“Where do we go from here?” This question arises in every course of care: at the beginning of therapy, at every plateau, and at the conclusion, as people leave hoping their progress will last.
Clients feel it when they first come in, looking for fresh ideas or a bit of hope. Often they’ve reached the limit of what they can manage on their own, or someone close to them has. They’re hoping for a renewed sense of will or motivation to tackle whatever led them to reach out. Therapists ask the question too, when therapy feels stuck or when change stops being linear and progress circles back to somewhere we’ve been before. The therapist’s impulse can be to devise a new strategy or encourage another push of effort and willpower.
Why Doesn’t Trying Harder Break the Cycle?
Simone Weil wrote, “We have to try and cure our faults by attention and not by will.” There is something true in this, and something confounding. Surely our will, the way we direct our efforts, is vital to the changes we want to see? And yet we often find ourselves in the same problems again and again. We try new strategies and renewed efforts, and sometimes they work, but often we end up right back where we started.
Weil isn’t telling us to focus harder. Attention, as she uses the word, is different from effort. It is a patient, open staying-with rather than a forceful gripping. What we give sustained attention to gradually shapes us.
That kind of attention is hard to come by. We move from one stimulus to the next, or from one stimulus to one obligation, and rarely let our attention rest on what matters most to us. Our values and passions show up in our actions, but we seldom sit with them.
This is what therapy offers. In individual sessions, we usually can’t act on the problems we’re discussing at that moment. Instead we reflect, turning our attention toward past hurts and future hopes. Sometimes we feel that gaining new knowledge or understanding will set us free, and it can help. But insight is only a beginning. What changes us is what we return to and stay with, session after session, until an idea becomes familiar ground.
📩 Real Hope for Lasting Change
Get thoughtful advice from Christian counselors to help you break stuck cycles — delivered straight to your inbox.
When Blockers, Promises, and Strategies Fail…
Here is what this has looked like in the therapy room. The following story is a composite of multiple client experiences, with details changed to protect confidentiality:
A young man came to me after years of trying to stop compulsive pornography use. He had done everything he could think of. He installed filters and blocker apps. He prayed and prayed. He made promise after promise to himself to stop. Each effort held for a while and then gave way, and each failure added to his shame.
In therapy, we did talk about strategies, especially ones that could lessen that shame. Part of that was speaking openly about his failures and slowing down around them rather than rushing past. As we turned our attention to what was happening in him before and after, we began to see what he was running from, and which emotions and triggers sat underneath a behavior that brought so much shame. Strategies matter, but they were never meant to stand alone. We also paid attention to what was going on in his heart and mind. That awareness is the first step of any lasting change, and it can also become part of the solution. There are many things our minds run from. When we keep bringing our attention back to what we avoid, we often find that the fear is scarier than the details themselves.
What Actually Creates Lasting Change?
Notice what changed for him. What changed was that he stopped running and let his attention rest on what his mind was trying to avoid. This attention is not just a step towards greater progress; it is part of the change itself. As he turned his attention inward, he began to learn who he truly was beneath the shame and habits we can all get caught in. The sitting still and sitting with those parts we run from was the work. That familiarity gave him something willpower had not up to this point. He gained the ability to love himself both when he was stuck in the mud and when he was standing on solid ground. Before he could change, he had to learn to be present with himself, at every point during the process of change.
So where do we go from here? Perhaps not toward a new strategy or a harder push, but turning toward what matters most and staying with it long enough to be changed by it. This attention can be a stillness, a stillness that invites the Holy Spirit to shape us in new ways. That is the quiet work of therapy, and it is available at the beginning, in the plateau, and at the end.
Written by Lucas Bishop, M.Ed, LPC
Move from Striving to Stillness
When human effort reaches its limit, grace, attention, and trusted guidance create room for real renewal. If you’re ready to lay down the exhaustion of trying harder and step into lasting freedom, let us connect you with a Christian counselor to begin your journey toward true transformation.
