Why Change Feels So Hard: Understanding Discounting Through Smoking | Men’s Psychotherapy Cornwall
Written by Carl Stephens, TA Psychotherapist (In Advanced Training), Falmouth, Cornwall
Why Change Feels So Hard | Discounting in Transactional Analysis Therapy
Men’s Psychotherapy Cornwall - Male-friendly psychotherapy - Sports & athlete therapy
Why do we stay stuck even when we want to change? A TA psychotherapist explains discounting, passivity, and the Discount Matrix, using smoking as an example.
Why People Don’t Change – A Transactional Analysis Perspective
Most people know that smoking is harmful. And yet many people continue to smoke.
This does not mean they are unmotivated, weak, or lacking insight. From a Transactional Analysis (TA) perspective, it means that a psychological process called discounting is likely operating. Discounting is not conscious denial or stubbornness; it is an unconscious interruption of awareness that makes effective action feel impossible.
In TA, discounting is mapped using the Discount Matrix (Schiff et al., 1975), a core model for understanding passivity, stuckness, and difficulties with change. Rather than asking “Why won’t people change?”, the Discount Matrix invites a more compassionate and clinically useful question:
“What is being discounted that makes change feel impossible right now?”
In this article, I use smoking as a simple, everyday example to illustrate how the Discount Matrix operates and how therapeutic change can be supported at each level. While the example is behavioural, the same process applies to anxiety, performance blocks, relationships, identity issues, and long-standing life patterns.
Change in Transactional Analysis: Contact With Reality
In TA, meaningful change depends on accurate contact with reality, with oneself, others, and the wider situation (Berne, 1961). The Discount Matrix shows four key points where this contact can break down:
The existence of a problem
The significance of the problem
The options for change
One’s personal ability to enact change
Using smoking as an example, we can see how discounting at each level leads to passivity, and how therapy can gently restore movement.
1. “There Isn’t Really a Problem”
Discounting the Existence of an Issue
At this level, the person does not experience smoking as a problem at all:
“I don’t smoke that much.”
“It helps me cope.”
“This isn’t really an issue.”
From the outside, the risks may be obvious. Internally, however, there is no recognised problem, and therefore no reason to change. Action would not make sense because nothing has been named.
How change is supported
At this level, therapy does not focus on stopping smoking. Instead, the work is about noticing. This may involve gently exploring patterns (“When do I smoke?”), bodily sensations, emotional triggers, or relational contexts. The therapist supports curiosity rather than persuasion.
In TA terms, change cannot begin until the Adult ego state has access to accurate information.
Until something is noticed, it cannot be changed.
2. “It’s Not That Big a Deal”
Discounting the Significance of the Issue
Here, the person acknowledges that they smoke, but minimises its importance:
“Lots of people smoke.”
“It’s not as bad as other things.”
“I’ll deal with it later.”
The problem exists, but it does not feel meaningful enough to mobilise action. This is a common place where people talk about change without changing.
How change is supported
Change is supported by linking behaviour to personally relevant consequences, rather than abstract or fear-based arguments. In therapy, this often means exploring impact on energy, mood, finances, relationships, self-respect, or performance.
Importantly, TA therapists do not rush to solutions here. Staying with ambivalence allows significance to emerge organically.
Change becomes possible when something matters enough.
3. “Nothing Will Work Anyway”
Discounting the Possibility of Change
At this stage, the person recognises that smoking is a real and significant problem, but feels trapped:
“I’ve tried before.”
“Nothing works.”
“Stopping would make things worse.”
This is often accompanied by hopelessness or resignation. The world feels small; options appear closed.
How change is supported
Therapeutic work here focuses on expanding perceived options. Rather than framing change as all-or-nothing (“you must stop”), the therapist collaborates to explore what might be possible: reducing, pausing, seeking support, or understanding what smoking provides emotionally.
In TA terms, this is about restoring Adult problem-solving capacity and reducing archaic script beliefs that limit choice.
Change becomes possible when the world feels larger again.
4. “Other People Can Change, I Can’t”
Discounting Personal Ability to Change
At this deepest level of discounting, the person accepts that:
smoking is a problem,
it matters,
and people can change
but believes they personally cannot:
“I don’t have the willpower.”
“I always fail.”
“There’s something wrong with me.”
Here, the difficulty is no longer the behaviour itself, but identity, script, and self-belief. This level of discounting is often rooted in early decisions about competence, worth, or agency.
How change is supported
Change occurs through the gradual restoration of self-efficacy, often within a reliable therapeutic relationship. Being taken seriously, believed in, and supported challenges long-held script conclusions. Small, achievable steps are prioritised over dramatic goals.
Change becomes viable when a person no longer experiences themselves as the problem.
From Passivity to Possibility
The Discount Matrix helps explain why people feel stuck without being resistant or oppositional. When essential information is discounted, whether about the problem, its importance, the options, or the self, passivity becomes the only logical response (Schiff et al., 1975).
Real change does not come from pushing harder or applying pressure. In TA psychotherapy, change comes from working at the correct level of discounting:
bringing awareness to what has not been seen,
taking impact seriously,
rediscovering options, and
rebuilding belief in oneself.
Smoking is only one example. The same psychological process applies to anxiety, performance issues in sport, relationship difficulties, work stress, and long-standing life patterns.
When discounting reduces, passivity softens, and change, often quietly and steadily, begins.
Working With Discounting in Therapy
As a Transactional Analysis psychotherapist and sport specialist based in Falmouth, Cornwall, I work with men and adults who feel stuck despite insight or motivation. Understanding where change is blocked allows therapy to be precise, respectful, and effective.
If change feels hard, it may not be because you are failing, it may be because something essential is being discounted.
Transactional Analysis therapy isn’t about forcing change or applying willpower. It’s about understanding where things are blocked and restoring choice, clarity, and agency.
If you’re struggling with habits, anxiety, performance issues, or feeling stuck despite insight, therapy can help you understand what’s happening beneath the surface and how change becomes possible again.
I offer Transactional Analysis psychotherapy for men, working both face-to-face in Falmouth, Cornwall and online across the UK.
You don’t have to push harder.
You can work at the right level.
Book your 30-minute consultation
Let’s explore what might be getting in the way and what needs to change.
📍 Based in Falmouth, Cornwall
🌐 Online therapy for men across UK
References
Berne, E. (1961). Transactional analysis in psychotherapy. Grove Press.
Berne, E. (1964). Games people play. Grove Press.
Schiff, A. W., Schiff, J. L., Mellor, K., Schiff, E., Schiff, S., Richman, D., & Fishman, J. (1975). Cathexis reader: Transactional analysis treatment of psychosis. Harper & Row.
Stewart, I., & Joines, V. (2012). TA today: A new introduction to transactional analysis (2nd ed.). Lifespace Publishing.
