Archive - June 2025

Immunity to Change

My client came to coaching in some distress. She worked very hard, and loved her work, but wanted to have more discipline in the organisation of her non-clinical time and to work on her habitual pattern of never saying no. She was overloaded and exhausted, and her exhaustion was having an impact on her effectiveness and behaviour, which was at times intolerant and verbally aggressive. Yet the habitual patterns persisted: nothing changed, despite her being desperate to change. Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan originated the theory of Immunity to Change, which can offer both clues to understanding what stands in the way of an individual actually making the change that they seem to rationally and enthusiastically want, and to a process for releasing the obstacles to change. I was privileged to participate in a day with colleagues at consultancy MDV on Immunity to Change, insightfully and sensitively facilitated by Nathan Roberts. My experience in that workshop reinforced how significant our somatic experience – our sensations, and our impulses to move – and facilitated movement are for gaining insight and a different kind of understanding from merely cognitive understanding, rationality and reasoning.