Can People Change?

I have found someone who is showing me different philosophical aspects of the world, that I had not seen before.
In addition, I am attending school for a total career change.

Will this change ME? I think I have room for improvement, as do we all, but I do not want to lose who I am.

Years of working in psychiatry have given me a viewpoint borne of experience: people can learn different theories, and reasons why certain behavior manifests itself; and can to an extent adjust their behavior if they are motivated to do so, but what 'they' are, does not seem to change.
Is this a valid viewpoint? Do people actually ever change the inner core that makes them a unique person?

I am honestly not sure, what do y'all think?

I think people can change. I also think that who you are changes as well. For me, I have changed drastically in the way I feel and think over the past several years, and I am not the same person I used to be, but I am a better person today and getting better day by day as I learn more about myself and the world. People are too afraid of change. Change can be a good thing, too.

Certain aspects of a person can change (i.e. job, friends, marital status, age, etc.) but I think the person's core remains. I've had many, many changes in my life but I have remained the same person.

I think people change. I know I have. Looking back 15 years ago...... (shakes head at self)

When I was 21 until I was 25 I worked in Alaska on the commercial crab boats 4 or 5 months a year. Made great money and spent the rest of the year off. Spent the rest of the year just traveling, chasing everything in a skirt and drinking as much ale and Jagermeister I could get my hands on and smoking more weed than Bob Marley. I was a very self absorbed person, not looking past the next bottle of booze, the next big fatty or the next hottie in a tight skirt. Life was truly one big party and I selfishly indulged in it.

Don't get me wrong, I was not a bad person that could not be trusted or was unethical. I was always a person who treated people with respect and was always willing to do anything I could to help someone out. I never stole, robbed, murdered, assaulted, picked on people or anything like that. Yet my lifestyle and womanizing ways hurt a lot of good people that did not deserve it and at the time I really did not even see it.

Even when I first came back to Indiana for a visit (that visit has now lasted 11 years, lol) and got someone pregnant I wanted no part of that. The whole time my ex was pregnant I was saying and doing all the right things, but inside I was hating every minute of it.

Then the day came that I stood next to a doctor and literally helped my child be born. I was immediately overcome with such an emotional force that I spent the 15 minutes immediately after my daughters birth crouched in the corner of the delivery room floor uncontrollably crying my eyes out. Everything about my life changed at that moment. It was truly an epiphany.

I had never really put anyone before myself until that point. I had never really loved anyone more than I loved myself until that point. I never really thought about how my actions effected others. I went from being a self absorbed person to a person who had seen the light in a matter of minutes. I started seeing myself and the world in a whole new perspective.

So much about myself changed that day and the bizarre part is I never even tried to change or thought about changing, it just happened. Almost overnight. I am not ashamed of the person I was before, that person was not a bad guy, just young and dumb.... yet I am glad that I am no longer that person.

I think people are like onions, in that they have layers. The very deepest core is permanent and unchangeable. The layer next to the core is also extremely difficult to change and barely ever changes in any strong measureable way...when you get to the very outside layer, the most superficial, that changes drastically... one year a person is infatuated with the letter W and the next year they are certain that the ultimate letter in the universe is R.

If a person is labeled a "bad guy" here, some say "he can never change"... but truth remains... the person can or cannot change based on what level their "crime" sits upon... if it was a deep or core level, the possibility of change is nearly zero. If the "crime" came from a less-than-deep level, it is certainly possible for them to change....especially if the crime itself goes against the true nature of the core of the individual!

Case in point...

I did something once (when I was 18) that would have me labeled here on the BOI as a "Bad Guy" and boy, it was BAD (did not involve live animals)... I was going through some changes on some of those middle layers of my onion, and I made a bad decision. I can still remember with perfect clarity the day the person I injured called me up and called me on the issue. I think if I'd had a hole in my big toe, ever ounce of blood would have dropped out of my body. I felt awful, once I realized the extent of my crime. I had never felt more sick in my life... not for being caught, but that I had DONE such a thing. I immediately made reparations far and above the level of my crime. Not worth it to go into the crime, but let's say I scammed someone for $100, I made sure to make reparations more than five times the value of the injury, and made sure to undo the injury (it WAS possible). I felt awful. I didn't want to even REMEMBER my crime. I wanted to ERASE it, but in spite of the lengths I went to to make it better, the wound to my own soul remains... because I acted OUT of character with the person who I am at my deepest level.

Mr. ReallyBad with a core as rotten as anything, might try to make changes, his outer onion layers might scream "good guy" but eventually he'll revert to form, he'll do something that will have him labeled a "bad guy" and he will feel remorse ONLY if he's caught in his act, actually DOING the bad thing is not the source of his remorse.... and he will lash out and blame the accusers, especially whoever it is who has caught him in his bad act. Mr. ReallyBad can NEVER truly change... he might revert to his "acts of good" but they will always be an act and will never be condoned by the inner self.

I think that few (if ANY) of the "good guys" on the BOI have 100% pure cores. Heck they probably all have somewhere closer to 90% as 100% pureness probably doesn't exist.... but the things that matter and make them a "Good Guy" in this universe here are all good. And I think that few if any of the bad guys are 100% BAD .... but they have few good guy virtues that will bring them praise on this site.

People CAN change, but only if we're not talking about the deepest core inside.

When I came back from Iraq, everyone and their brother was telling me how much I had changed. Also, when I came back from Iraq, I saw the most extreme personality change in my then-husband. Mine was caused by going to war, his by cocaine (which he was still on to the day he died, the first of this month) but both were quite remarkable by all around both of us. One for the better, one for worse.

Over 6 years ago I went through a change that is often called basic training. When we we sitting on the bus to take us over to the unit we would spend 9 weeks at for training, the drill sergeants boarded the buses and said, "Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives." I can see the differences between myself and non-military service civilians quite plainly almost every day.

Go back a little over 11 years ago, and I became a mother on Nov 22, 1993. Anyone who has a child knows that it changes your perspective immediately upon seeing the little person puff up and give his first holler. There is a world of difference between parents and nonparents.

These have all been deep, inner core type changes in me, where my whole perspective on life has altered. I can never go back to the person I was before I became a parent, before I became a soldier, or before I became a veteran. So to answer your question, Lucille, ask yourself if you are the same person you were before you had children?

My kids are grown and gone; but yes, their birth was a profound event and change in my life. But I still am the same me. Wiser, happier, but I am not sure I am different. I raised them with love, but I was a loving person previous to their arrival.
In my years as a nurse I have seen parents who did not love their kids; it is unfortunate but true, so kids do not always work that way for everyone.

I may have changed and just not have the self awareness to see it, certainly from their birth they gave me a different perspective of the world.

Everything changes. All parts are subject to change. I even refer to people as 'broken', meaning that they have allowed experiences to change their inner self in a negative way. Along with this is that 90% of the population will show you how not to be/do something right.

You can tie in the nature vs. nurture into this as well.

But to get back to the meat of this thread. Everythign changes. The degrees may vary or the change may be positve or negative but nothing is static. At soem level things always change. We couldn't survive without it.

I think this is a very hard question at best but here are my thoughts:

I have changed at different times for the good and sometimes the bad.

Im not sure at what point in your life you define "who" you are to be honest.

I was at 18 a high strung, head strong person who worked 3 jobs and went to college and paid my way threw. My parents have money but I was too stubborn to take it. I paid rent to them from 15 at my first job until I left home at 22.

At 22 I was still pretty straight headed, worked 2 jobs, went to rookie school and did hours and hours of volunteer work for the local sherrifs dept when they needed a female for intake rides on female intakes.

At 23 my grandfather died on my birthday and I became a very distant and sometimes a very mean antisocial person and began to work 3 jobs again although 2 of them were already full time, I felt I could sleep when I died.

By 25 I was divorced and even more angry at the world for what I thought it had "done" to me.

Then I think I grew up some by 26 maybe 27 not sure really some of that is still in the dark lol

I think I became who I am and was supposed to be with my first child at 30, I became a parent and it changed everything about my life and my goals.

Is my "inner core" or soul really any different from that 18 year old kid that wanted the world, probably not.

But I am different, yes, I think your SOUL stays the same but your mind has to adjust to the things that happen to you in your life.

I think you become stronger, better educated, better able to deal with bad situation etc. and learn that what you may have thought you could not live with or without some time ago really didn't even matter at all.

Perception changes I think along with toleration, patience and every aspect of how you think and feel, but the soul of a person I feel stays the same.

This is a very fascinating thread...many posts revealing quite a lot, and some quite touching !
I really haven't changed all that much...still the same obsessions, still the same grin all the time...I guess I have calmed down a little since the college days, and prefer a glass of wine to chugging a beer (except for in the summer...ahhh, heaven !!!) along with a good game of chess.

My wife says that I am the oldest twelve year old on the planet...perhaps she knows me too well.

Thanks to all of you for writing...very, very interesting.

greg