In “What You Can Change & What You Can’t” (Knopf), psychologist Martin Seligman offers realistic goals for therapy and self-improvement.
Q: What are the most common things that people want to change?
A: Far and away, the most common is their weight. Then, in order, depression, anxiety disorders, relationship and sexual problems, and substance abuse.
Q: First of all, which of these can’t you change?
A: The least changeable is weight. Some 90 percent of the people who lose weight on any diet regain it and more within two to five years. Substance abuse-whether of drugs, alcohol or cigarettes-is not very changeable. About one-third of the heavily addicted die prematurely or remain addicted all their lives. One-third go on and off the wagon throughout their lives, and one-third are able to quit or become social drinkers.
Q: The others can all be changed?
A: Panic is 90 percent curable when you show people that their symptoms are not those of a heart attack or a stroke but of anxiety and that they can be relieved by disciplined relaxation or meditation. Depression is moderately to markedly changeable. Mild cases-you wake up every morning and the day looks bleak-can be treated with thought-countering techniques. More severe depression can be effectively treated 70 percent of the time with drugs or therapy.
Q: What about relationship and sexual problems?
A: Sexual performance problems, such as impotence and frigidity, are 70 to 90 percent changeable. But a homosexual who wants to be a heterosexual-that’s close to unchangeable. And a transsexual-say a man who believes he’s really a woman in a man’s body-is completely unchangeable; you’d have to change the body to conform to the psyche.
Q: How valuable is it to explore your childhood as a method of change?
A: The only childhood event that has been found to be related to adult personality is a mother’s death before age 11. It produces a slightly higher rate of depression. If the point of the inner-child movement is to cure adult problems, it doesn’t work. Reliving childhood traumas gives you a nice afterglow, but it lasts only for hours or days. There is no evidence it changes adult problems.
