1. A closer look at how to break our patterns in relationships and our lives.
2. Building our ego strength and self-esteem so we can start taking responsibility for our lives.
3. When we blame others and the world we take the victim position.
4. Fear is at the root of all our negative behaviour.

What We Covered This Week:

Week 14 Round Up

In this Round Up I speak more about how we break our patterns.

I reflect on our need to take responsibility for what we are unconsciously doing in relationship that is sabotaging what we actually want.

After we’ve been in therapy for a while we can look at ourselves and our behaviour more honestly. We need ego strength to take responsibility - it requires a degree of self-esteem to know when we make a mistake it doesn’t mean we *are* a mistake.

Doing work on ourselves increases our self-esteem and self-worth.

With our patterns it’s all too easy to go into the victim position. We can get stuck in blame (of the other person or ourselves).

We have no control over other people - we can only control ourselves. It is testament to our increasing emotional intelligence and maturity when we can ask ourselves “what part am I playing in this? (However small)”.

My Patterns Teaching outlines 4 categories in which we can break down a lot of our behaviour:

Fear – Drives our negative, destructive behaviour. We live in fear and fear makes our decisions for us. Is that what we want? Getting to know our fears we know what to apply courage to.

Protective – We protect ourselves in primitive ways, and this is not effective, it actually creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where we inadvertently create more distance as a result.

Controlling – If we are triggered, our instinct is to control what ‘made’ us upset. We can try to control how someone else behaves and feels. We do so by being disapproving, giving them the silent treatment etc.

Perpetuates – We feel justified to continue the above behaviour because it feeds into our patterns and script of being hurt/hard done by/rejected etc, and this is how we then *carry on the pattern*.

My Boundaries Teaching helps us learn to protect ourselves more effectively. We focus on ourselves and our behaviour & we are then free to relate in a new way that’s more likely to get our needs met.