Why Trying to Change Others Never Works (and What Actually Does)
We’ve all had moments when someone’s words or actions left us feeling triggered, frustrated, angry, or hurt—and the thought immediately arises: “They need to change.”
Sometimes it’s a passing encounter with a stranger, and other times it’s someone we’re very close to, which makes the impact feel even heavier. We convince ourselves: “If only they acted differently, I wouldn’t feel so stressed, hurt, or frustrated.”
And I get it. That person really did something that affected you, and you could probably give me plenty of reasons why your frustration feels justified.
But here’s the truth: trying to change other people is always a losing proposition.
Why? Because the more we push for someone else to change, the more resistant they become. And because there’s a faster, more effective, and far more lasting way to shift the situation—one that’s entirely in your control and doesn’t depend on anyone else doing a thing.
What I’m about to share might sound counterintuitive at first, but once you truly understand it, it has the power to change your life in the most radical and freeing way.
You’ll no longer feel dependent on anyone else changing in order for you to be at peace. Instead, you’ll find that navigating relationship dynamics becomes lighter, clearer, and far easier.
Why Conflict Feels So Charged
Most of the conflicts we face with other people aren’t really about what they said or did—they’re about what their actions stirred up inside of us. Every time you feel triggered, it’s because a repressed emotion or limiting belief, stored deep in your unconscious mind, is being activated.
Your unconscious mind’s primary job is to keep you “safe,” and it quietly influences over 90% of your daily decisions, often without you realizing it. In fact, it operates according to 21 key principles that shape how you think, feel, and respond.
Here’s how it works: when your unconscious mind senses “danger,” it automatically switches on protective programming. But that programming is emotional, not logical. It was formed in moments when there wasn’t time to process things rationally—sometimes in childhood, through generational patterns, or even lifetimes ago.
To protect you, the unconscious mind repressed the emotions and limiting beliefs from those moments and stored them away. The tricky part is that repressed emotions and beliefs don’t stay buried forever. They resurface as emotional triggers and repeating patterns.
When that happens, you end up reacting through the lens of old programming—which is why your response to conflict can feel so justified, yet is often disproportionate to what’s really happening in the moment.
This is why two people can go through the same situation but have completely different reactions. If your unconscious programming were different, you might not even feel upset at all.
But when your reactions are fueled by old emotional charge, it not only stresses you—it can also damage your connection with the other person.
Why We Want Others to “Own It” (and Where That Need Really Comes From)
When conflict happens, most of us want the same thing: for the other person to take accountability. We want them to acknowledge what they did, apologize, or change their behavior so we can feel better.
On the surface, it makes total sense and we think, “They caused the hurt, so they should be the one to fix it.”
The problem is, when we come at someone with the energy of “you should be ashamed, you need to apologize, you better stop doing that,” they usually don’t respond the way we hope.
Sometimes they avoid, defend themselves, or double down. Instead of moving closer, they back away.
In most cases, it’s not the request itself that’s the issue, it’s the charged energy behind it. That desperate need for them to change or apologize is really your unconscious mind having an emotionally charged reaction and trying to reestablish a sense of safety.
Depending on your programming, you might go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—and ultimately desire the other person to fix it so you can feel “safe” again.
We convince ourselves our reactions are justified, even part of “who we are,” but when you reprogram your unconscious mind, those triggers no longer have the same hold on you. Your reactions and responses become calmer, more grounded, and more rational. You’re able to express yourself clearly, without the extra emotional charge.
And here’s the beautiful part: when you’re steady and centered, people are far more likely to meet you with openness. Your calm presence signals safety, which makes it easier for them to lean in rather than resist.
But when you respond from an emotionally charged state, the opposite happens. Your energy triggers their unconscious programming, their reaction bounces back to you, and before long a small disagreement has snowballed into something much bigger.
When we step back and look deeper, we can see that these moments aren’t just about the conflict itself, they’re mirrors, revealing the unresolved parts of ourselves that are asking for attention.
The Mirror of Relationships
We can’t grow in isolation. We need each other—love, support, community, even conflict—because every relationship we experience is a karmic classroom. People reflect back to us what we most need to see, often highlighting the parts of ourselves we’ve neglected, repressed, or abandoned.
Something I say all the time to my clients is: perception is projection. Whatever you notice in another person, whether it inspires you or irritates you, is really shining a light on something within yourself. The way we interpret others is inseparable from the way we feel about ourselves.
It’s like walking through life holding a colored flashlight: if your light is red, everything you shine it on looks red. That doesn’t mean the world itself is red, it means the lens you’re carrying shapes how you see it.
Here’s the gift: once you understand that relationships act as mirrors, conflict stops feeling like punishment and starts becoming an opportunity.
Instead of asking, “Why are they like this?” you begin asking, “What is this showing me about me?”
That simple shift puts your power back in your hands. Triggers become invitations. Discomfort becomes guidance. Even admiration is a mirror because when you see qualities you love in someone else, it’s often because they’re waiting to be fully expressed within you.
This doesn’t mean excusing harmful behavior or taking responsibility for what someone else chooses to do. It means recognizing that the emotional intensity you feel in the moment is always pointing back to your own inner world—your programming, your wounds, your desires for healing.
When you work at that level, something powerful happens: your outer dynamics begin to shift on their own. You no longer need to change anyone—which is good news, because you can’t. What you can do is change the one thing you have full authority over: yourself.
Our relationships don’t exist in a vacuum. The common denominator in every dynamic is us—our unconscious beliefs, our repressed emotions, and the patterns we’ve been carrying.
So if you’re feeling frustrated or unhappy with the people around you, it’s really an invitation to examine your relationship with yourself.
Your Relationship with Yourself
The way your relationships feel on the outside usually reflects what’s going on inside—how you relate to your own thoughts, feelings, inner child, your ego, and the parts of yourself you haven’t yet integrated.
If you’re struggling with self-worth or having a hard time prioritizing yourself, you’ll often attract people and experiences that reflect those struggles back to you. For example, if you’re abandoning yourself on some level, you may find yourself in relationships where others don’t prioritize you, leaving you feeling abandoned.
This is why I say the only relationship you ever truly need to “work on” is the one you have with yourself. Every other relationship naturally reorganizes around that.
Trying to change other people is a recipe for frustration—it puts you in the impossible position of managing every person and every dynamic one by one. But when you work directly with your unconscious mind and release repressed emotions and limiting beliefs, the shift happens across the board.
Every dynamic you’re part of is impacted, from the person you’ve known for years who knows exactly how to push your buttons, to the stranger who cuts you off in traffic. When you reprogram the patterns running beneath the surface, you change the way you show up. And when you change, the way people respond to you shifts too.
Over time, the triggers that once hijacked your peace begin to lose their grip. What once felt unbearable starts to look different—you see it with more distance and without the emotional charge, almost as if you’re on the outside looking in.
And when conflict does come up, you’ll find you have far more emotional bandwidth to sit with the discomfort instead of being overtaken by it. You’ll watch yourself respond with calm and clarity in situations that once would have set you off.
This is the true power of working with your unconscious mind: instead of endlessly trying to “fix” other people, you reclaim your authority by transforming the one relationship that shapes everything else—the one you have with yourself.
You don’t have to micromanage your connections with your partner, family, friends, or coworkers. When your unconscious programming changes, the ripple effect flows outward, reshaping every dynamic with far less effort.
Your Next Step
If you’re tired of feeling stuck in the same old conflicts, waiting on other people to change, or questioning whether things will ever feel different—you don’t have to keep living that way. When you shift your relationship with yourself, every relationship in your life transforms as a result.
In my structured and sequenced program, The Reclaimed Mind, we go straight to the root—releasing repressed emotions, reprogramming the unconscious patterns that keep you stuck, and aligning your inner world with your authentic desires.
The result? You stop feeling hijacked by old triggers and start experiencing a new sense of clarity, freedom, and power in every area of your life.
Imagine navigating relationships without that constant emotional charge. Imagine feeling steady, grounded, and confident no matter what’s happening around you. That’s what becomes possible when you reclaim your mind and heal at the unconscious level.
If you’re ready to break free from the cycles that have been running your life and step into a version of yourself that feels unshakable and aligned, I’d love to guide you there.
Book a Discovery Call and let’s explore how you can finally stop outsourcing your peace, reclaim your inner authority, and start creating relationships—from romantic to professional to family—that reflect the love, worth, and clarity you’ve cultivated within.