I’ve always found I understand things more deeply through metaphor and example, and this way of thinking naturally shapes how I work as a therapist. Metaphors help me make sense of complexity without reducing it too quickly. They create a way of seeing experience that is shared, visual, and often easier to reflect on than explanation alone. They can also help people take a step back from something they feel caught up in, and look at it from a less personal and less blaming position. This can make it easier to notice the wider patterns and influences around a situation, rather than feeling that it is simply “about me” or “my fault.”
In therapy, I often find metaphors are particularly helpful for this reason. They offer a shared language for experiences that can otherwise feel hard to describe, especially when people feel stuck in patterns that keep repeating. They also allow us to step slightly to one side of a familiar experience and look at it differently, which can open space for new understanding and possibility.
Around 2012, when I began teaching on the Post Graduate Systemic Therapies Papers at the University of Otago and was increasing my therapeutic work with couples; this particular metaphor came to mind. It grew out of many conversations with couples, families, and colleagues about the experience of trying to make and more specifically, maintain change.
Again and again, I heard a similar story. At first, something shifts. Things feel better. There is hope, sometimes even relief. But over time, that sense of progress fades. Old patterns return, and what felt different gradually slips back into what is familiar. This cycle can keep repeating, leaving people feeling stuck - caught in a sense of revolving rather than evolving.
It was in this context that I began to think about change as something similar to trying to complete a Rubik’s Cube.
At first, there is energy, motivation, and hope. You work at it, and eventually one side comes together. This is often experienced as rewarding and encouraging, and it can bring a real sense that change is possible. It creates momentum for further change.
But this is where things become more challenging!
To complete other sides of the cube, you can’t simply preserve the side you have already solved. At some point, it has to be disrupted. The stability of what has been achieved needs to be loosened, at least temporarily, in order for other sides to come into view and be worked on. Progress in one area often requires a willingness to unsettle another.
This is where a particular pattern can emerge. There is often a genuine effort and intention to build on what has already been achieved and to create further change. However, once the achieved side of the cube is disrupted in the process, things can quickly become unsettling. In response, there can be a strong pull to restore what has been lost. Using this metaphor, it can look like initially turning the top of the cube 180 degrees, then the middle section 180 degrees, and then the bottom section 180 degrees in an attempt to try to bring further sides into place; but then promptly turning them back again in order to return the cube to how it was, bringing back that sense of having one completed side again. There is a powerful draw to re-establish what previously felt stable and successful, even when the original intention was to move towards further change.
While this is completely understandable—and can bring short-term relief— it can also mean that things settle back into how they were before the next stage of change has had a chance to take shape.
Lasting and meaningful change often requires tolerating a greater degree of uncertainty than this, being persistent and consistent. Change doesn’t often happen immediately but can come from a thoughtful willingness to let familiar patterns loosen, so that new and more helpful ways of doing things can emerge. In this sense, change is not only about achieving stability, but also about developing a capacity to live with temporary instability in the service of longer-term progression.
From this perspective, the challenge of change is not just about knowing what to do differently, but about learning how to stay with things when they feel unsettled again. It can be uncomfortable when familiar patterns start to shift, and there is often a natural wish for things to settle quickly. Over time, it involves building trust that this sense of movement and uncertainty is part of a larger process of change unfolding, even if it isn’t immediately clear where it is heading.
