's something uniquely demoralising about it. Like ignorance is almost easier," expressed Jeff. 

"But when you know exactly what you're doing, you can see the pattern. You can narrate it in real time, and you still can't stop. That is a very specific kind of hell.”

The reason behind the condition

Jeff explained that thinking and behavioural change are influenced by different parts of the brain.

• “Insight lives in your cortex - the thinking, analysing, narrating part of your brain; but behaviour change, that's operating way deeper."
• The parts of the brain running on habit, emotion, and survival do not respond to reasoning.
• Sophisticated language and self-explanation can feel like productive action even when it is not.

How to bring effective change

To stop analysing and start doing, the therapist recommends the following steps:

• Accept the need to act even when you do not feel ready.
• “Start by doing the embarrassingly small versions of the thing, not the big, huge version you think you should be doing.”
• Focus on little repetitions to teach the deeper brain rather than grand gestures.
• Build the groove first and let authentic feelings catch up later.
• Bring another person into the fold because “shame loves privacy.”