Changing Your Mind

Changing your mind is one of the quietest, most radical acts a person can make. It rarely looks dramatic from the outside. More often it feels like a small internal rearrangement, like a loosening of an old knot, or a shift in how we meet the world.

In our culture we are told that conviction is a strength and uncertainty is weakness. But in clinical work, and in ordinary life, the opposite is often true. The capacity to change your mind is a sign that something in you is alive, responsive, and in contact with reality rather than defended against it.

A change of mind is rarely just cognitive. It’s embodied. It shows up in the breath, the jaw, the shoulders. It’s as if the psyche has been holding a particular shape for a long time, and suddenly there’s permission to soften.

Winnicott might say that a new thought becomes possible when the environment is ‘good enough’ to hold the risk of it. Bion might see it as raw emotional material becoming thinkable. Jung might see it as holding the tension of the opposites long enough for something new to emerge.

Changing your mind can feel like a small betrayal of the person you’ve been. There’s often grief in letting go of the certainty that once protected. Many people feel shame when they realise they no longer believe what they once argued for, or no longer want what they once longed for. But this shame is often a sign that the old position was doing important work. It held the line until you had the internal conditions to move beyond it. The task isn’t to disown the earlier self, but to recognise and have compassion for the function it served.

There’s usually a liminal phase, where the old view no longer fits, but the new one hasn’t yet formed. This is the uncomfortable bit. The mind wants to rush to clarity, to tidy up the ambiguity. But staying in the in between space is often where the real work happens.

A changed mind is not a reversal. It’s an expansion, it widens the field of what can be thought, felt, and attempted. It allows for more nuanced contact with the world. It makes room for complexity, ambivalence, and the kind of honesty that doesn’t need to defend itself. And crucially, it restores movement. When the psyche is rigid, life becomes narrow. When the psyche can shift, even slightly, new paths open up - relationally, creatively, practically.

If you notice yourself hovering at the edge of a shift., treat it as a sign of vitality, rather than instability. Something in you in trying to grow. Something is asking to be re-considered or re-imagined. Changing your mind doesn’t mean you were wrong before. It means you’re alive now.