EP42: The Cost of Staying the Same | Secondary Gain & The Process of Change

"What are you getting out of staying stuck?"

It’s an uncomfortable question, but it’s the one that finally forced me to look at my own blind spots. Shifting out of old habits and deeply ingrained behaviors requires a massive internal lift, and it rarely happens overnight.

Inside the episode:

• The Reality of Growth: We are walking through the entire messy, non-linear process of change—from the places we’re in denial and the paralysis of over-analysis, to taking action and navigating the inevitable setbacks of relapse.
• A Lesson from the Past: I share a personal story from my education days about recognizing when a space is no longer serving you.
• The Cost of "Secondary Gain": Learn how to spot the hidden, backhanded benefits our subconscious gets from keeping us exactly where we are.

If you’re ready to stop focusing on the immediate discomfort of changing and start looking at the long-term cost of staying the same, this latest episode is for you.

More episodes: netanyaallyson.com

Transcript

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Netanya 0:00

There are moments in life that split us open. Quiet unravelings, sudden frames, or truths we didn't know we needed until we had no choice. This podcast is about those moments. It's about the turning points that change us. The things I wish someone had told me that I only understand in looking back. Come on in. You belong here, and we're gonna talk about all of it. I'm your host, Natanya, and this is what I didn't know. Before we begin, a quick note. This podcast explores themes such as mental health, addiction, trauma, and recovery. While the stories here are honest and heartfelt, they're not a substitute for professional advice, therapy, or medical treatment. Please listen with care and pause anytime you need to. Take whatever resonates for you and leave the rest. Every so often I sit down to record something just for you. A short reflection, no script, no guest. It's where I share what I've been thinking about lately, straight from the heart. Okay, so first up, I am traveling this week, so this is a little bit different of an episode than we normally get. You get me solo in a hotel room, I don't have my normal microphone, and we're gonna talk about the process of change. I'm gonna start by reading a poem, which is not a poem in the traditional sense of what you're thinking. I'm gonna talk about the actual process of change after that, and then we'll get into a real life example of how I use this to change something in my life. So the poem I'm gonna read is called Autobiography in five short chapters. You can Google it. It's by uh Portion Nelson, and it's very short. I just want you to hear it. Sit with me for a minute and listen, and I think you'll you'll get where we're going once I get to the end of this. So, autobiography in five short chapters. One, I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost, I am helpless. It isn't my fault, it takes forever to find a way out. Two, I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I still don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place. It isn't my fault, it still takes a long time to get out. Three, I walk down the same street, there is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's habit. It's my fault. I know where I am. I get out immediately. Four. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Five. I walk down a different street. I love that poem because I think it does a great job of narrating the example of what it's like when you're trying to change something. And so it uses the process, the stages of change to tell a story. It landed with me so well the first time I've heard it, the first time I heard it, that I just felt like I saw what I was doing a lot better than I had seen it before. Okay, so the actual six stages of change, I'm not gonna go through them intensely by any means. We're gonna just kind of briefly touch on them, and you're

Understanding the Six Stages of Change

Netanya 3:31

welcome to look them up. I would encourage it. But stage one is pre-contemplation. You don't see a problem, you have no intention of changing, you're in the state of denial or ignorance of anything even existing. Two is contemplation. You acknowledge that you have a problem, you're kind of weighing pros and cons, but you have not made any kind of commitment. Three, preparation. You begin planning. You're gathering data and information and making decisions on what you are going to do in the future, but you have not done it yet. Four, action. You actively take steps to change what you have been doing differently than you have been doing it before. Five is maintenance, you sustain the behavior change and you keep working towards building a new life and not going backwards. And then six is relapse, which is you made a mistake, setbacks occur, and you go backwards. And from this stage, people will either stay in relapse and keep going backwards, or people who successfully navigate relapse will often treat it as an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and adjust what they did wrong the first time. A note too, because there are five steps in the poem and six steps in the process of change, that it's not a perfect one-to-one overlay, but it generally goes through the same process for one through five. And then six is relapse. So relapse would be like if you fell back in the hole again. What I like about seeing all of this, whether it's from the poem or from the stages walking through them, is that I didn't know for a long time what I was doing, what stages I was in. And you know, in this podcast, we talk about recovery. Recovery can be from anything. Much of what I have done in this space, yes, has to do with substance abuse, but there's a lot of other things that I have had to work through the process of change to show up differently for myself in my life. A story I'm gonna give you of a personal example from when I was in teaching, when I was in education several years ago. Why this is the story that I'm using, I have no idea. It's just what came into my head. Um I used to go eat lunch every day in the teacher's lounge. And certain teachers all had the same lunch period. We would all go in. There was probably 10, 15 of us every day. We'd all sit down at this big long table and everyone would eat lunch. And I'm gonna kind of talk through my own process of change as we're as we're telling the story here. What I started to realize was happening was that I would go in for lunch every day,

Personal Story: Changing Habits

Netanya 6:01

and by the time I would leave, I felt shitty. And I felt shitty because I realized that every time I would go in there, something about this collective group of people, all of whom I liked greatly and enjoyed very much individually, something about this room, this setting, when they all came together, was a breeding ground for hating and complaining and woe is me, and everything is miserable. And that's all that would happen for that, you know, 45 minutes every single day is they would all get together and I would join in and add to the pile of yuck. And I started to realize after I would leave that I felt shitty. And so I think the first, the first stage there is me just doing it blindly and not even realizing it's a problem. And then at some point, the second step is realizing this is a problem and I don't feel good after I've left the room. So if stage one is I'm in denial, the second stage is I realize it after I've left the room. The third stage I was in was I started realizing it was happening while I was in it. So I'm at the table in the middle of the conversation, realizing I'm sitting in the middle of this. I'm hearing myself contributing to it. I'm in real time, and I have awareness around what I'm doing while I'm doing it. And then later what happened was I didn't like this either, and I didn't want to keep continuing to contribute. And so I eventually started to try to go in there and like sit in a different space or not contribute. And it was still, even though I wasn't contributing, I still didn't feel good because it was still happening around me. And so the final outcome of what I eventually ended up doing was to not eat lunch in there anymore. And so I still liked everyone in there. I would pop in there and say hi. There was a couple times I would change my lunch time because my schedule was sort of flexible at the time. So I would just eat in there but at a different time. Or there was a couple times I would find an empty classroom and go eat lunch in there and just hang out by myself, which is it's hard because I wanted to be social and I liked those people, but that specific space, everywhere else I was with them in other corners of the building or whatnot, or other small groups or other one-on-ones, not a problem. But something about that that lunch space was not good for me. And so I ended up just not eating in there at all anymore. And it's hard because it cost me connectivity time, but I realized that that time wasn't connecting the way I wanted to connect with people anyway. So even though it was something I missed, it was not serving me to continue in that space.

Barriers: Contemplation and Overthinking

Netanya 8:36

And I think when we're looking at these processes and all the different stages where people get stuck the most from just personal experience, I am not a therapist, just observation, is I think people get stuck a lot in contemplation. I think they get stuck a lot in thinking about changing before, you know, the thinking and we're gonna do it, but I'm not actually done anything yet, because you don't have to take any actions. You can get stuck in the just thinking about it without actually doing it. And all the different angles, you can you can analyze the shit out of something for quite a long time. I have learned. I'm very good at this. And one of the things that people get stuck in is instead of looking at like the immediate costs of changing, which is hard, what it would be more helpful is often to focus heavier on the long-term cost of staying the same. So instead of like, what do I have to deal with right now in order to change this thing? And that might be hard, that's a lot of resistance and people don't want to lean into that. Something that can help shift you is to look farther down the road, you know, from your highest good perspective, from the future you perspective, from the you that will thank you down the road for changing that perspective. That's one way to help. Another thing that's difficult in this space is that people get stuck because the destination looks massive. Trying to do anything in a large amount for a long period of time seems impossible. I can remember thinking, like, I couldn't imagine being sober for six months, let alone the rest of my life. Um, and I think that's where in substance use recovery, the term in 12-step programs will often say just for today. And the point is to hone in on like you just have to do this for the next 24 hours, like just for today, that's all we're gonna focus on. And many people will even pull it back farther and be like, just for this hour. You know, what do I have to do just for the next 10 minutes? If that's where you have to baby step your way into changing something. And so a lot of my change initially was external in this space, right? It was substances and not picking up the thing I had been picking up to avoid dealing with my life.

Internal Work: Examining Patterns and Beliefs

Netanya 10:43

And over time, once that was not as prevalent for me anymore, I started to use the same process, but instead of external things, I turned it internally of why am I, you know, the more work you do and looking at yourself and getting curious about what are these patterns and behaviors and habits that I have been doing and functioning as and all these things, what's good for me, what's not good for me, especially when you know something's not good for you and you continue to do it. And, you know, some of mine were um, why am I attracting the same types of men that were emotionally unavailable? That was a thing I had to look at for a while. Why can't I say no? I keep becoming a doormat, I duck out of a conversation, I avoid, I can't face things. And so again, those were just areas that I've looked at in terms of how do I, how do I not keep doing this thing, or how do I change this pattern in my life or this behavior internally so that I can function differently because I want a different outcome. And you know, one of my favorite sayings is if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. And that sounds very simple. There's a lot underneath that because it requires a lot to shift out of the thing that you've always done into something new. But I think too, like once you start to find evidence of, hey, I can do this thing, and whatever that thing is, if you can change something, it helps to build confidence in yourself, because confidence comes from evidence that you can you can change in different areas of your life. And even if it's just, you know, beginning with little things, or say you forget to use dental floss, and that's the habit that you want to start with, is I'm gonna just do this every day. You start to build confidence in yourself that you can change things and then can use that to transfer into other bigger parts of your life that that are more difficult to change. And you know, I have, I would like I said, I would look up the process of change and see whatever you're working on and see where you might be like which area you might be stuck in. Am I just thinking about it? Am I planning and planning and stuck in the planning stage, but haven't actually taken the step off the cliff and why or why not? Where are you lying to yourself or in denial about something?

Secondary Gain and Hidden Motivations

Netanya 12:58

Or one of my favorite questions to ask is, this is such a good question. One of my therapists asked me this several years ago, and I was like, oh, this is so good. I hate it, but it's good. And the question is, what are you getting out of this? This thing that you're doing, whatever the pattern or the habit is, you're getting something out of it, or you wouldn't keep doing it. Um so, and to to expand on what are you getting out of something, I'm gonna talk about the concept of secondary gain, which is when you're getting something on the back end of something that you're doing that may not be obvious. So a primary gain is the initial thing, the the hit, the fix, the initial thing that you get out of the thing you're doing. Secondary gain is often hidden or um a backhanded effect that you may not see right up front in your perception. So, an example is a woman says she wants to lose weight, can't lose weight, can't lose weight, has done every diet and exercise, no demand, can't lose weight. Um, and suddenly, if you look at her life closer, you realize that also in tandem with her trying to lose weight and all this focus that she's put on it, she in her belief system has in her head that when she loses weight, she'll start dating again. And she is terrified of dating. It's scary, it's vulnerable, it feels like a risk. She hasn't done it in a long time. And that because she has made that a connection, like a rule almost of if this, then that, if I lose weight, then I'm gonna go on a dating app, and that scares the shit out of her, she will subconsciously block herself from actually losing weight because she's terrified of what the losing weight will have her do in a completely different area. So even though they seem like separate things, losing weight and dating, they're actually subconsciously linked, and she'll block herself from being able to move through that because she's so afraid of it. So what she's getting out of it is she doesn't have to take a risk. She doesn't have to be vulnerable. That's a that's a bonus of not losing weight is I don't have to go into this new realm that's scary, and I get to stay safe and in the realm of the known. So what she's getting out of it is not having to take a risk. I would

Tools and Resources for Change

Netanya 15:17

say looking at processes of change, seeing where you might be stuck, what might help you move through it, talk to friends or family or therapists or other people and see what they've done that maybe has worked for them. I have also used AI successfully here. Um, I will put in to AI a problem that I'm having, and I'll try to just tell the truth. This is the thing I'm doing. I'm aware that it's not good for me. I can't change, and then I'll ask it things like, why do you think that is? What might I not be seeing? I'll ask that a lot. That helps me to literally see something that I wouldn't see otherwise. Also, a small caveat here: using AI for information gathering to try to see something you're not seeing is not the same thing as using AI for advice giving on how to handle a situation or navigate through something. I would not recommend using AI for the second part of that. That is what paid professionals and therapists are trained in. There's a lot of nuance involved in that and a lot of reasons why using AI in that way can be dangerous. And then also for if you find yourself in something that you are actively trying to change and you're feeling all the discomfort in it, you're feeling all the discomfort in it, uh, there is an episode that I did with Joe Singer. It is episode 34, and we talk about pattern withdrawal, which is the discomfort you're feeling when you're in a pattern that you're actively trying to break and you are doing it successfully, but you're so physically uncomfortable. We take a deep dive into that in that episode. So I hope this was useful for you to try to shine some light for yourself on places that you may be stuck in where you're trying to change, and hopefully to help you see that a little bit more clearly and make some more progress through the process. Thank you so much for being here. It means more than you know. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a quick rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps more people find the show. If you want more of me, head on over to NataniAllison.com and enter your name and email for behind the scenes updates in between shows. New episodes air every Tuesday. We'll see you next week.