Why do we often repeat patterns that make us unhappy?
Actually, I think you are compelled, or it's so familiar to repeat what you learned. It's like speaking English to you; it's your first language. It's really easy; you've done that since you were a baby. It doesn't take any thought, it doesn't take any energy, it's just natural. So we have reflective patterned ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that are natural to us because of where we grew up and how we responded to those experiences. But those may not be things we want to replicate in our lives later and we certainly don't want to pass those on to our children. But because we had an emotional decision that we made when we were kids about those experiences, that's really either hard black or white, it's very extreme one way or the other because as a child, when you get impacted by influences around you, you have to make a survival based decision in those moments that work for you at that time. Those decisions then become a survival strategy that help you survive in that moment, in that family. But twenty or thirty years later those strategies, those decisions have now become the template of your personality like the hard drive of your computer. And even though they used to work then and there they may not work anymore. But because they're so ingrained and they're so early it's like trying to chance the software without changing the hardware. You can't do it unless you take the time to go back, uncover what the original decisions were, tweak them at the source and then re-parent yourself differently so that you can catch up to the present and start to work in concert between you head and your emotions instead of in conflict.
