In this episode, Ross Ellenhorn explores the complexities of why we resist change and what to do about it. As Ross explains in this conversation, “staying the same protects you from the insult of small steps.” He shows us why these tiny steps can sometimes feel insulting and demoralizing. Ross also delves into the fear of raising expectations, the pain of disappointment, and why hope itself can feel threatening
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Key Takeaways:
- Psychological concepts related to change, addiction, hope, disappointment, and self-efficacy.
- The complexities of addiction and the distinction between harmful behaviors and positive attachments.
- The challenges of personal change and the forces that resist it, including fear of disappointment and existential anxiety.
- The concept of “fear of hope” and its impact on motivation and willingness to change.
- The importance of social support and community in the recovery process.
- Critique of current addiction treatment models and the need for a more compassionate, harm reduction approach.
- The role of context in shaping an individual’s ability to change and the limitations of individualistic approaches.
- The significance of incremental change and the value of small steps in personal growth.
- The importance of respecting resistance to change as a form of self-love and preservation.
Ross Ellenhorn, PhD, is an eminent thought leader on innovative methods and programs aimed at helping individuals diagnosed with psychiatric and substance-use issues recover in their own communities, outside of hospital or residential settings. He is the founder, owner, and CEO of ellenhorn, the most robust community integration program in the United States, with offices in Boston, New York City, and Raleigh-Durham. Dr. Ellenhorn is also the cofounder and president of the Association for Community Integration Programs, and the founder of two lecture series that aim to shift current behavioral health paradigms. He gives talks and seminars throughout the country, and is an in-demand consultant to mental health agencies, psychiatric hospitals, and addiction programs in the United States and Europe. Dr. Ellenhorn is the first person to receive a joint PhD from Brandeis University’s Florence Heller School \
Connect with Ross Ellenhorn: Website | Facebook | LinkedIn
If you enjoyed this conversation with Ross Ellenhorn, check out these other episodes:
How to Integrate Behavior Change with Your Values with Spencer Greenberg
Tiny Habits for Behavior Change with BJ Fogg
Behavior Change with Dr. John Norcross
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Episode Transcript:
Ross Ellenhorn 00:00:00 Disappointment is this profoundly important and scary thing for people, because it means when you’re actually trying to change something, it’s telling you that you’re not capable of doing it. And in that it’s saying you’re kind of helpless in running your life. So every disappointment is that message. And so it makes sense that a person might want to avoid that.
Chris Forbes 00:00:25 Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:11 I have a book coming out next year called how a Little Becomes a Lot, and it’s all about how change happens through small, incremental steps. So you can imagine how the title of chapter seven in today’s guest book stopped me cold. Staying the same, he says, protects you from the insult of small steps. Ross Ellenhorn, therapist, researcher and author of How We Change and Ten Reasons Why We Don’t, shows us why these tiny steps can sometimes feel insulting and demoralizing. In this conversation, we dig into the fear of raising expectations, the pain of disappointment, and why hope itself can feel threatening. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed.
Hi, Ross. Welcome to the show.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:02:02 Hi. It’s nice to be here.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:04 We’re going to be talking about two of your books today. One called How We Change and ten Reasons Why We Don’t, which is a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about. But you’ve had a book more recently than that called Purple Crayons The Art of Drawing a Life, and I want to spend some time with that book.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:21 Also great. But before we talk about either of them, we will start with a parable like we always do. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:03:01 Yeah. Well, on one level, it’s a parable that’s a little bit about righteousness. And that kind of way of thinking can be good for us, and it can also put us in difficult situations, because I actually think that there’s parts of my life where I feed the quote unquote bad wolf that I’d hate to give up.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:03:24 That life’s messy, that part of the messiness has to do with the issues of aggression and trying to get gratified and all of that stuff. And if you were to remove all those things, what would you end up with? You know, I’ve been working for over 30 years on what I consider and I’ve been observing this diagnosis a lot, and I’ve been studying this diagnosis for over 30 years. And it’s I think it’s the most, really the most terrifying diagnosis there is that when you spend time with somebody with this diagnosis. It’s disturbing. And that diagnosis is the diagnosis of normal. The normal is probably the most terrifying diagnosis there is. And so parables like this sometimes are pointing out a kind of a black and white version of things. Yeah, that helps us on some level because it helps us think about, well, what are you feeding? What areas in your life are you kind of, nurturing and how can you resist nurturing it? That’s what that parable is about. But it also fits in with these other ways of thinking that are about there’s one thing that’s kind of perfect and good and one thing that’s imperfect and bad, and we should stay away from the imperfect and bad.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:04:38 Yeah, right. Is addiction bad? No. Addiction is bad when it’s bad for you. I’m just completely addicted to my relationship with my wife. I’m addicted to writing. I can’t stand it when I don’t do it. This. This habit of mine that I can’t get away from called. My attachment with my family members is a habit, and I go into withdrawal when I don’t feed that habit. So there’s all kinds of things in our lives that are one or the other, that kind of get mixed up when we sort of split things off in the bad and good. That’s sort of my my take on it. On the other hand, what do we want to feed? We want to feed those more righteous parts of us. Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:18 Yeah. I’ve always found it ironic that I’m a guy who deeply dislikes binary answers to things, and yet I picked a completely binary parable to base this show on for the last 11 years. Yeah. you know, I think the addiction thing is an interesting thing to dive into because I would argue, and I’m a recovering alcoholic and, and drug addict, I would I would argue that one of the definitions of addiction is continuing to do something while mounting serious adverse consequences.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:51 Right? Yeah. And so in that way, I’m not sure that being addicted to loving your wife a huge amount is really the same thing, even though it shares some characteristics and I feel the same way, like I have some tendencies towards doing things a lot if I really like them, which I think is part of my character and it’s a good part of my character also, but it feels different than my addiction did.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:16 Yeah. So you and I differ a little bit on that because I wouldn’t put it in a context of, you know what I mean? Like addiction is only addiction when it’s bad for you. I think addiction is, habitual behavior that you don’t feel completely in control over.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:31 That’s fair.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:31 Yeah, yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:32 Control is a big piece of it.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:34 Yeah. And that kind of behavior can can lead towards profound experiences of emptiness and shame. And that kind of behavior can lead towards painting a beautiful painting, you know. And so to me at base, that’s what it is.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:06:48 So there’s problematic addiction. And then there’s just habits that you can’t quite escape. And some of those habits create the most beautiful things in our lives. You know art. Art. To to to paint a painting requires a certain addictive quality to it. It kind of it kind of focus. Everything else gets pushed aside. You know, it’s kind of this kind of hyper focus. And the focus is about the experience of it, the high of it you know.
Eric Zimmer 00:07:14 Yeah. I mean control is a huge piece of addiction because you know that is one of the, the big markers of when things you know, slide from what I would call something you, you really like to do to something that’s addictive is you’re not in control of whether you do or don’t do it. To a certain I mean, to a certain degree now anyway, I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole because because I, I want to move on. And I want to talk a little bit about your book, how We change in ten reasons why we don’t.
Eric Zimmer 00:07:48 And there are so many things in your book that I really love. And I think one of the core ideas is that change is just really hard, and that this changes in a follow the instructions kind of thing, right? It’s much more complicated than that, and that there are always, at any time, forces that push us in the direction of change and forces that push us in the opposite direction. And I think your book is one of the few that really addresses that latter category in a lot of detail. Yeah. You know, what are these forces that cause us to want to stay the same? Now, there’s a simplistic version of this where people say, well, you keep doing drugs because you like drugs, and there’s truth in that, right? Like, I, you know, I was an addict because I liked it, and I liked what it did for me. But it goes a lot deeper than that, this resistance to change that we get into. And so I’d like to kind of talk about all that, but I’d love you to start us off by saying a little bit more about this allure of sameness.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:08:56 Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it’s it’s pretty clear that there’s an alert to sameness, right? I mean, look out your window. Everybody’s dressing the same. Acting the same. Everybody’s worried about seeming like they’re not the same. I mean, conformity is just sort of part of our daily life now, in some ways, the way people are behaving. But I think that staying the same has a grace to it. It has a beauty to it, and that until we recognize why a person might not want to change and why there’s a logic to it, we can’t really help them change because we’re not speaking to part of them that’s attracted to that. And that that attraction isn’t just like you said to the high of the drug or liking the drug. It’s protecting them from experiences of disappointment that it’s protecting them from another time. When they tried, They got their hopes up and then the thing didn’t work out. And disappointment is this profoundly important and scary thing for people, because it means when you’re actually trying to change something, it’s telling you that you’re not capable of doing it.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:10:07 Yeah. And in that it’s saying you’re kind of helpless in running your life. So every disappointment is that message. And so it makes sense that a person might want to avoid that. All love is disordered, all love is crazy and so is self-love. So you can be staying the same out of your own love for yourself, your own wish to protect yourself. Yeah, from this powerful sense. I don’t want to feel helpless again. And that’s especially true with people in the behavioral health system who have been over and over again disappointed. And they live in a system. This comes from my work in mental health. I interviewed a group of people I was running a group for about 30 years ago, and I said, what, what, what stops you from changing? And not a single one of them said, my symptoms. All of them said, I don’t want to raise anybody’s expectations. I don’t want to raise my expectations. In this system, people are constantly, constantly raising expectations and then being disappointed, raising expectations and being disappointed.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:11:03 I mean, can you think of a more insane thing to have your job being changed? You wake up in the morning and everybody’s waiting by your bed saying, is this the day where you’ll change? We’ve been waiting for change. Is it today? Oh, not today. Okay, well, tomorrow we’ll check back in and see if you change then. Right. That kind of pressure. Yeah. Creates all these expectations. And then there’s all these disappointments one after the other. And that creates what I call fear of hope. And we can talk about that further. But we’ve done full research on this concept. We have a scale for it. It’s not it is its own thing. And that is hope is that thing that got me to disappointment. If I don’t hope, I won’t be disappointed. And yet hope is at the center of all motivation.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:47 Exactly. You you have to have it in order for real change to any kind of change to occur. Because if you don’t have some hope that you can change, you’ll never bother.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:56 So yeah, it is a little bit of a double edged sword, right?
Ross Ellenhorn 00:11:59 Yeah, yeah. Especially if you think of hope this way. Hope. Hope isn’t optimism. It’s not. Everything’s going to be great. Hope is the mindset that gets us through uncertainty to something we yearn for. Whether we get to that thing or not. The most brilliant philosopher, I hope, is probably Martin Luther King, because this is what he was trying to activate a whole, a whole movement around this concept that we don’t know where we’re headed, but we got to get through uncertainty to get there. That’s hope. It’s not the guarantee things are going to be good. And so every act of change, every act of motivation requires that because you’re always stepping in the unknown. Even if you have a workout schedule, you don’t know, am I going to quit in the middle of it? Am I going to give up all those sorts of things? And so it’s always about some level of can I get the uncertainty of this thing I want.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:12:51 So a person is afraid of hope, who has fear of hope that the well to motivation is poisoned, and then they stay the same and they’re staying the same because they just cannot handle the idea of another disappointment.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:05 Yeah. So let’s dive into a couple of the reasons not to change. I think we’ve hit on like the big overarching picture here to a certain degree, but within that there are lots of little or subtleties that we could say. And the first I’d love you to talk about is staying the same protects you from your aloneness and accountability. What do you mean by that?
Ross Ellenhorn 00:13:27 Yeah. So if you think about all change as an act that exposes you as a person in charge of your life, we’re all afraid of that on some level. It’s called existential anxiety. The idea that I’m in charge of my own life. Yeah. And so every act of change kind of exposes that that I’m making this happen, which also means I’m alone in this. On some level, this job in my life.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:13:55 I can be connected to people. People can support me, but I’m kind of alone and accountable for what happens. And so every change always has that threat to it always has that. You know, when you talk about the things that are sort of holding you back, it always has that threat. And if you are afraid of disappointment, you’re going to be more afraid of that threat of your own accountability, and you’re going to feel more alone in that process. You’re going to feel more like I’m the one that made this fall apart when things go bad.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:27 Now that is the truth. Regardless of whether we are attempting to change or not, that we are alone and responsible for our lives. This is an act of just not wanting to actually come more face to face with it, is what you’re saying?
Ross Ellenhorn 00:14:41 Yeah. On some level it’s not quite intentional, but it’s a person who is almost choosing sameness. You know, we all do on some level. I mean, this thing called resistance, which has never been proven.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:14:53 This thing called denial, which has never been proven. This thing called difficult to engage clients, never been proven that it’s a psychological issue. You know, for me, it’s all about a person saying, I don’t really want to do this because I don’t want to. I’m terrified of another disappointment. It’s not a person who’s saying, I’m not looking at my problem. It’s a person saying, I don’t want to move that way, because I don’t know if this will just be another time when I feel disappointed and harmed by that disappointment, you know?
Eric Zimmer 00:15:21 Yeah. Here’s one. Some of these are paired with each other, right? One is staying the same, protects you from your own expectations, and staying the same protects you from the expectations of others.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:15:32 Yeah. Those are kind of the big ones, you know. So one of the interesting things about hope is it appoints whatever you’re hoping for is more, more important than it was before. You hope for it. It’s like your parents asked you.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:15:45 You know what you want for your birthday. Can’t come over. And then you all of a sudden you think I want a bike? And then the bike becomes the life saving most important thing in your life, right? So once you start hoping for something, you’re raising its importance. And so all our expectations go up and the value of the thing goes up once we start moving towards it. You’re not going to feel disappointed if those things aren’t there, but those things have to be there for you to be motivated. And so when the thing doesn’t happen, that’s what’s crushing about it, is that your expectations went up and as your expectations went up, so do the value of the thing. And now that thing that you feel is going to kind of make your life what it should be, is taken away from you. And then there’s the disappointment of family disappointment or treaters. You know, there’s this thing called self-sabotage, which I don’t know if that exists either, but we see people over and over again when they start reaching points of success begin to fall apart.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:16:41 And for me, that’s because they feel as if they’re kind of terrified of raising people’s expectations even further.
Eric Zimmer 00:17:14 Any success, actually, then raises expectations.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:17:18 That’s exactly right. Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:17:19 Right. You do well. And now it’s not like, great. You’re at the finish line. It’s you did this. Now you can do that. And now that you can do that, now you can do this. And it just keeps going.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:17:30 Yep, yep. My son used to call home from college and say, hey, dad, I got an A in English. And I’d say, Max, that’s that’s fantastic. What are your grades in your other classes? Right. I wasn’t being a bad parent. I was being a parent. But everything becomes it begets more expectations. Every time you do better people than say, okay, well, if you can do that, you can do this. It becomes this terrifying world where things become more and more alone, and also more and more like, if I fail, it’s going to be all the way from the top.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:18:00 Now, all of this failure is going to bring everybody down, including myself. Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:05 Is this the sort of thing, this, this fear of hope that happens after we have been disappointed by our own failures to change? Is that part of it? Because I’m wondering, you know, if you’ve got somebody who has been so far successful in making the changes they want to make, maybe they don’t feel this, but the people who have tried and it hasn’t gone, it becomes a it reinforces itself.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:18:35 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:35 Yeah, yeah. In both directions probably.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:18:37 Right. Yeah. Yeah yeah. So I think I think everybody has it. The issue is how much faith in yourself do you have that you can handle it? The disappointment. How much do you believe you can deal with it if the disappointment happens? You know, there’s all this research on this thing called self-efficacy, which is the ability to kind of feel like you’re competent in life. But but half half of self-efficacy is self-efficacy. People aren’t ruined by disappointment because they feel self efficacious about that, too.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:19:05 I can handle it. I know how to deal with disappointment. But if you’ve been sort of crushed in your faith or yourself, then everything becomes kind of terrifying. You can’t really raise people’s hope. You can’t really lower their fear of hope. But what you can do is get them to believe in themselves more. And the more that they can believe in themselves, the more likely they’re they’re going to be willing to hope, they’re going to be willing to kind of do that because the risk of the disappointment goes away. It’s not as much.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:31 You know, how do we do that? Because, you know, self-efficacy or confidence tends to come from you can’t you can’t pretend you’re way into that stuff usually, right? Yeah. That gets developed by you being successful or doing well in certain ways. So how do we get people to believe more in themselves when, let’s say, their track record isn’t great? So, I mean, I can look at myself with my getting sober the first time. I mean, it took me a bunch of attempts.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:01 Yeah, yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:02 Yeah, yeah. So how do you get somebody who points to the, the their track record? Yeah. To believe in themselves.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:09 Yeah. Well, I’m going to tell you how not to do it and I’ll tell you how to do it. How’s that?
Eric Zimmer 00:20:15 Okay. Perfect.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:16 Maybe we should have a system if it’s going to call addiction a disease, which I don’t quite believe, I believe addiction. My favorite word for addiction I’ve come up with myself is this term called addiction. I think that’s what addiction is. It’s not disease. But if you’re going to call it a disease, we have a system that says it’s a disease, but you can’t get help for your disease unless you’re not showing symptoms of the disease. That’s a cruel and inhumane model. And it hurts people. People feel bad about themselves and they’re out there failing all the time, because abstinence is the only way to get into a program. Then we have programs that claim to get people to abstinence, and they do.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:20:56 But so what? They’re behind walls. They got abstinent. Right. And we have programs that say, you’re not ready for this. You’re not ready for that. You’re not ready to have a relationship. You’re not ready to use your phone. You’re not ready to work. You’re not ready to, Right?. All of those things are the medicine for addiction. Having a sense of purpose. I feel like a valuable member of the community, feeling connected to someone you love. Those are the medicine that help a person have faith enough in themselves to hope and to try. And so we have a system that removes the medicine for addiction by removing people from their communities. So in my mind it should be harm reduction oriented harm reduction does not mean it’s not abstinence oriented. You can use harm reduction means all kinds of things, but it’s not kicking people out all the time because they’re using. And it’s about getting people into their own lives you use today. That means you shouldn’t go to work tomorrow. You should go to an IOP.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:21:57 That job you had that you finally got, you’re not ready for it. Go to a program. Oh, you’re almost about to get your degree. Forget the degree. We gotta remove you from the place and put you somewhere instead of having a team around you outreach wise, that’s helping you stay in the world and become valuable and feel valuable. I don’t know if you if you’re a person that went through AA, but the before the meeting and after the meeting or the events. Yeah. The fellowship C of that.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:27 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there are I think there’s a little more nuance in it than what you’re, you’re talking about. Like, I’ll give you an example. We had to put our dog to sleep last week, and we chose to get out of our house for a week. Go visit some people. So we weren’t in the place where everywhere we looked, she wasn’t. Yeah. Now we have to come home. Yeah. And when we come home, it’s there, right? It’s waiting for us.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:57 It’s there. But we’ve had a week of building up some strength and some skills that allow us to go back to that place a little bit more supported. So I think there are, I think, any type of addiction treatment to assume that it’s the only right one for people is always a mistake, because we’re all different and our circumstances are different. So I think there are plenty there are cases where putting somebody in somewhere to build some skills to get stronger before they go back to their community. Make sense? But I also do agree with you that purpose is is really important into what makes us the medicine for addiction. I think part of the problem is this the outreach in the community around people that you’re describing doesn’t often exist.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:23:45 Yeah. No it doesn’t. No, no.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:46 Right. And so so people are kind of between a rock and a hard place a little bit.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:23:51 Yeah. No, I’m imagining something that’s not there, really. You know. I mean, our program does it, but I mean, yeah, I’m imagining something.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:23:57 I’m imagining something that’s not quite there. I’m just saying what? But, but, but I do think that the, the system we have now is almost pro addiction on some level, just like the mental health system is kind of pro suicide because it’s putting people in hospitals all the time when they’re suicidal, which doesn’t really work. But that doesn’t mean, oh, I totally agree that there’s a need for triage and their need to remove the person from their use. I don’t consider that really the curative event, though. It’s giving them enough to go back to then be in the curative event. It’s it’s giving them enough room to do that, you know. Yeah. And and sometimes people need to go away because what they’re doing so dangerous, they need to be protected from it so they can make better decisions. I mean, there’s all kinds of reasons to go away, but the idea that treatment is kind of focused on going away and not focused on how to help people feel like parts of their community, I think, is a problem.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:24:51 I don’t see things working if we don’t do that, you know?
Eric Zimmer 00:24:55 Yeah, I think the real problem. I agree with you when we say go away. So my my experience, I got sober twice, once at 25 as I was homeless, heroin addict, real low bottom. And then I stayed sober about eight years. And then I started drinking again. And I got sober at that time. The first time I went, I did treatment. Yeah, I went into treatment. I didn’t go away. I went to treatment in Columbus, and then I chose to go to a halfway house and that worked for me. I have seen what happens when people go away, away, meaning they they go to Minnesota. That happens to be a popular destination for people in this situation. they start to build a community there. Right. So I was building a community in treatment in the halfway house. I was going to meetings. I was meeting people at meetings. I was doing all that. And when I left treatment or the halfway house, that community was still there.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:25:53 Right.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:54 Right. I think when you send somebody to Minnesota, because they’re building that community, ideally in a decent program, they’re building that community right away. Right. But then you leave that whole supportive environment. And I think that is a really rough transition.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:26:08 Yeah, I agree with you. And the story you’re telling me is still about social connection. Yes. And so 100% medicine. In the end, the medicine was social connection in a sense of value in the community, you know. And if that’s the way to get it, that’s a great way to get it. You know, the other part of it is who knows? This is sort of from my book. Who knows what it was that made you susceptible to change at that point? Yeah. In my mind, it wasn’t the place. It was whatever was going on in your life that made it so you could metabolize the care that people were giving you. Yeah. You know.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:44 I always think of it as it was a combination of things in my life were really getting bad, but that I don’t think that’s enough.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:54 I think that that came up at the same time with somehow the thing we talked about, which is hope. Yeah. Some hope that I could get better. And when those two things come together, I think we’ve got a shot. But when things are just bad, that’s a really dangerous place to be. When it’s just. I’m. I’m broken, I can’t change. Yeah. There’s nothing I can do about this, right? You know, those were the most dangerous days of my my drug use, I think. And they were after I had tried 12 step programs and treatment before, and it didn’t work that time. So I concluded it doesn’t work. Yeah. Instead of recognizing very much what you’re saying, and I think this is some of what’s critical to getting people to hope again, is to recognize that you’re not the same person this time that you were last time. That’s right. Just because it didn’t work last time doesn’t mean that it won’t work this time, because you’re not the same.
Eric Zimmer 00:27:55 And I think that’s a really key piece.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:27:58 Yeah. Yeah, that’s a hard one, isn’t it? Because because, treatment becomes as repetitive as addiction, you know. And so.
Eric Zimmer 00:28:05 Yeah.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:28:06 You can. Okay. Again, just this is part of the whole thing. And the feeling of isolation, shame and loneliness doesn’t really get addressed often in the treatment. So the underlying suffering from the addiction often doesn’t go away. I’m still feel broken. I’m not drunk anymore, but I still feel broken. I still feel unheard. I still feel alone. You know. And so those things aren’t always addressed in treatment centers. Sometimes they are. But but. And then also sometimes we have to get those things from the community. We have to get it from being part of the world.
Eric Zimmer 00:28:44 Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What’s one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it’s there. You’ve tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Eric Zimmer 00:28:57 You’re not alone in this, and I’ve identified six major saboteurs of self control. Things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here’s the good news you can outsmart them. And I’ve put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now. At once you feed. And take the first step towards getting back on track. So let’s move on from there. And I want to talk about one of these reasons not to change that jumped off the page to me. And I’m going to give it a little context real quick. So I’m a big believer. I use a phrase a lot that little by little, a little becomes a lot. The change happens through these incremental small steps. I have a book coming out next year called how a Little Becomes a Lot. So obviously Reason not to change number seven. I was very intrigued by which is that staying the same protects you from the insult of small steps.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:04 I love this. Yeah, talk to me about the insult of small steps and what you mean by that.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:30:10 Tell me about the theme of your book. This idea that a little bit, a little bit means a lot. What? What does that mean?
Eric Zimmer 00:30:16 Well, it’s that my experience is that change comes through a thousand small moments and choices. Right? If you were going to film the movie of my life, you would see a scene of me going into a detox center and them saying you need to go to long term treatment, and me saying no, I don’t. Going back to my room and having a moment of clarity where I thought, God, I am going to die or I’m going to go to jail. I’ve got 50 years of jail time and I go back and I say, I’ll go to treatment. And that’s the moment, right? That, you know, the cue, the triumphant music, all that stuff. That moment only matters only has any significance because of a thousand tiny choices I made after that, again and again and again.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:57 Yeah, we over prioritize the epiphany. We over prioritize the five easy steps. We over prioritize all of that. And that change actually tends to most lasting change happens a little bit at a time over a long period of time. Yes. I love what you’re talking about with the insult of small steps, because there are reasons why. Little by little doesn’t work. And some of it is what you’re addressing here.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:31:28 Yeah, yeah. No, I think that that’s beautiful how you’re describing this, you know, and if you’re afraid of hope, the only thing you can bear is the small steps. Yeah. Because the big ones are like, oh, shit. Everybody’s gonna, like, see that it happened, you know? And it’s also like, I can only digest little moments of pride. I can’t feel completely proud of myself because I’m so afraid of it.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:50 That’s a great point. Yeah.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:31:51 So every small step is just this the most manageable unit of pride, the most manageable unit of self-efficacy.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:31:59 And anything past that scares the person. The insults of Small Steps is sort of about that. It’s like if the step is a little bit more than small, or if it’s just even small, it becomes like, well, that makes me look at where I’m at. I made a sandwich today. That’s my big event. I know, but you know, I’ve been eating out all week, and today I made a sandwich because I’m trying to be more responsible for my life because someone at AA told me to make a sandwich. I made a sandwich today. That’s the big event. But that small step, the way you’re describing it, is one of those small steps that led to the bigger one. Right? Yep. And so it’s that constant sense of being insulted by these small things I have to do, you know? Yeah. We got plenty of people in my program who say, yeah, oh, I’m ready to go back to college. I’m totally ready. I’m going to graduate next year.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:32:47 And then we say, well, you know, first you got to apply. And they’re like, oh God, apply. Which means to them I’m not as far as my friends who are already in college. Yep. And that’s sort of a big step. But even that step is like now I’m looking at where I am in relationship to my goal. The minute you take a small step, you’re looking at the distance to the goal.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:05 Yes.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:33:06 And then it becomes insulting and upsetting, you know, and you have to kind of get through those things because you’ve got to have the small steps to get there.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:33 I think your point is a really good one. There’s a couple there. I mean, one is, yeah, if we keep comparing ourselves to the end goal. Yeah, it’s demoralizing. And every time you have to sort of look at where you are, it can be very disappointing. I mean I can think about that like, well, okay, I went to two meetings today.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:50 I feel on one level I feel really good about myself. On another level, I can look at friends of mine, like you said, who just graduated from college last year, and I’ve never darkened the doors of a college due to my addiction. Yeah. You know, and these, these little steps. And it’s also just hard to sustain.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:34:08 Yeah, yeah. Unless you have some sort of credo to help you with that. Like there’s a credo called the One Day at a time, right? I mean, in other words, like, that’s really brilliant. And it is sort of about that. It’s like, don’t set your sights on the big thing, get through today and then you feel some sense of accomplishment about today, and then tomorrow you’re going to get up and start again. But don’t look too broadly. You know.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:34 Yeah. I mean, it’s there’s so many cliches around it. Rome wasn’t built in the day and all that stuff. I mean, they’re they’re cliches, but, you know, one day at a time is a huge cliche.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:44 And it happens to be actually very useful.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:34:47 Very. It might be. Without it, I don’t see how people recover. Right. Yeah. How can you not if you’re not in that mode of saying today, today is my day. This is the day I’m working on it. I’m not thinking about tomorrow, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:35:01 Well, really? From both angles. Right? It’s one is, you know, a day breaks it down into, you know, recognizing it’s small steps. And the other is when you feel really overwhelmed. Yeah. My partner talking about our dog passing, the thing she said a few times is I can’t imagine how I’m going to live the rest of my life without her. Right. And the one day at a time answer to that is you don’t have to figure out how you’re going to live the rest of your life without her. All we have to figure out is how we live the next hour without her or the next. You know, today without her, right? When we start thinking about how am I going to live the rest of my life? It feels overwhelming.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:35:39 Yeah. And think about what that does for you. This isn’t a problematic problem. This is a sadness. But it allows you to grieve. You’re not. You’re not. To think about your future is not to grieve. It’s to grieve. It’s to grieve. Who will I be without? You know, this is actually a lot of grief. Turns out is about like, who will I be without this person? But still, it’s to think about who am I, not what am I? What have I lost?
Eric Zimmer 00:36:06 Right. It’s your brain trying to figure something out so that you don’t feel what you’re feeling. It is a it is a mechanism of of distancing yourself. Yeah.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:36:17 But it’s one of those situations where if you go towards the thing it’s actually more gratifying. Right. Like that’s.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:23 Great.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:36:24 Grief is we’re doing right now. We’re grieving. You know.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:27 Yeah. And I had to put a number of dogs to sleep over the years. And I do like one thing about it.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:34 It is that it is. The grief is just so pure and strong and straight and simple. Yep. Yep. It doesn’t have any of the complexity that human things have. It’s just I loved this thing. It’s gone. I miss it, and it’s just it’s a very I like it in its its intensity but also its simplicity.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:36:59 Yeah, yeah. I wrote about this a little bit to somebody that, there was a period of time in our lives where we knew things more than we know things now, but we didn’t have language. You knew what it meant to be comforted before there were words. One psychoanalyst calls it the unthought known. This place pre words after you were born in our relationships with dogs is in that world the known unthought known. And what those animals give us is uncomplicated grief because it’s not complicated by thought or by what do I mean to you? And who do you mean to me? We just know it. You’re not questioning. How did I harm? You know, like none of that stuff, is there? Yeah.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:37:52 It’s the chance for uncomplicated grief, you know? yeah. You know, immaculate grief. You know, it’s like it’s really a great.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:00 That’s a good term for it.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:01 Yeah, yeah. The real gift on some level. Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:04 So looking at all of these things here that we’ve, we’ve laid out these, these reasons not to change. And a lot of them as we’ve talked about being around hope, how do we get people to hope. I think I asked this question. I’m not sure we got the answer. I think we may have gone off on a tangent. I probably took us off on a tangent if if past history is any indication, this was me. Not, you know.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:32 Past history with me.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:32 To how how do we get people who don’t currently believe in themselves to believe in themselves enough to hope?
Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:41 Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. If I promise I’ll get to that, I’m gonna take a little tangent. It’s just a small tangent, but I think it’s important because it’s something that after that book, I began to understand better and better.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:38:56 There’s there’s a thing in social psychology called threat assessment theory. And what it is is that something is a threat when you don’t have the resources to handle it. So if you’re in a t shirt and shorts and you’re walking around and it starts to snow, there’s a threat. But if you put on a jacket and pants, it’s just a challenge. And there are things in our lives around us that are just like that coat that make it so that challenges personal challenges. Stay in the challenge column and not the threat column. Social support. People around me who have my best interest in mind, who back me up. Self-efficacy I can get things done. Sense of purpose. Sense of value to my community. These things are really proven within social psychology that they become the resources that make it so things don’t seem threatening. Things like looking at your problem. No longer is it a threat. It’s a challenge. I’m willing to look at the fact that I have an addiction. If I don’t have those resources around me, I’m not going to accept the care, because I’m not going to be willing to look at the problem because I can’t handle it.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:40:13 It’s a threat. It’s a threat for me to go into treatment. It’s not a challenge. Life becomes just all threats. This is what there is, what their discovering and all the loneliness epidemic stuff is that people who are lonely, who don’t have the resources of social support, are constantly in this threat mode. And so if we’re going to help.
Eric Zimmer 00:40:30 Perversely makes it harder then to connect to people. Loneliness is a yeah.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:40:35 Yeah, yeah. When they’re finally ready, they’re paranoid. I mean, it really is. Yeah. Awful that way. So the answer is complicated, but it’s I think it’s a fact that if we don’t have the right social resources, we’re not going to move towards change. Those are the things that are push us forward. When we talk about things holding us back and things pushing us forward. And so we really do need to be kind of focused on who you are in the community. How do I support you to continue to be a valuable member of the community, even if you’re using? Yes.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:41:09 If you use last night, is it really the best thing for you to quit your job? Or is it better for me to show up at your job during your lunch break to make sure you’re not using then, but keep you in that job? And is it valuable for you to see that the person caring for you sees the job? Not fixing you with some intervention, sees the job as the most important thing in your life, and it’s surrounding you with that. Giving a person a sense that there’s a continuous, non-judgmental relationship. We just know this to all the addiction research, that long term relationships are the number one thing that, contribute to a person’s recovery. So how do we do that for people where they don’t feel like when they use, they lose those relationships, that social support?
Eric Zimmer 00:41:53 Yeah.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:41:54 How do we have conversations not about the addiction, but about where they want to go in life? You know, I think that’s a better conversation. And but, you know, I work in mental health largely.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:42:03 And I think it’s that’s a better conversation than talking to someone who has schizophrenia about their symptoms. It’s like, where do you where do you want to be? And by the way, your symptoms might be in the way of that, but where do you want to be, you know.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:14 Well, yeah. And I have a lot of compassion for family members, friends of addicts. And I have I’ve been in that role. So I have compassion for myself in that role and people in that role. It’s a terrible it’s an awful spot to be in. Yeah. And that part of what ends up happening, I think, is that those people become threatening to the addict.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:42:40 Yeah, absolutely.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:41 Because to look at addiction, to talk about it, to think about it is threatening because that person is so angry. Yeah. And again, I don’t blame people for being that angry. I get it. And it doesn’t really help take the it doesn’t help you take addiction from a threat to a challenge.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:59 Right? It ups the threat.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:43:01 Level, it ups the threat level. And it also creates a system of lying. So now you get like there’s no the attachments gone at that point. They’re threatening me. I’m lying. That’s our relationship. And I’m sneaking around. And now there’s a secret. And so the chance for social support is lessening at that point, you know. And that’s generated in these kind of experiences like this. You know.
Eric Zimmer 00:43:30 I want to spend a couple more minutes here on change, and then I want to get to purple crayons. Late in the book, you talk about you can’t always change, and you talk about the fact that there needs to be an acknowledgement of two things that I think are important. One is that you talk about the cruelty of purely individualistic approaches that blame people for systemic problems. Meaning you give a great example about for a CEO to go back to school and get their master’s degree is like climbing a minor hill. Yeah. For somebody who works in the warehouse of that same company who has two children and is a single parent.
Eric Zimmer 00:44:21 That’s not just a small hill to climb. That’s a that’s a big mountain to climb, right? Right. And so so it’s not just purely individualistic. What’s the circumstances? The system, all of that stuff matters. And yet accountability needs to remain crucial, right? People have to have a sense of efficacy, of hope and and about how you how do you balance these things. And you say that extremism always tends to bend towards cruelty, which is such a great line. Talk to me about this idea.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:44:55 Yeah. I mean, this sort of concept we have, that all you got to do is make the choice. To change. You know, I mean, every book that says there’s five steps is just basically saying, why aren’t you doing the five steps instead of respecting the person’s context, you know. Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:45:16 And context is everything.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:45:18 Everything. And so we have all these things going around us that decide whether we’re ready to make a change. And those things switch and change every day.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:45:28 And there are those resources I’ve been talking about, you know, and if you don’t have those resources, it’s insulting on some level. And it makes you feel bad when people act as if this is something you can just do. When it’s always what’s around you that’s going to support you enough to then be able to make the decision to change. And we do live in a system that’s basically saying, well, we have all the cures. Just come and take the cure and you’re done. And and that’s a lie. There’s a lot of evidence, actually. People that never go to treatment do pretty well, you know. So we’re also trying to talk people into all these treatments. Say, and then we say that there’s something wrong with them. They’re not accepting them. And what we’re not respecting is that that person lives within a context, within an experience. Now, the fact is that CEO actually could be impoverished in areas that the poor person is not to. Yes, that Theo could be living somewhere in some suburban place where there’s no culture, no sense of connection, no sense of cultural connection, no sense of shared language, nothing like that.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:46:27 And that poor person could live in a neighborhood where in at night, everybody’s out on the street talking to each other, having connected experiences. They live close to their family and all of that. Those are also resources. Yep. You know, it just depends on the situation, you know.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:44 Right. And so how how do you work with people to understand the context but not let the context define them? Because we both said context is everything. But it’s I guess I would say probably to speak less binary. It’s not it’s not quite everything because there is an element of human agency in all of this. So how do you work with people to understand their context, to have kindness and patience towards themselves, but also not allow the context to become. Something that holds them back.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:47:20 Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I mean, you know, for me it’s like it is all about our aloneness and our decisions. And the context is the thing that might give us enough courage to face that. Right? So that the world we’re in might give us enough room to look at that.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:47:34 I think that, we’re in trouble that way. That political debate, the debate about human beings is all totalizing. You’re this. That’s why you’re feeling this. And that includes you’re this kind of oppressed person, right? Which I appreciate, and I understand why it’s there, but it it is not it is not seeing the person as a unique humanity with all kinds of complex things going on.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:57 Right.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:47:58 And so this kind of identifying with these things is its own kind of nationalism, its its own kind of way of having a totalizing view of things. It’s a kind of nationalism I like better than other horrid forms of nationalism, but it still is. It’s this kind of totalizing idea, this idea that instead of the complete and complex mystery of a human being, you know.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:20 Exactly. And one that the outcome is not known.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:48:24 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:24 Yeah. You know, nobody’s outcome is known. Yeah. We we can say, oh, we could predict that this type of person is going to be more successful this way, or this type of person is going to do better in this environment.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:35 We can make some predictions. Yeah. But there’s a lot going on that we don’t understand.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:48:41 That most of it we don’t understand. Yeah. I mean about about human beings. It is a completely uncertain event. change is improvisational. Growth is improvisational. Yup. Psychotherapy was invented as an improvisational art form where you didn’t know where it was going. And all of this has become these little best practice tools instead of what it was supposed to be, which is I’m here listening and I’m following you, but I’m not going to make decisions about who you are. Right. And Martin Luther King had this gorgeous concept called the sacredness of human personality. And when he talked about oppression, he was talking about that sacred thing that everybody has their own unique, fascinating world inside of them is crushed by them, made into things. And so he was celebrating that everybody has this unique, fascinating world that can’t be captured by saying you’re this or you’re or that, even when those this is and that are part of the resistance.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:49:42 He was saying every person deserves the dignity of being a fully human, unique person. And that’s the version of oppression that I appreciate is being made simple by another person’s perception. And that can include the list of things that says, your identity is this and this and this.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:06 You know, I’m thinking, you know, all of those sort of I’m this, I’m that. they they serve purposes to a point. Yep. Right. And you know, I’ve talked about this on this show a lot. You know, at what point did my identity as an addict and an alcoholic help me? And when did it become limited? Or my diagnosis of having depression? Where was that useful and served me, and where did it suddenly become non useful? And I think it’s the same thing for people who are parts of oppressed groups. There’s a there is an understanding that’s really valuable there, but it’s not the whole story. And and how you know what, whatever that thing is, is, you know, how can we use these identities, diagnoses, all these things when they’re useful but be able to discard them when they’re not? And I think what you were just talking about with Martin Luther King is a beautiful way of saying.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:50:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I often say like the DSM, what if we treated it as this remarkable book of poems about human suffering, all the different forms of human suffering. What if we said that it was that? Then it’d be pretty cool. What if it’s. If it’s a way of us designing how to fix somebody, because they’ve got this and this and this and kind of telling them what they are. It becomes something completely different.
Eric Zimmer 00:51:24 All the poets in the audience who have been issued a challenge, take the DSM and make poems out of it. I think it’s a beautiful idea.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:51:31 It already is, in a way, these little, short little things. It really is about how do you approach things as flexible and nimble and not defining. You know, and we live in an age where people are terrified of that. And so everything’s becoming the opposite of that. You know.
Eric Zimmer 00:51:46 Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn’t quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals.
Eric Zimmer 00:52:01 And that’s exactly why I created The Six Saboteurs of Self-control. It’s a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them. If you’re ready to take back control and start making lasting changes. Download your copy now at once. Let’s make those shifts happen starting today. One you feed e-book. So if listeners are listening to this and they want to take away one little thing that they could do today in their life. Small thing that would move them in the direction of the change they want to make. Like, can you give us one little takeaway thing? And I know you hate five simple steps. I’m not asking for that. I’m not asking for that. I’m asking for a particular starting point.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:52:56 I think you might want to respect and honor all the ways you try to stay the same. Then you should stop insulting it and putting it down and see That it comes from your own self-love. It comes from your own attempt to preserve yourself.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:53:12 And that. Well, in the end, it’s probably not good for you and your progress. It’s also a moment of rest, and it’s also you doing the best job you do care for yourself, and if you do that, change actually becomes easier. Change doesn’t emerge out of shame. It just doesn’t.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:30 No, it sure does not.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:53:32 And so I was going to title the book Don’t Go Changing, but Harper Collins wouldn’t let me. But that but that is kind of the message in it. Like it’s okay, you know, respect this, respect this thing you’re doing, staying the same. There’s a grace to it. There’s a beauty to it, you know? and if you do that, there’s more likelihood that you’ll be freed to change.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:49 Excellent. Well, that’s a beautiful place to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation because I said we were going to talk about purple crayons and we did not. So we are going to go talk about it.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:00 Listeners, if you’d like access to that post-show conversation where we’re going to be talking about the role of creativity in all of what we’ve just been talking about and life in general. You can go to one, you feed coin and you can get ad free episodes. You can get these post-show conversations and you can help support this show, which really needs your help. Ross, thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed talking with you and I really enjoyed your books.
Ross Ellenhorn 00:54:26 Yeah, yeah, it was great. It was really great. You’re good at this and I appreciate your questions and the way you listen. So thank you.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:31 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:57 Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom. One episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.
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