25 Mar March 25, 2011 Ezine: Changing Disruptive Patterns
In the Becoming Safely Attached Workshop that happened a couple of weeks ago in Boston the group of us began to look at the embedded patterns that seemingly run our lives.
We spent the first day looking at what these patterns are, how they show up, and how they got laid down. The second day we explored the shame cycles we fall into that keep us trapped.
We all have these patterns that operate even when we’re trying to do it differently.
One of my supervisors, Daniel Brown, PhD taught me to see the similar basic structure that is entwined throughout our lives. As we become aware of these underlying patterns we start to see how they are woven through relationship after relationship.
The more you can identify the pattern the more you begin to see how pervasive and persistent they are.
As hard as it is to see these patterns show up everywhere, that awareness provides the key to change. Once we can see what the pattern is we begin to put a wedge into their unconscious operation.
Examples
Yesterday I talked with three clients who were confronting their patterns head on (none of these are their real names)
– Mark is noticing how hard it is to stand up for himself, how easily he disappears
– Mary saw how in finding the best in people she seems to overlook the parts of people who attack her
– Athena, despite her professional visibility, is realizing how she isolates and separates from people even as she cries from loneliness
Each of them struggles within this invisible netting that casts them into similar roles repeatedly in their lives. Our task is to tease apart the microscopic psychological tendrils that keep them bound.
Part of the vexing problem is realizing that these patterns don’t seem to be effected by our thoughts or our will to change them.
Try as we do we seem to repeat the same thing over and over again. As one of the participants in the Becoming Safely Attached workshop said, “I keep being hired by the same boss.”
That’s when we feel stuck. Trapped. Fall into feelings of hopelessness and despair. “Ugh.” Is the mild-mannered response we have. Inside we live with a sinking feeling. Things might change for other people, we tell ourselves, but for some reason, it can’t change for us.
We try to adapt to this harsh reality. We reassure ourselves. We tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. We’ll be okay.
Or we shut down whatever the longing is. We push it away and pretend to ourselves and others that we really don’t care if it changes.
That’s what comes out in the heart of therapy, these stories of longing, the secret hopes that it can be different if only there weren’t something wrong with us.
There isn’t anything wrong with you.
What happened is you learned – not intentionally, not because you wanted it to be that way – but through patterns of interactions that carved in a belief, a way of being, a perspective on life.
This happened early on before you had the self development to understand what was going on. You encoded the interactions through a different memory system, a feeling, non-verbal, body based system. That system isn’t as available to our conscious understandings.
Take my client, Mark for example. Growing up Mark’s family didn’t notice how smart he was. Worse than not seeing him his parents gushed over other people in his class. Instead of learning to value himself and his contribution he learned to devalue himself and keep himself in the background, second guessing himself. Even as Mark later excelled in life that underlying pattern of disappearing into the background persisted. It feels to him – and to all of us at those times – as if it’s just the way it is.
When we try to understand, logically and rationally, these body based patterns we come up with some good explanations. For the most part, those explanations are what we bring to therapy. We try to understand them even more. Hoping, of course, that the more we understand, the more we’ll be able to direct the change to these basic patterns.
Problem is, those explanations don’t always describe the felt experience.
Body oriented psychotherapies help us get in touch with the felt experience underlying the explanations. Accessing the felt experience (not just the feelings, but the body sensations) opens the doorway to change.
Even if we’re not in therapy we can begin to look, to be aware, to explore what is the common pattern that keeps occurring. None of this is to blame ourselves, judge ourselves, hate ourselves into doing it better, differently. Becoming aware – being mindful – is to wake up to these deeply embedded habits of mind.
We can slowly begin nudging ourselves toward alternative perspectives. As we do that we’ll feel less controlled by these patterns and begin to feel a sigh of relief. We start to partner with ourselves allowing a new, different, more nourishing future to open up.
If any of this sounds interesting there are still some openings in the Becoming Safely Attached Workshops in Chicago (April) and Ireland (May.) We’d love to have you join us.