Where are the places you get stuck?

Carolyn's unfiltered and mostly unedited thoughts....

Photo by Seana Williamson. A tangled ball of Carolyn's yarn with Carolyn in the background.

This coming weekend I am doing a couples intensive, three days of work to unblock a couple from a pattern that has been repeating for decades. Now before you conclude, "Whoa! Must be really bad!"... pause to consider where you get stuck on repeat.

Now maybe it's the infernal fight about the toilet paper, or maybe its a persistant reluctance to let your guard down and be vulnerable, or perhaps it's that niggling voice of self doubt that follows you around everywhere.

Maybe it's you and your partner repeating a fight, or you and a sibling who chronically misunderstand each other. Or maybe it's just you and you: you have been manifesting and manifesting the crap out of your dream, and it is groundhog day over here.

We all get stuck. ALL. Of. Us. We all get stuck in a pattern that won't stop repeating. It follows us from one job to another, one relationship to another. We try to blame it on the job or the other person, but we keep finding this same challenge. We pick the "wrong partner," the "wrong job," over and over, or we are anxious no matter what we do.

A New York Times article came out the other day about how therapy needs therapy — but more importantly, about how our brain processes and releases experiences of pain and trauma (read that here). I want to take that discussion one step further on all that wisdom (really a profoundly great article!) and acknowledge that these stuck patterns go even further back.

We inherit these patterns — not only from our own childhood experiences, but from the source of those experiences: our parents' childhood experiences, and their parents' childhood experiences, and so on up the generations.

So what is a human to do, and how the flip am I going to use that with my couple* this weekend (*they don't actually belong to me...)? You have to slow down and work to interrupt the pattern. The gift of an intensive, a retreat, or longer sessions in coaching or therapy (I work in 90-minute or longer sessions) is the gift of time — the chance to slow way, way down and see the pattern unfold in real time, so you can get behind and underneath it.

But you don't need a retreat or an intensive, as powerful and transformative as they are. You can do this on your own with curiosity, focus, and care (though, as a therapist, coach, retreat facilitator, and teacher, I do think professional support is invaluable).

Here's what's needed:

1. Curiosity and honesty. What is the pattern, and what is its emotional coding? What is actually happening here? When I do the thing I do, what is the feeling and thought behind it? What story am I telling, what impulse is driving it? Is it fear? Shame? (These are the usual culprits. Often we're scared to be fully ourselves, to speak what's true, to ask for a need, to express who we are.) It's very important to be genuinely curious about it, rather than leading from assumptions you already have. And it's very, very important to be honest about where you get stuck and what you do. This is probably the hardest step, because most of us want to own the nice parts, but not look at the messier parts of ourselves. Seeing it, and its impact, leads right into the next tool.

2. Compassion. We have to offer ourselves (and our partner, when they're doing this work too) care for the formation and existence of this pattern. No one chooses an unhealthy or unhelpful pattern for fun — these form as an adaptation to pain. Recognizing and honoring this helps you access the compassion that lets you soften and stay in curiosity.

3. Explore the pattern fully. This is where time creates the space to regulate the nervous system in real time, so you can open. A therapist (or a really well-trained, certified coach) can help you do this — asking questions that go deeper and deeper into the root of the pattern. Is this pattern just mine, or did I learn it somewhere? Did either of my parents also engage this pattern? Where did they learn it? Seeing the pattern beyond you frees the source: it loosens the grip of "what is wrong with me??" and replaces it with "no wonder this is hard — this has always been hard." From there, it opens into "I can learn a new way, my own way. Let me release it." And then, with things slowed down, you can ask in real time: "Am I actually afraid in this present moment (or whichever feeling drives the pattern), or am I living out the programming that drives it? If I am afraid, what am I afraid of?"

   
   

4. Pause. Sitting with that question opens the space between the impulse — the neuroscience trigger — and the action that fuels the pattern. That space is what lets us consciously choose whether we want to continue the pattern at all.

   
   

5. Ongoing attention (aka mindfulness) to our minds and bodies helps us repeat the steps above, over and over.

   
   

6. Regular check-ins to evaluate what tweaks are needed help us stay with the changes and reinforce our growth.

It's now a week later from where I left off...

and the couples intensive is complete (aside from the notes I need to write up and share — bane of my existence). I'm here to report back that what I started above actually works. (If you were growing suspicious of what I teach here....)

The couple moved through the three days and created the space, care, curiosity, and compassion to see and feel the pattern differently. They built a deeper understanding of the pattern, which helped them access both greater love and greater hope to take different steps than they had been taking. And they got to practice all of it in real time, with a lot of laughter built in. Is it all fixed, never to repeat? That depends on them, as it does on all of us.

We all want the quick and easy fix-- we want someone to tell us what to do so we can be done. But in reality, patterns take time to build, and just as much patience to unbuild. If we settle back into "normal" and stop staying mindful of the new habit, the old one will return.

I have a pattern of self-doubt and self-criticism that has followed me from my childhood to today. I didn't choose it, but I have repeated it, and it's my responsibility to change it-- regardless of who "helped" me build it. I've been actively working on it for a couple of decades now, and it still sneaks back in, in new and different forms. I want a magic fix, and every so often I get one... but then a new challenge comes along and I go back to doubting or questioning myself.

When I follow the process above to slow down and catch it in real time, I can intervene and practice a new pattern in the moment. Offering myself kindness, practicing the skills I need, and then noticing the change has been the key to processing and releasing it. Now, almost 56, I think I'll have some form of this pattern my entire life. But with each new turn, it changes and loosens its grip. This is the power of slowing down and being intentional.

I'll be guiding both individuals and couples through this process at my retreat at Kripalu, September 11–13. The chance to slow down and offer care in real time holds potent magic for learning and understanding ourselves and our patterns better. I can't wait to guide this group forward. Grab one of the remaining spots here.

Join us at Kripalu! September 11-13. Can you feel the magic??