How Childhood Patterns Shape Actions Today

Lurking in your subconscious are beliefs, habits and patterns that you developed in childhood.  Even though today you may not consciously connect to those old beliefs or patterns, they can still be shaping your actions today. 

The great part is that by becoming aware of how the mind organizes itself through patterns and by learning ways to consciously become aware of old patterns, you can begin to consciously create patterns that serve who you are today instead of who you were 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

The process of pattern changing and creation has five different aspects:

1. Having a greater understanding about the nature of habits and patterns and what they represent
2. Identifying your habits and bringing the unconscious elements of the pattern to the surface
3. Evalutating which habits serve you today and which ones need changing or modifying
4. Honoring and acknowledging how pattern served you in the past if it isn’t serving you so you can release it
5. Modifying and changing the patterns that need updating

A client of mine, Marcy (name changed), last week had a piece of this pattern awareness show up for her in our session.  Marcy wakes up every day between 5-6 am but finds that she can’t get up despite the fact that her body doesn’t feel as good when she stays in bed.  She was trying to identify why if she is being awakened by her body in a way that feels right and natural to her, she doesn’t have the will to get up. 

Often we associated willpower as the culprit in not being able to make a change or follow a natural cue from the body-mind.  However, the truth is often that is has less to do with willpower than with not understanding the underlying patterning and legitimate need the body-mind is trying to honor.

In Marcy’s case, she realized that as a child she would wake at this same 5-6 am but her parents, who didn’t want to wake up or have her get up, gave her a very strong message that it was not ok to wake up at that time.  As soon as she connected these pieces, it became very clear to her that her continuing to stay in bed after she woke up was a remnant of that old childhood message and pattern.

In this case, her old childhood pattern was in conflict with a current need.  Once she was able to recognize where the conflict was coming from and understand the two pieces, she was able to step into the place of deciding how she wanted to alter the pattern.

I will be teaching a coaching workshop on this very topic of “How Childhood Patterns Shape Actions Today”on Tuesday, February 2, 6:15-7:15 pm.  If you find that you seem to be reacting today in ways that don’t seem aligned with who you are or you want to change your patterns, I invite you to come explore!

Find The Key To Unlock Your Pattern

In changing a habit or pattern, we often tend to try to change the outer behavior without finding the core key that unlocks the pattern itself.  However, as a BodyMind Coach, I have found the process of shifting patterns to be far more effective when you look underneath the surface of the outer behaviors and find the hidden lock first.

I had a client do just this over the past two weeks.  My client, Jane (name changed) is wanting to shift her eating patterns.  She feels that she eats excessively often as a stress response and is not happy with the results of the extra body weight.  In the past, she has tried to control the eating with restrictive dieting and mental planning – neither of which has worked.  From these past experiences, she has felt that she is lacking in self control and that if she could just control herself and her eating, the problem could be solved.

This feeling of lack of self control often shows up in trying to change a habit based on treating the outer symptoms.  Because the outer behavior is really the outlet or vehicle for the underlying need, if we respond only to this vehicle, we aren’t really taking care of the need that we are trying to meet with the behavior.  And as a result, the attempts aren’t successful and we often think it’s because we’re not trying hard enough instead of realizing that we’re trying to fix the wrong part of the problem.

Over two sessions, Jane was able to understand more about how she is using the food and where some of the pattern came from.  The first big “Aha” for Jane was that at the core of eating large amounts of food was a fear of losing something which came an earlier event in her life, again where she felt a lack of control.   The amount of food she was eating was an unconscious way she was trying to “fill up” that empty space.  While this “Aha” left her feeling light and happy since she had uncovered a piece of the puzzle, it in itself didn’t automatically change her behaviors.

In the second session, Jane explored the different times she wanted to eat when it wasn’t purely to satisfy her physical hunger.  Though she identified three major situations when she tended to overeat, she discovered that within each of those areas she was using food as a reward to counterbalance something that felt challenging.  With this realization, we acknowledged that she had a legitimate need that her body-mind was trying to meet.  And that her current way of meeting that need wasn’t serving other parts of her.  Her homeplay for the week is to explore all the ways she can reward herself that satisfy that need for counterbalancing her challenges without making her feel bad in other ways.  At this time, Jane has also made a conscious choice not to use food as one of the possible rewards though for some people finding different, healthier foods could also be an option.

Jane is turning her lock.  She may not completely have the door to her pattern fully open, but she is well on her way.  And her example highlights beautifully that by understanding what the lock is, you are much more able to find the key to unlock it!

I will be exploring more of these ideas and other ways to Beat the Weight Loss Blues on Monday, January 18th.  Come and join the fun if you are looking for your own keys.  Click on the above underlined link for all the registration details.

Are You Holding Someone Else’s Expectation

Many times in BodyMind coaching my client discovers that what on the surface appears to be a restriction or a block, can actually be an external expectation that she is subconsciously holding.  These expectations may come from a specific person or they might come from your culture or a sub-group such as an organization, company, or even your extended family traditions.

I had a client recently who discovered just such an expectation, which in her case was around exercise.  My client came to coaching to be able to function better in her life, specifically in managing a pattern of anxiety.  Part of this management revolved around the balance in her daily activities in taking care of her family and herself.  Within a couple sessions, she had a new anxiety tool kit in place and was functioning significantly better.  It was at this point that she choose to explore how to make exercise a more consistent factor in her self care.

As we looked at her exercise patterns, what kept coming up was that exercise didn’t make the top of her priority list yet she had a continuous underlying message that she “should” be exercising more often.  As we delved into the should and what the exercise should be and look like, she found that both her background as a nurse and her husband’s way of exercising had created expectations about what exercise should be for her…but that deep down she didn’t fully agree with them for herself.  Just by seeing the origin of the expectation, she was able to begin to look at the role SHE wanted exercise to be in her life.  She flipped the external expectation to a personal intention.  And with that change, she changed the energy around how she felt about exercise. 

She is now exploring the idea that exercise doesn’t have to be the same and have a rigid look or feel.  Rather, she is looking at how exercise can fit into her life with flexible ease, as part of a natural desire.  I’m confident that through her realizations and change in perceptions that she will develop a new, empowered relationship with exercise to fit her own needs.  And the critical component in making this change was the recognition that she was holding someone else’s expectation.

Are you feeling stuck?  If so, look and see if you have a hidden expectation lurking beneath the surface!

Client Case Study: An Interesting Reflection on Lists

I had a client this morning who brought to the table a pattern that I think many of us hold in today’s modern society that I’d like to share…the ongoing burden of lists.

The background.  Jill (name has been changed for privacy) has been having some ongoing tension in the mouth, jaw and neck for the past several months which we’ve been exploring.  By her own description, she is a task-oriented, efficient, perfectionist.  She has a part-time job that really requires full-time hours, is a mother, and has an upcoming social event that is taking lots of planning and time.  Put all these pieces together and my client has found herself in a highly pressurized environment!

Prior explorations and discoveries.  As I mentioned, my client has been working on this pattern for several months.  We have done regular CranioSacral Therapy and massage to soften the tissues, we have done inner mouth techniques to release the tension in the jaw and re-align the jaw joints, and we have strategized about ways to deal with the stress through a specific meditation.  We also explored left brain forms of self support from new communication patterns in the work situation to her methods of delegating or seeing when she doesn’t delegate.  All of this has helped but the tightness continues to come back.

Beneath the symptoms.  The cornerstone of my work is that symptoms in the body are messages from within that something is imbalanced and is asking for help.  This morning we dug deeper under the surface to look at what the tension in the mouth might be saying.  And in doing so, an interesting pattern showed up around lists. 

The Lists.  Many of of us use lists to keep our tasks organized and help us move forward towards goals.  Jill came in saying that she felt weighted down under the endless lists.  She has a master list for work, another master list for her social event, then she has her daily lists of the tasks off the master list that she wants to accomplish that day.  Any of this sound familiar?!  Right now, the lists are never ending and no matter who much she accomplishes, there is still so much left.  The energy around these lists, therefore, feels heavy and creates pressure.

The left side of Jill’s body is the area that is having the greatest tension.  This side of the body is also connected to the right brain which is that aspect that ties in with the emotions, the state of being.  In the discussion about the lists, Jill came to the realization that she does trust that she will get the items done but she doesn’t like who she is in this process and how she is feeling.  She wants to be in a better internal place of ease while doing these tasks.  Both of these ideas reflect a being state of energy with emotional components which ties is with the tension held in the left side of the body.

We then ask the left side of the body what it needed today to feel greater ease.  The answer was to stop making lists…a request my client didn’t think she could do.  No problem.  The list is simply the vehicle not the real issue so we began to explore underneath the list.  For my client, her stated purpose of the list is to acknowledge that she is getting things done.  Notice that purpose isn’t about staying on task or actually getting the task done because she knows she will do that.  This is an important distinction because while she states that the point of lists is to create acknowledgement, this is not what’s happening!  Jill current pattern is that she finishes a task and instead of pausing to think about what she’s finished, bask in her success, or acknowledge a job well done…she moves directly into the s pace of knowing she has more to do and feels pressure to get to the next task.  It’s a double whammy…no positive energy flowing from feeling successful and pressure to do more in a cycle that seems to be never ending.

Expanding awareness and new options.  This awareness created real clarity for my client not only about what she was doing but that her actions weren’t supporting her needs…this disconnect thus triggering her body to “speak up”.  In discovering this awareness, all the tension in the right side (connected to the logical left brain) went away and the tissues on the left side softened from my perspective but still felt tight to my client.  The inspired action to begin to shift this pattern and align it with her truth was for today to focus only on the celebration, the success of a job well done every time she crosses an item off the list.  Yes, there will still be more items on the list that she will be working towards but the focus on her energy will be elsewhere.  And she likely will not be able to hold the self request perfectly because shifting patterns does take time.  However, the experience itself will continue to increase her awareness and each time she pauses for those 30-60 seconds after crossing off an item, a new thread of energy will be added to the new neural (brain) messages which becomes a new pattern over time.

What little adjustments can be made to your pattern to  line up the actions with your truth?  And if you’re a list maker, is the process serving your needs?

Perception Management

I was recently reading a David Baldacci book in which part of the theme was around percpetion management.  In the book, there was a perceptioin managanemtn (PM) firm whose sole job was to create a “truth” that fit the clients need to be broadcast out to the world.  According to Mr. Baldacci, these such firms do exist and governments use them to control not only the information the public receives but the “truth” of situations, like what is really happening around war.

Although I have no doubt that this happens on a societal level, I would also posit that it happens within companies, families and individuals even without the assistance of an actual PM firm.  Just think about the “truths” that get held and perpetuated in society such as if you are thin, beautiful and rich, life will be good.  On one level, we know this isn’t true and see that evidence in the traumatic and dramatic lives of movie stars.  Yet, even with the contradictory evidence, many individuals, with the help on continued marketing for products, continue to buy into this belief on some deep level.

Families can also perpetuate certain “truths” about such things as gender roles, self worth, cover ups, and archetypes.  These beliefs or truths that get “sold” to individual by families or cultures, form a foundation for beliefs and patterns which shape individuals.  Often this buy in is on a unconscious level and many of these beliefs are not fully recognized.

The good news is that you can become your own PM company and re-create the truths that serve who you are and who you want to be.  It may take some detective work to root out the old “truths” that aren’t yours or no longer apply to who you are but that in itself can be a freeing process.  Then the real fun begins as you craft your own strategy and marketing plan to put in place the reality that you wish to hold for yourself.

Of course, all of this does bring up the interesting question of, “What is truth and with different perceptions is there ever an absolute truth?“  What are your thoughts on this question?