Can you think of times where you feel you give so much to others in your life and yet don’t seem to receive the same back in return?
Perhaps as you point this out to people, they don’t seem to understand or take the feedback well, and you are left feeling worse for raising the issue.
Or worse, you continue to say nothing and bury your feelings, for you believe the other person will get angry or upset if you say anything.
It may not be happening in every relationship to the same extent, but those where this does happen are causing you pain or suffering.
Are you noticing the feelings that come up as you think of examples in your life where this happens? Could be feelings of frustration, hurt, or sadness or perhaps even guilt.
Perhaps you’ve reached a point of wanting this behaviour to stop or change in some way? To find a way to still give but to also receive, and to feel good about the times you give to others. You need to learn how to ask for what you need in these relationships. And be more functional where you achieve results.
Other questions related to this include:
Are you repeatedly drawn to relationships with people who are cold to you? Do you feel even people closest to you do not care or understand enough about you?
Do you struggle at times to let people go?
Do you sometimes feel at your core you are somehow defective, that no one who truly knows you could possibly love and accept you?
Are you sensitive to receiving feedback and at times feel like nothing ever changes in your life, despite whatever efforts you put in?
Do you put everyone else in your life ahead of you, taking care of there needs to the point you don’t know what your needs are?
Are you finding despite social attention you often are left feeling unfulfilled or like you don’t deserve the praise?
This article is designed to help you raise some awareness of patterns of behaviour where we feel we have lost control, and how we can begin to break patterns and begin to take our control back.
Patterns of behaviour
Where the answers to the above questions are mostly yes, we may have patterns of repeated behaviour we use in our life that ultimately hold us back from thriving, achieving success or experiencing joy and happiness.
These patterns are sometimes referred to as schemas or lifetraps (Jeffrey E. Young, 2022). These patterns are often tracked back to our childhood where we became damaged in some way, in the inside. We were left alone too much, not praised enough, praised too much, criticised, abused or left out, or compared to our siblings or other family members where we have never felt like we are good enough as we are.
We are often completely unaware of these patterns existing, sometimes living our life as though on autopilot. Most people turn to those close to them when something goes wrong to have them share with us how to overcome any challenges or obstacles. Its great to have support and advice, however friends and family cannot see the patterns either, or are unlikely to be able to help you see them in a resourceful way. Likely, instead you will feel shamed by what they reflect from your repeating behaviour and results, meaning nothing changes.
For some of us these patterns are so strong they affect how we think, act, and feel. They affect how we relate to others in our life where we unknowingly seek to recreate what we are so familiar with, even where this behaviour results in us being put down and left feeling sad, lonely, and anxious. For its all we have known.
We can appear on the outside to have the perfect life, but this can be far from the truth on the inside. The risk is, despite feeling this way, no one else sees what is going on for us and, over time, we settle for a life feeling this way all the time.
Unable to move forward and make the progress that has always been available to us, we give up on any dreams we had, telling ourselves they are not real or realistic. We blame others, or worse attack them or ourselves for the results we do have, often suppressing our feelings so deep we accept this as normal, only to explode later at unpredictable moments, for no one has taught us anything different.
These explosive moments of expressing anger or aggression often causing harm to ourselves and those around us. These moments being particularly traumatic for children, who are left unable to trust, feel safe, or rely on us. Here, the cycle of generational patterns of shame and trauma are passed on.
Here we are repeating the pattern of recreating the pain we have become so used to, where others leave us on our own to avoid our outbursts for, they don’t want to be around our strong emotional expression. Instead, we are shamed for showing how we feel.
As humans we are wired naturally to do more to feel comfortable and certain; to have things around us feel certain and familiar. Unconsciously we will find ways to create or turn situations in such a way as to experience the pain we have become so used to feeling, because at one point in time in our life this was our way of surviving something we were not emotionally developed enough to handle.
Breaking free
For change to happen, where we develop an awareness of the patterns and learn how to break free of them, takes us moving away from what is comfortable, to experience the pain of changing, and to learn what is true about what we tell ourselves in our mind.
One of the most powerful ways to begin the journey of breaking the patterns, is to increase our awareness of where they exist in our life, understand their origins, and ultimately, learn more about ourselves on a deeper level where repeating these patterns are bringing us more of what we don’t want.
To help get started, click the link below to download the full article and answer sample statements relevant and true to people who generally live their life where they allow others to control them, and are often always seeking approval through friends, family members, partners, or their boss. Upon answering how true the statements are of us, we begin to see whether we may have these patterns in our life.
The steps towards change are to be taken gradually as change will not happen overnight. The steps include:
- Beginning to see our individual patterns and how they cause us pain
- Understand when the pattern started
- Learn why the pattern is there, for what purpose we needed the behaviour to survive
- Accept it exists and seeing we no longer need it, work on letting it go
- Allow yourself to feel everything the pattern brings up
- Begin to forgive yourself and others instead of blaming or attacking
- Learn what your triggers are and build awareness
- Break the patterns holding you back the most
Removing obstacles
Sometimes, despite wanting things in our life to change we struggle to bring in what is needed to see results. We are unaware of focusing on what blocks us, instead of looking at the path that take us through to where we want to be.
Sometimes there are things that get in the way we simply cannot seem to get past. These things become blocks or obstacles to us working our way through the patterns and reaching a way to bring in change on a life-change level.
STRONG EMOTIONS
Things like realising how hard it is to revisit or face what happened in our past, and not wanting to feel the strong emotions, which can be very intense. Sometimes we fear how the emotions make us feel, wanting to move away from them, believing they are harmful to us. Here, the examples of past events may be too overwhelming for us, and we need to consider starting with something less painful to begin with.
DESIRE TO ESCAPE
For some of us, where things get too much, we instead look for short term ways of helping us feel better and escape the pain. We use these escape moments to avoid or move away from the feelings we don’t want to feel. Where we lack awareness or are resolutely unwilling to accept there is a problem in our life, we may seek to numb ourselves from feeling anything at all, turning to things like sex, drugs, alcohol, eating, work, rage (counter attacking), social media, even shopping or exercise to escape our mind; our thoughts, and stop feeling whatever it is we don’t want to feel.
Addictions are driven by the shame and unexpressed emotion we felt from early childhood experiences. Not knowing back then what to do with all these strong feelings, we now carry the shame around with us. New experiences triggering the same feelings, we find soothing in what we are addicted to for short term gratification pleasure and to escape.
NOT READY
Sometimes, despite having the awareness, knowing things don’t need to look or feel how they do, we simply aren’t ready to make the change. For some of us the pain of staying the same is not enough to encourage us to take responsibility for changing our life. Tragically, this can result in us seeking other means of ending the pain for good, which is why it is vitally important to seek help and support. Whether it is you or you are reading this and recognising someone close to you in your life who needs help, please share this information with them.
Where the problems are severe it is important to seek the right help and speaking to a medical professional such as your GP or doctor is good place to start. From there, help can come in a variety of ways and may involve a therapist, psychologist, or counsellor to begin with.
LIFE COACH
When you are feeling ready, you can also move on to work with a coach trained in cognitive behaviour techniques to help us create change on a deeper level, for reading this pdf alone or even a book or three is not enough. We often cannot make the changes on our own.
The information in this article is about raising awareness and helping you understand a little more about yourself. Download the full article and access the sample questions, scoring and read our handy five steps to change.