How to Move from Understanding Your Patterns to Actually Changing Them

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Onattachment. In today's episode, I am answering the question of how do I go from knowledge and insight about my patterns to actually changing them. So, what do I do if I've been doing the work for a long time and I feel like I really understand myself. I know what my patterns are. I know why they're there. I know where it all comes from, but I'm still stuck in them or I still feel this sense of, you know, being at the mercy of my patterns. This is one that, you know, many people will have experienced and maybe come up against if you've been quote unquote doing the work for maybe months or years and yet you're still feeling like your patterns are in the driver's seat. your subconscious, your blueprints, your attachment style, you know, particularly in those crucial moments gets the better of you and that part is driving the bus and it's taking you back to places where you don't want to go. And I think I'd almost say that it's more frustrating and more disheartening to be in that place when you have the knowledge and awareness because it feels like you've been shortch changed. it feels like you know better and you've put in the work.

[00:01:14]So why am I still here? Why am I still doing this? And I think that, you know, in congruence between what we know and what we're still doing can really be a source of shame and it can feed into the story of, you know, maybe I'm just going to be like this forever because maybe you've been really throwing yourself into personal development and reading books and listening to podcasts and going to therapy and all of the things and yet you're still finding yourself in that same place. Uh, and so I want to talk today about why that might be and where you might want to focus your energy if that's an experience that you can relate to. Maybe you're in it at the moment. Maybe you've been there before.

[00:01:55]Because I think there are some really important lessons that come out of this question. I should also say that this exact topic is something that I cover in my free training on how to heal anxious attachment and finally feel secure in life and love. I talk about why the work isn't working even though you've been doing all of the right things. So, why you still feel stuck despite all of the work that you've been doing. I go into that in lots of detail in this workshop alongside my three-step framework for healing anxious attachment. I also cover one of the most frequently asked questions that I get, which is, you know, how do I know if the things that I'm experiencing in my relationship are because the relationship isn't right or is it just a function of my anxiety? So I go through that as well. Uh so if any or all of those things feel resonant for you, it's definitely worth registering for and coming along to my free training on healing anxious attachment which I will put in the show notes. Okay, so let's talk about this bridging the gap from insight to actual change. Now I think it's really important to say at the outset that as much as we can feel a great sense of urgency around changing our patterns, these patterns run deep.

[00:03:09]Uh and expecting there to be, you know, a short walk from I read a great book and now I understand myself to suddenly I'm a new person and all of those things are, you know, faded away into the rearview mirror. It's just not realistic. And I think it is important to be honest and realistic when we're doing any of this stuff around, you know, this has been with me for a long time. This has been my modus operandi.

[00:03:32]This has been the way that I have navigated relationships. Our attachment style forms this internal working model that shapes how we perceive ourselves and others and the world around us.

[00:03:44]That's not something that we just get to switch off. Um, and I would argue that we wouldn't want to because those patterns are not wrong or bad. they're maybe just ills suited to our present circumstances or the circumstances that we're trying to create for ourselves.

[00:03:59]So, it's more like needing to gradually outgrow an old way that no longer fits and experiment with what a new healthier adapted way might look like. I think even that mindset shift of you know a gradual metamorphosis a gradual outgrowing and growing into is much kinder and more compassionate and has more patience built into it. Uh and ironically even that uh you know offering ourselves that grace and not approaching the process of growth with this sense of urgency and you know a veiled self-rejection this this sense of I need to stop being like that because that is bad. How do I change myself? How do I fix myself? I think all of that is actually just reinforcing the sense of brokenness and shame that can sit at the heart of so many of our patterns. So having a lot of grace and actually starting from the place of wanting to understand, wanting to be compassionate towards ourselves and almost gifting ourselves a new way from a place of deep love and devotion to our well-being rather than enforcing a new way and trying to white knuckle it because we think there's something wrong with us.

[00:05:14]It might look similar on the surface, but it comes from a very different place within us. uh and quite simply one works and one doesn't. Um so trying to soften the sense of urgency, trying not to approach our growth from a place of self-rejection is really really crucial.

[00:05:30]Uh and you know I encounter this all the time amongst students in my courses who sign up and the way my healing anxious attachment course is structured is it's eight modules over eight weeks. Uh, and we'll often have people reaching out asking for all eight modules to be released on day one, you know, because I've got some time this weekend and I really want to get through it because my relationship's in dire straits and I have to fix it. Uh, and you know that to me when I hear that, I completely understand where it's coming from. That place of desperation uh, and really feeling at rock bottom, but just devouring lots of information over the course of an afternoon isn't some silver bullet that's magically going to change. uh you know so much of the growth is a gradual process of clocking reps to build a new muscle to show our system what's possible to gather evidence. Uh, and that's why it's so much more important, I would argue, to focus on action that creates new experiences.

[00:06:32]Because when we have new experiences, sometimes referred to as corrective experiences, it registers in the database or the library of our nervous system. If we consider that our nervous system is essentially a predictive machine that is, you know, surveying the world around us and registering threat and deciding what to do based on all of the things that might happen. And our assessment of all the things that might happen and what we might need to do to best navigate a situation is based on our past experiences and the things that we have come to know about the world around us from everything that we've, you know, seen and been through. And so when everything we've seen and been through is negatively coded when it comes to relationships, then just knowing that about ourselves doesn't allow us to feel safe enough to do something differently. So really just realizing that when it comes to a lot of the deeper attachment patterns, nervous system work, we need to focus on having new experiences that show us that a different way is possible. So, what does that look like in practice? Rather than doing the thing you've always done in conflict, changing your experience might mean pausing instead of snapping. It might mean taking a breath or saying, "Can I start again? That didn't come out right." Or, "It feels like this is getting heated. Can we take a breather?"

[00:08:00]Like, it might just be one step to the side of what you usually would do. And that is creating a new pathway for you to realize that it doesn't have to go the way it's always gone. And you know when you do something differently, the ripple effect starts to play out. And so you're collecting this lived experience that says, okay, there are other options available to me. And what might it be like if I took one of those other options rather than defaulting to whatever self-protective mechanisms I've historically leaned on that maybe haven't been working terribly well for me or haven't been getting me what I really want when it comes to relationships. So a big part of it is just experimentation. And of course that requires time. It requires patience because we can't fast track all of that.

[00:08:50]We can't just frontload all of these new experiences so that we can build up the evidence. We kind of have to live life and allow ourselves to roll with the punches a little. And you know, as and when we come up against these experiences that feel loaded, that feel triggering. Those are the moments when you it's almost like game day. I often tell clients and students this when they say like, "Oh, I, you know, had a fight in my relationship and I'm really disappointed in myself because, you know, I've been doing all this work and so I'm upset that that happened." And the reframe that I always give people is like, no, that's what we do the work for. We're training for those moments that absolutely will happen so that we can arrive at those moments as maybe a different version of ourselves or a version of ourselves that has more capacity, different skills, new tools that we can then put into practice so that we can create a new experience for ourselves. So it's not about doing all of this work so that we don't experience the hard moments. It's doing the work so that we arrive at the hard moments with the capacity to do things differently.

[00:09:54]So that we then maybe shift a couple of degrees to the left or to the right. Uh and then we set ourselves on a new trajectory in our relationships. And over time, if we do that, we're just shifting a little bit and a little bit.

[00:10:07]You know, when we then zoom out, we can see that we've charted a whole new course for ourselves. And you know, I've said this before, the the process of healing and growing is rarely one big dramatic moment. It's more likely something where you'll wake up one day and look back and realize that you've actually changed so much in lots of little ways such that the things you used to do by default. The ways that you used to react, the thought patterns that you felt really stuck in are no longer as frequent or it would be unusual for you to go there and you know in place of those old ways there is a new way and maybe that new way feels a little more spacious. Maybe it feels like there's more choice there. Maybe you feel a little freer. Maybe you feel like you can respond rather than just lash out or react. Maybe you feel the ability to notice your thoughts in real time and get a bit curious about them rather than, you know, taking those thoughts and immediately panicking and acting on them. You know, all of these things.

[00:11:11]It's not super sexy, but there's huge amounts of freedom in all of that choice and awareness. To me, that's really the the whole aim of the game in healing and growing is not that we get to opt out of anxious thoughts or difficult emotions or hard experiences in our relationships. It's just arriving to all of those things from this grounded place where we feel like we have a degree of choice, where we feel like we have more capacity, where we feel like we can exercise some agency and hold ourselves through those moments and have enough space that we can show up to those moments in a way that aligns with our values. I think when we can do that and that doesn't mean behaving perfectly all the time, but it at least means like I'm coming from a place of selfrust and selfrespect and integrity leading from that place rather than acting out of fear means we tend not to have to clean up the mess so much afterwards because we do less damage to ourselves to our relationships. And all of that then compounds in the direction of creating safer relationships with others, more trustworthy and secure relationships with others, but also a safer internal environment because we're not so, you know, gripped by fear and anxiety and panic all the time. We trust ourselves to navigate life. And you know that's really what I always come back to you know being the the point of it all is so that we have that selfrust that you know I can't control what happens but I trust in myself to navigate it with integrity and grace to have my own back to lead with my values and you know then I kind of have to hand over the rest of it to the universe. I'm realizing now that I've ventured so far from the original question which was, you know, how do I bridge the gap from knowledge and awareness to implementation? Hopefully, you can find something of use in that rambling word salad. Maybe to recap, I think, you know, ironically enough, when we can drop the urgency, when we can drop that needing to be somewhere and certainly not approach our growing from a place of needing to fix something that's broken, rather wanting to equip ourselves with, you know, an expanded capacity and new tools and having new experiences that reflect that, that teach our system that it's okay to trust doing things differently because remembering the old way has been protective for us. It's not just dysfunctional. It's not just sabotaging for the hell of it. You know, there's a part of you or maybe several parts of you that really deeply believe that, you know, all of those dysfunctional patterns are essential to keeping you safe. So approaching those parts with almost reverence, right, and gratitude for the ways in which you've kept yourself safe while also acknowledging that it's time to try something new. Um, I think all of those mindset pieces and, you know, that is really a shift in our inner environment to approach healing in that way. I think that's when things start to really soften and that's so essential. I've said this many times before and I will keep saying it because that tends to be the difference between people who really make strides and experience profound shifts in their patterns is when they're not approaching themselves from that place of self-rejection and self-criticism but rather curiosity, compassion and really loving stance towards themselves. So I think that's crucial and then it is really just a matter of you know time and reps allowing life to serve up to you those opportunities to forge a new path to experience a new way and over time you'll look back and realize that you have grown. I think maybe that's another piece as well is doing a stock tag because naturally we focus on all of the imperfections. we focus on all of the screw-ups or the things that we wish we hadn't have said or or whatever. Um, and in that negative bias, we can miss all of the growth that we've already been experiencing. And I think it really is worthwhile to reflect and look back and go, "Wow, I have come a long way."

[00:15:33]And maybe there's still a long path ahead of me, but it's good to stop and celebrate and be proud of yourself because you know it it's brave work. It's courageous work and most people will never do it. Uh and so the fact that you're even on the path is something you should be really proud of. I hope that that is helpful. And of course, if you are wanting to dive deeper into this work and have some structure and support, uh you may want to check out my programs on my website. I haven't been talking about them much recently, but I have uh healing anxious attachment, which is my signature course. I have a course on anxious avoidant relationships called Secure Together, which is designed for couples and is something that I created with my partner Joel. Uh, and I also have a breakup program called Higher Love. Um, so if any of those feel like they might be a support for where you're at, uh, you may want to check those out. Okay, thanks so much for joining me, guys. I hope that this episode has been helpful for you and I look forward to seeing you again