Why Do We Keep Returning to Familiar Emotional Patterns?
Have you ever noticed yourself returning to an emotional state that you don't actually enjoy? Perhaps life becomes relatively peaceful and you start looking for what's wrong. A relationship feels secure, yet part of you becomes restless or pulls away. You repeatedly find yourself angry, overwhelmed or disappointed, even though another part of you desperately wants things to be different.
It can be tempting to describe this as being “addicted” to an emotion. But our relationship with familiar emotional states is more complex than simply becoming hooked on a particular chemical released by the brain. Our brains and bodies are continually learning from experience, and patterns that are repeated, particularly those connected with strong emotion, protection, relationships and reward, can become increasingly familiar and automatic.
Sometimes we don't consciously choose the emotional state at all. We simply find ourselves travelling down a pathway we've travelled many times before.
Why Familiar Doesn't Necessarily Mean Comfortable
We tend to imagine that we naturally move towards what feels good and away from what feels bad. Human behaviour isn't always that straightforward.
Something can be uncomfortable and still be familiar. Anger might give us access to power when vulnerability feels more difficult. Busyness might protect us from the discomfort of slowing down. Longing for unavailable people might feel more familiar than actually receiving love. Criticism might protect us from disappointment. Drama and intensity can make us feel alive when calm feels strangely empty.
This doesn't mean we're consciously creating suffering or that painful experiences happen because we secretly want them. It means that within patterns where we have some participation and choice, there can sometimes be something worth becoming curious about: What does this familiar state give me?
The Body Learns Patterns Too
These patterns aren't experienced only through our thoughts. They can become deeply embodied.
If you've spent years rushing, for example, slowing down may initially feel surprisingly uncomfortable. Your mind might immediately find something else that needs doing. Your body may feel restless. You might reach for your phone, begin planning or suddenly remember something “urgent”.
Similarly, if you're accustomed to being the person who supports everybody else, receiving support may create discomfort rather than relief. Being appreciated might make you want to deflect. A secure relationship might awaken an impulse to withdraw. Expressing anger might feel dangerous, while criticism comes easily.
This is why intellectual insight doesn't always create change on its own. We can understand a pattern perfectly and still find ourselves repeating it when the familiar situation arises.
Our thoughts, emotions, body and relationships all participate in the pattern.
What Might the Pattern Be Doing for You?
One of the most useful shifts I've found is moving away from asking only ‘How do I stop doing this?’ and becoming curious about ‘What is this pattern doing for me?’
You might explore questions such as:
What situations or emotional states do I repeatedly find myself in?
What tends to happen immediately before the pattern begins?
What do I feel in my body when it happens?
What does this pattern allow me to feel, express or avoid?
What does it protect me from?
What do I gain from it, even if I dislike the consequences?
What might become possible if I no longer needed it?
And strangely, what might be difficult about that?
That last question can reveal a lot.
Someone who desperately wants to be seen might discover that remaining unseen also protects them from judgement. Someone who wants more rest might discover that busyness gives them a sense of value. Someone who wants greater intimacy might discover that choosing unavailable people protects them from the vulnerability of actually receiving love.
None of this means the pattern is wrong. Often it makes considerable sense when we understand what it has been trying to do for us.
Working With the Different Parts of Ourselves
This is where parts work, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), can be particularly useful. Rather than seeing ourselves as inconsistent or self-sabotaging, we can recognise that different parts of us may want different things.
One part might long for intimacy while another fears being hurt. One part wants visibility while another feels safer remaining unseen. One wants rest while another believes stopping is dangerous. One wants change while another has built an identity around the very thing we're trying to leave behind.
Instead of trying to defeat the resistant part, we can become curious about it.
What are you trying to protect me from?
What are you afraid would happen if I changed?
What do you need me to understand?
This can create a very different relationship with behaviours we previously judged as weakness, sabotage or failure.
Shadow Work ~ Meeting What We've Learned Not to Be
Sometimes the emotional state isn't the real issue at all. The deeper question is what qualities we have learned to exclude from ourselves.
Perhaps anger wasn't acceptable in your family, so you've learned to accommodate instead. Maybe vulnerability felt unsafe, so competence became your identity. Perhaps wanting attention was judged, so you learned to disappear while simultaneously longing to be seen.
Our shadow doesn't contain only qualities we consider negative. It can also hold confidence, sensuality, playfulness, ambition, need, power, vulnerability, desire and our capacity to take up space.
Change can therefore involve more than getting rid of an unwanted behaviour. Sometimes it asks us to reclaim parts of ourselves we haven't previously felt able to inhabit.
Change Is More Than Understanding the Pattern
Awareness matters enormously, but recognising a pattern doesn't necessarily mean it disappears.
Sometimes change involves repeatedly experiencing something different. Asking for support instead of doing everything alone. Allowing appreciation to land instead of immediately deflecting it. Saying no and discovering that the relationship survives. Slowing down long enough to notice what emerges underneath the busyness. Staying present when love is available rather than automatically pulling away.
The nervous system, body and relational experience can all become part of learning something new.
Over time, the aim isn't necessarily to never experience the old emotional state again. It's to have more choice when it appears. The familiar pathway may still exist, but it no longer has to be the only one available.
Exploring Your Own Patterns
If you find yourself repeatedly caught in the same emotional, relationship or behavioural patterns, this is some of the territory we can explore through coaching. My approach brings together inquiry, parts work, shadow work, emotional awareness and embodied practices, helping you understand the pattern while also becoming curious about what happens through your emotions and body when you begin doing something differently.
I also explore shadow and our less-accessible emotional ranges through my BEING HUMAN workshops. These experiential personal-development workshops offer an opportunity to discover the parts of ourselves we've learned to hide, suppress or reject, and to notice some of our patterns as they emerge in relationship with other people.
