PATTERNS--TOOLS FOR HEALING AND TRANSFORMATION

Clients ask me for tools to guide them in their journeys, make essential personal changes, build confidence and self-worth, enhance relationships and release their inner most creative and positive and powerful selves.
Not such a tall order.
The “solutions”* lie in our pasts. No, I do not advocate “Woody Allen” therapy—5 days a week for 55 years.
I do advocate delving in to our earlier life experiences in order to recognize the patterns which pervaded then, which have continued to pervade over the years, and which now will be used as tools for growth.
Patterns emerge from our observing how our parents interacted with each other, and from experiencing how each of them interacted with us. And just think about all the complexities arising for individuals with backgrounds of divorce, re-marriage, step-parents, unknown parents, adoptive parents, more than one step-parent and so many more variations of patterning / patterns.
If you are that complex person or are involved with him / her, listen up! If you manifest a simple nuclear family and / or also manifest simplicity in family connections, you, also, please listen up and read on!
Siblings create patterns, as do half and step siblings and
no siblings. Neighbors--both adults and children contribute to early patterns, as do teachers and classmates and clergy and other folk at church when that applies. Extended families make patterns, both those which meet the fairly unrealistic expectations of one marriage with children and grandparents and aunts and uncles, and those extended families in other circumstances, which meet different expectations of many folk playing multiple roles on multiple occasions. Extended families pattern our early lives into kaleidoscopic complexities!
And those early years only begin our life patterning.
Our lives’ original patterns tend to re-create themselves with variations on the original themes as we enter school and forever after, unless and until we create our own transformation. Are we the klutz in our family? Or perhaps the hero or star? The always relied-upon one? The loser? The brain?
While it pains me even to write some of these personae families imbue their members with and which we carry on from day 1 into our lives, recognizing and acknowledging these roles / labels and their associated feelings liberates us to recognize and acknowledge the familiar—same yet different—patterns we, as adults, continue to perpetuate.
Recognizing self-defeating patterns and their repeated negative outcomes in our lives allows us to make healthy changes for positive outcomes. Yes, the changes may be painful and even frightening, but the patterning technique can readily be as rapid as “solution” or cognitive therapy, yet on a far more profound level.