Break a Pattern
In choosing this card you are ready to release a major emotional pattern in your life consisting of the roles you play for others. These roles and their behaviours were created to meet your emotional needs. Congratulations. You are no longer at a stage where you need to play false roles in order to gain energy for your life. You are ready to be yourself.
Think of emotion as energy. And think of emotional patterns as energy pathways. These pathways are like railway lines in your body that rebalance your energy system through your emotions. Each pathway is triggered by different stimuli such as an echo of a past memory, a person’s tone of voice, attitude, or need. Ideally, when triggered we take the pathway – railway line – we have perfected, one that meets our emotional needs. We shuttle the train carriages of unresolved emotions down the railway lines in order to release them. Enroute the energy of our anxiety, our fears and desires about being loved, successful, balanced and complete is released. At our destination we find the balance, connection and flow that we seek.
At the moment you are still taking the wrong train because you respond to triggers with an outdated pattern of behaviour that you developed to compensate for your insecurities. You’ve been riding railway lines that are meeting your emotional needs based on distorted beliefs about yourself. Any challenges to your sense of self (identity) will trigger this automated pattern. When triggered you respond by playing a role – a form of emotional defence to protect your identity – masking or hiding your vulnerable self. Most people will choose a role of service – being good, a martyr, a hero, the rescuer, etc. This allows them to participate and be accepted in other people’s lives without having to face the fear of not being good enough. Being indispensable becomes confused with love.
In any given moment your emotional trigger highlights the role you play – bringing awareness of how your mask keeps another person from knowing your vulnerable aspects. When you jump on this emotional train, the role you play meets your emotional needs by keeping you safe. However, the destination you get to isn’t really where you want to go. You can sometimes think you’re on the right train but you always end up at the same unfulfilled place, going down the same emotional track, and you are tired of the same result.
Until you recognise this pattern you will continue to release the emotional pressure without releasing the distorted beliefs that you are compensating for. To investigate your pattern, know that it consists of the role you play for others, the need you fulfil by playing that role and the behaviours you use in that role to rebalance your emotional state. The pathway is linked in several ways:
- The trigger
- The role you play
- The energy you gain from your role
- How you manifest or play out the role
Each of the categories is linked to create an energy pathway. Stimuli will trigger one category aspect and the other three categories will automatically be initiated and enacted.
1. The trigger
Triggers come in all forms, such as seeing your friends get ahead, a sibling who grates on your nerves, a co-worker who receives more positive attention than you do, etc. Underlying the trigger is insecurity. When triggered you are set on your habitual emotional pathway. Think of your trigger like a sore tooth. The minute cold water touches your tooth the pain is sharp. Your pain is the signal to act and in this case the message your tooth is sending you is ‘go to the dentist’.
However, in the case of emotional pain, the experience of the signal is different. When the signal arrives we don’t always acknowledge or under-stand the message that our inner self is sending. In trying to get rid of our uncomfortable feelings we react habitually to the signal instead of acting on the message it has delivered. For instance, let’s say you buy a new set of cur-tains for your home. You invite your mother over. You are instantly triggered by the tone of her voice or what she says about the curtains – something non-committal, lukewarm, the suggestion that venetian blinds would work better in that part of the room. And suddenly you – the CEO of your own company – feel like a child. In your automated response you express your feelings through the defensiveness of the child. You become highly emotional, deeply angry and may even shout at your mother. Later, after your mother is gone, you might use an addictive behaviour such as shopping on eBay, eating comfort food or banging dishes in a fit of anger to rebalance your emotional state. Your identity was challenged and you experienced self-doubt. Instead of looking at the core of your self-doubt (and how this aspect of yourself may have arisen from your relationship with your mother) you react by taking the same railway line – being defensive, shouting, shopping and/or eating. The purpose of this response is to reduce stress and keep you safe. The irony is the trigger actually highlights the parts of you that do not feel strong, and rather than address those parts and reset your boundaries, you jump on the closest train – the habitual pathway – trying to protect yourself. In this pattern, you find yourself at the next stop: playing a role.
2. The role you play
When you are disconnected from Source and your core self you create the connection you need with another person by playing a role. You are recre-ating different scenes from your childhood or early life – where these roles developed – in order to meet the emotional needs of your disconnected self.
Each of us has a central role that we move back to – rescuer, victim, workaholic, struggling artist – as the baseline of our identity. However, roles are abundant and in a relationship roles bounce back and forth. The roles meet the emotional needs that are present because your boundaries in their current state have not been fully formed. In order to meet your emotional needs you can play several roles within each relationship. One minute you’re the shoulder to cry on for a friend who plays the victim after a romance has let them down. And the next minute you’re the child being instructed by your friend (now the parent) how to live your life. These roles change depending on the environment and the emotions you wish to release or resolve.
When triggered, both of you in the relationship immediately jump on the train – you each take a role whether parent, child, victim, know-it-all, etc. In your roles you unconsciously recreate the scene from your past in order to release the emotional wound you each brought to the relationship. The general pattern is to enter the cycle of blame, blaming one’s partner for a lack of income, past decisions, not listening, feeling controlled, feeling a lack of support, and so on. But the real purpose of their role is to help you find your disconnected parts. By re-enacting these scenes – usually childhood scenes – you have the opportunity to change the ending of your story and reconnect to your lost aspects of self. In the new ending you have set the necessary boundary to link back to core and reclaim your identity. As a result – in the relationship you now feel acknowledged, appreciated, valued, loved, connected and safe. Until each person faces the underlying emotions at the core of their needs they will remain stuck on the train – unfulfilled in their pattern.
To examine why a role stops being fulfilling and frustration sets in, you have to look at the emotional energy you gain in each role. What is the emotional pay-off ? Each role has a position in a relationship and is based on either giving or receiving energy. How are you meeting your emotional need?
3. The energy you gain from your role
The role you play gives you a position when you are interacting with another person. It determines the flow of emotional energy. So, for instance, if you are a victim you may feel people let you down. You place yourself in the position of receiving emotional support – gaining your energy from other people’s sympathy, their listening support, and so on. If you play pioneer or leader you might be the hero that saves the day; you enjoy organising, being creative, being out in front, being in control, and so on. The energy flow meets your emotional needs. This energy may be gained from being acknowledged or getting the approval you seek, feeling powerful, needed or valued. In this case you connect to the person you have helped and in return you get a burst of energy from their admiration and affirmation.
Ask the question in your role – parent, child or hero, etc. – what emotional energy are you seeking from others to meet your needs – recognition, com-bat, reassurance, dismissal or rejection, etc.? This energy is the glue holding your pattern in place.
4. How you manifest or play out the role
How do you play out your role? Does it manifest in:
a.Highly emotional behaviours, excessive anger, fear, drama, energy gain through blame, shame, guilt and martyrdom?
b. Addictions to food, shopping, work, alcohol, over-talking, and so on?
c. Seeking approval, control, defensiveness, security?
d. Creating a serial relationship pattern from one person to the next?
Ultimately without your trigger to tell you who you are, the relationships that you form will never satisfy you. Your emotional need is created by the boundaries that are unset within you. And you will look to all these other people to fill that gap in the boundary line. When you recognise the trigger, it takes you right to the boundary of your true self, the self you want to be. Your journey toward consciousness and awareness has been frustrated by who you think you should be instead of who you are.
The key to change is awareness and to stop hiding behind roles and behaviours. In being totally present in the moment you can intercept each point of the pattern. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the emotion, celebrate that you are fully alive. You have created an opportunity to be truly yourself. In recognising and connecting to the trigger you choose your position (role), which changes your behaviours. You connect to your boundaries of your inner self. By changing one point of the pattern, you can change the whole automated pattern that you are using and move easily from the role of child, victim or parent into the adult with the new ending to your story. You are able to meet your own needs so that you can own what you want.
Listen to the voice of your inner self – your triggered point is your point of grace. Give voice to the boundary that sets you free to be yourself. The next time you feel triggered, open your heart. Step off the train and face the emotion that underlies your pattern. You have arrived at a new destination. Welcome home. You are good enough to have the love you seek.
