Growth. Change.  

On the journey of self discovery our growth and change takes many forms over time. I wish it were as easy as just walking up a staircase. Once we passed a “level” we never had to deal with those issues again. Not so. 

It’s more like those old behaviors just shift out of being our primary operating mode, but they can still be hanging around for a while. 

And when they pop back up, they seem a little louder and more of a contrast against our new way of being. If we’re not on alert it can feel like a punch in the gut: will it never go away?! I thought I’d dealt with this! 

Those moments are a gift. They are here to allow us to demonstrate our new way of being. Old behaviors were a running pattern. So the new way doesn’t just pop in — even through radical transformational therapies like Psyche-K or EMDR that access the subconscious and transform us deeply. These modalities change us internally but they don’t magically change our external circumstances. They only change how we view our external world. 

Our habits and patterns grew out of how we saw the world... so it stands to reason that when we grow it’s easier to change these actions we’ve been taking. But there is still a muscle memory of our old ways.  

Repatterning requires us to continually change our behaviors to new ones that support our level of growth.  

So when an old situation pops up, instead of doing what you’ve always done... what action would support this new growth? What habits would be good to replace the old ones? What triggered the old behaviors? How can we use those trip-wires to activate new behaviors in ourselves?