Why Does This Keep Happening To Me? You Already Know The Pattern - So Why Are You Still In It?
You understand your patterns, you can trace where they come from - and you're still living inside them, your patterns keep repeating. Here's why awareness alone doesn't change what your nervous system learned first - and what actually does.
ENERGY & SPIRITUALITYLOVE & EMOTIONS
5/11/20267 min read
It would be amazing that once we become aware of certain pattern(s), we’re able to change them fast instead of keep repeating the patterns. But even put that simply, it sounds too easy to be true. There's a special kind of frustration that keeps popping up when it comes to patterns and it's worth addressing more deeply.
This might resonate with you: you've been through, or you're currently going through, some form of inner work, which is bringing you more understanding, broadening your perspective, making you recognize the patterns you've been living inside for a long time. Over time, you become aware of your patterns and can rationally understand where they come from, why and when they show up, what can trigger them. You might be even putting a lot of effort, in various ways, in transforming what is no longer serving you and you promise yourself “next time things will be different”.
But then the same type of person enters your life and sooner or later, you start noticing the same dynamic starting to play out. Maybe not in the exact same way as before: the person is different, the context, the situation, the version of the story you’re living, but you can notice that the underlying pattern is still there and the core is the same.
The logical question that arises is: “Why does this keep happening to me?”
The Patterns Aren’t Random - There’s Consistency Behind Them
What I often explain to the people I work with is that they can’t expect to change the pattern right after they’ve rationally discovered it - because we’re not only mental beings. You can understand something at the level of thought, while it's still intact at the level of the body, the nervous system and the energy field. Each of those levels needs its own process.
How long we keep repeating the patterns depends on how deeply it's embedded in us. If your whole system was calibrated to a specific emotional frequency before you even had any consciousness about it or before you could make any changes about it (and here I’m referring to the childhood period of your life), these frequencies will keep repeating as they will feel “known” to you. It will feel like something that’s close to “safe” and “predictable”, even if it’s not necessarily good for you, even if it feels uncomfortable or draining.
This “calibration” is happening not only on the level of the physical body, but all your body levels and your energy field. It’s not living only in your thoughts and beliefs (although it can be most visible on those levels) but in your behaviour, choices, decisions, moves you’re making in your life.
For a moment, take a break from reading this article and think about the environment you grew up in. You don’t necessarily have to remember only the bad or dramatic moments, but everyday life. Did you feel tension that wasn’t really addressed? How did your parents' mood affect you and everything around you? Did you feel like you have to walk on eggshells or that maybe you have to earn your place?
Whatever the answers are, that is what your nervous system absorbed and this is what became your baseline, something that feels normal. Now, as your adult self, when you enter a space with similar frequency or when you meet people that bring out the most known and common behaviour of yours, some parts of you recognize it. This doesn’t have to be conscious recognition only, but the recognition in your body, your emotions, your energy field. These inputs and signals get registered as familiar - and familiar gets registered as safe, even if it’s the thing that drains you the most.
So, when you find that known frequency now, whether it’s in your emotional partner, friends, colleagues and work environment or family, your body will recognize it before your mind does and you will move toward it automatically.
When Something Feels Familiar, it Feels Safe - Even When it Isn’t
What feels familiar and what feels comfortable and safe isn’t the same, but your body and your mind might treat them as they are. Logically speaking, it would make sense that if we get in touch with something that’s bad for us, we’d naturally move away from what’s hurting us. But our nervous system works on recognition and our bodies will prioritize what’s known over what’s good almost every time. Until we break the cycle.
A good example for this is when you find yourself in a relationship that’s completely the opposite from any other previous relationship you had. Maybe you found a calmer partner or you're in a relationship that’s reciprocal or there is no drama and push-pull energy between you. Oftentimes, these relationships might feel wrong or boring, even unsafe at first. And that doesn’t mean they are, but for your nervous system, they’re not familiar.
What happens then, when something gets flagged as unfamiliar? It feels like a threat, despite the fact you might’ve been looking for it for a long time. You might end up asking yourself questions like:
“What am I doing in this relationship?”
“How come everything is peaceful, am I not seeing something here?”
“Why is there no drama, is this even a real thing between us?”
“This relationship feels boring.”
It can give you the impression that it’s boring, but in reality, it’s calmer, without constant oscillations, without you having to be in a constant alertness, scanning for what’s wrong, what’s the mood, what’s expected from you. If you find someone who’s steady, calm, emotionally available, not interested in living a drama, that can totally feel strange or even flat. Like something is missing. So, it can happen that you find yourself less interested or engaged in the relationship.
I don’t want you to call this a flaw in yourself or give it some harsh diagnosis like “being self-destructive”, because it’s “just” your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do and what it was designed to do. But that doesn’t mean that your old patterns are designed for or supportive of your current life and reality. The problem happens when those patterns and what is known is no longer serving you in your life.
Why Awareness and Good Intentions Aren’t Enough to Change These Patterns
As I mentioned before, many people expect that once they understand or see the pattern clearly, they should be able to change it. And yet, even with that knowledge, many people are still living the same patterns, just in different shapes. This can be confusing and I know it was confusing me when I was in my own patterns.
If I understand why something happens, why can’t I change it?
Understanding something is a mental process. You can easily decide in your mind that you’re going to do things differently, you might even start changing something in your life - and then you notice that you get pulled towards the known thing anyway. That doesn’t happen because you have a lack of willpower or because you’re a weak person, but because of the familiarity and recognition.
Going Back to Where The Pattern Was Created
So, how do you change it? First, you should go back to the level on which this pattern has been created. Not all patterns have been created in our childhood, but the vast majority of them were created exactly within our close family. Understanding the child who learned these patterns early in life, and understanding what those child’s needs were will give you a very real picture of which of your early needs weren’t satisfied. It will help you understand where and why this pattern started being formed in your life, which is the first step towards changing it. Yes, this is a mental awareness as well, but it’s also an emotional process through which you open up the part of yourself which was hidden all these years under the patterns and defense mechanisms that once served as your protection.
Then, you can slowly start connecting with that part of yourself by understanding what you can give to yourself (or better say, to the inner child that still lives within you), what environment that child needs, which dynamics, support and feelings it has never experienced. If you want to read more about what this process looks like, you can read the article Healing the Inner Child Through Energy Therapy.
Once you start fulfilling the needs that weren't met when they should have been, you will notice the change not only in the way your mind works, but how deeply you feel things, how much more connected you are to yourself; you can start noticing that you've started connecting to the parts of you that were running on default. And once you feel the change, your reality will start shifting as well. Your energy field will start releasing what no longer fits who you are today, the healing process will start at all levels of your body and slowly, you’ll start living in a different reality from what you’ve known all those years.
Change Is Slower Than Insight - And That's Actually a Good Thing
When we finally understand something and when we get the insight of what’s actually happening, that feels genuinely satisfying. It can feel like we finally got it, we finally understood what it was. And even though the insight can come in various ways and through various situations, the change itself is a slower process and often less satisfying than an insight.
But think of it this way: the real change, on a deeper level, on a level where the pattern has been created will take longer time, because it will be a change that actually holds. It will be the change that is affecting your base, the knowledge you have about yourself and everything around you. And every time you build something from scratch, the foundation has to be set properly, step by step.
You will start changing your original imprint and the frequency that once felt “like home”. When that starts to shift, the pull you felt towards familiarity will lose its power. Not all at once, but gradually and genuinely.
Going deeper and breaking the patterns
These deeper layers require actual work and energetic movement within your energy field. It’s not enough to just understand the pattern, but to release them at the capacity you’re ready to release them.
This is where Foundation Sessions can help, as they were designed exactly to start moving the energy through your energy centers, to remove what’s “extra” and to fill those parts of you that are running low.
A free 30-minute call is where we start.
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