Why Patterns Are So Hard to Change
“I understand where my patterns come from. Why can’t I change them?”
If you’ve done a lot of work and paid a lot of money to understand the origins of your patterns, tendencies, or behaviors, you may be understandably frustrated when this knowledge doesn’t give you the power to change them.
While you do have the power to oppose the patterns by reframing your thoughts, using healthy habits like exercise and meditation, or having friends hold you accountable, the results only last as long as you continue to do those things, and in some cases, they don’t work at all. For the first 12 years after my mom died, I participated heavily in workshops, programs, and therapies, which used these kinds of methods. What I noticed in myself and others was that people would make improvements with some patterns, but others were just too strong to oppose, or too invisible.
So what’s going on? After I learned about trauma and discovered Peak States Therapy, the modality that I now practice, I realized that these patterns are created by us in moments of extreme distress, to keep ourselves safe from those moments ever happening again. By opposing the patterns, we are fighting against our own impulses, which is why it’s so difficult.
For example, many children are met with punishment or reprimand for trying to assert needs or enforce boundaries, which often looks like “talking back” to adults. The children are shocked and hurt by this, so they create a pattern of being agreeable and suppressing their “unacceptable” feelings. This keeps them safe from being punished, but then they grow up and wonder why they have trouble standing up for themselves or having hard conversations with their relationship partner.
Eventually, they try to understand why they act this way, because it’s messing up their lives. Aha, it was because their parents punished them for talking back. “Now that I know this, I can remind myself that it’s not my partner who I’m afraid of, it’s my parents,” they say. Except… the fear never really goes away, no matter how many times they push through it. And when they have a bad day at work, or a bad week, and then they have to have a hard conversation on top of that, it can feel like too much. So they say “I’ll just wait until a better time.” (We know where that leads.)
The problem is that they are still living with the impact of being punished all those years ago. The pattern persists because the pain of being punished still lives within them, and they desperately don’t want it to happen again. In order to let go of the pattern, they have to heal the trauma of being punished. (And yes, it is trauma. Anything from the past that still affects you this way is trauma.)
The good news is that once you heal the trauma, the pattern disappears on its own, permanently. You don’t have to breathe first or reframe your thoughts or use any techniques, just like someone who heals their broken foot doesn’t have to use crutches. You just… walk. Or have that conversation.
While “permanently” may sound like a lofty claim, Peak States Therapy is not the only modality that can do this. The most well-known is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing), but there are others such as Somatic Experiencing and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). But I like Peak States because it’s extremely versatile and comprehensive, and can address a very wide variety of issues and patterns. Plus, I’m really friendly and nice.
If you’ve had enough of dealing with your patterns and would like to explore what kind of changes are possible, send me a message. I’d love to show you a new paradigm of healing and help you step into a new level of freedom and autonomy.
