Catalyst Moments: Sometimes One Insight Changes Everything

Psychotherapists help people change to become more purely their best selves—a beautiful paradox. Most change happens gradually—three steps forward, two steps back, over weeks, months, and years. But once in a while something life-altering happens. A phrase, a realization, a flash of truth breaks through. Suddenly you’re not the same. There’s a clear before-and-after, a permanent change.

The insights or experiences that generate such rare moments are catalysts. A catalyst rapidly accelerates a system to new complexity. With people, more complexity is often more compassion and deeper consciousness. Increasing complexity is the quiet magic of therapy, coaching, spiritual practice, great books, transformative workshops, and human intimacies. We all long for transformation (while also resisting change—we have conflicting drives). When truly transformative insights strike, they leave an imprint—a form etched in our adaptive unconscious.

Ethan is born

The week after my son Ethan was born, I went to see Ran, the Akira Kurasawa samurai epic based on King Lear. Twenty minutes in, I had to walk out. Even though I knew the warriors dying on screen were actors, all I could think was:
“They were babies once. Like my son.”

It was a catalyst moment. I had a deeper understanding of violence and love that has persisted these last forty years.

Love, Pain, and the Emotional Blindfold

What about relationships?

Certain crucial insights can transform how we fight, love, and heal—especially in our closest relationships. One insight that changed me was realizing that when I was angry at my wife Becky I was focused on my pain and her fault, while not feeling her pain and my fault. I started remembering this when I got angry, and I found it vastly easier to get back to love.

Think about the last serious argument you had with someone you love—especially with your intimate partner.
What happens inside you when you’re hurt and injured?

• Is there hot anger in your chest?
• Is there tense dread in your throat?
• What are you thinking? Usually, we get stuck in some emotional loops like: “I’m hurt and you’re responsible,” or “You don’t get it.”

In your argument, you’re probably focusing on your pain, “You’ve hurt me and shouldn’t have!” and your partner’s responsibility. “You caused all this!”

In this argument, do you feel responsibilities for creating and maintaining the problem? Usually not!

Most of the time we can safely surrender to loving, joyful, or generous impulses. Anger is more dangerous because anger wants to attack. Anger needs wise guidance to support healthy intimacy.

In your argument did you eventually feel empathy for your partner’s distress and apologetic for your mistakes? Since you’ve read this blog so far, you probably got back to love eventually, but how many minutes, hours, or days did you spend disconnected and resentful? Most of that time was unnecessary suffering.

Here’s an insight that can transform defensive patterns into deeper love.

In conflict, we are emotionally lost in our own pain and the other person’s responsibility. We become blind to our partner’s pain and our responsibility.

Really let that sink in.

When you embody this knowledge—when you consistently feel his or her pain and your responsibility—you have become a more complex, compassionate, and connected human being. You also have become a better friend and lover.

The Emotional Blindfold

The following couple sat down in my office chairs and began to fight. Within minutes, they were shut down, furious, frustrated, and frightened. Each knew theoretically that they played a role in the mess, but emotionally their role was dissociated and irrelevant. I calmed them down and explained about the pain/responsibility dynamics. They both agreed with the framework and immediately started their fight again.

He said, “She doesn’t listen when I try to apologize…”

I jumped in gently and firmly:
“You’re doing it right now. You’re focusing on her shortcomings. Do you want to help her out of her pain—or make it worse?”

He took a breath.
“I want to make it better.”

I saw his wife’s face soften and turned to her.
“It looks like you appreciate that.”

She smiled—then stiffened.
“But he should have known better…”

I interrupted gently and firmly:
“And now you’re doing it. Locking the door just when he’s trying to open it. Do you want to help or hurt?”

We had a bunch of such exchanges during the session

Toward the end, he suddenly said,
“If she could just…wait. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

I felt a surge of joy. He had just stopped cooperating with the argument and was reaching for connection.

Arguments are highly cooperative.

Conflicts involve partners instinctively working together—flipping between roles of victim, persecutor, and rescuer—to keep the drama going. Such dramas are choreographed defensive patterns—adaptive unconscious to adaptive unconscious.

Want to stop the dance?

Try this:
Focus on your lover’s pain and your responsibility.
Not as a tactic, but as a practice. A shift in presence.

It’s like yanking off the blindfold and seeing the whole terrain of frustration and love. Compassionate understanding connects us with others as well as well as interior parts of ourselves.

A Great Gimmick

The next time you’re in conflict, say to yourself:

“I’m not cooperating with this argument. I’m reaching to understand your pain and take responsibility for my part of the problem.”

This doesn’t mean you disappear or become a doormat.
It means you access relational power—the kind that heals, not harms.

The Mystery and the Work

I never know which moments will leave people changed. Sometimes they tell me, years later.

My job is to offer radical acceptance, to show up with curiosity, clarity, and care. Do my best and let go.

There’s a beautiful mystery to psycho/spiritual transformation.
Sometimes, the heart opens in a flash, sometimes millimeter by millimeter.

How about you?

After reading this blog, I suspect you are clearer about the pain/responsibility dynamics of your conflicts. Your next argument might involve you initially focusing on your pain and your partner’s responsibility while ignoring their pain and your responsibility. If you remember this blog and shift into your responsibility for creating and sustaining the argument, and your compassionate understanding of their pain, you might be having a catalyst moment right now!