How to Break Out of Old Patterns

“Okay, I see what’s causing the problem. Now, how do I change it?” It’s a happy moment when I hear a client say this. It often comes after a good amount of introspection and analysis regarding what the client sees as the difficulties in their life. Let’s use this example: someone is experiencing unhappiness in their relationship with their partner. What they say they want is a happy, loving relationship, life to be easy, without conflict or stress. The problem is, right now things are definitely not easy, and there is lots of conflict and stress. They acknowledge they are unhappy; they want things to change. Here’s how this process might play out in talk therapy.

We would start by discussing a fight the client recently had with their partner. We’d talk about the play-by-play of what happened and explore why the client felt and acted the way they did. We won’t come up with any solutions right away, but we’ll dig deeper into both the partner’s role and the client’s role in the conflict. We might learn that what the partner did or said triggered something in the client that caused fear or anxiety; the client became angry and directed that anger towards their partner in a way disproportionate to what the partner actually said or did. The client will be encouraged to consider all this the next time a similar fight comes up.

The Root Cause of Relationship Conflict

At some point we will identify the origin of the anger, fear, and other strong emotions causing the relationship conflict. Hopefully it will come in a moment of clarity, a light bulb instant, something along the lines of: “Ah! I get it now. The fact that my partner doesn’t scrape enough food off the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher and it ends up getting crusted on after it dries isn’t a personal attack on me; this triggers emotions related to my relationship with my mother, who was so concerned with cleanliness that if I didn’t conform to her way of thinking I wouldn’t receive love, and I learned that cleanliness is a way to express love. When my partner doesn’t have my same attitude towards cleanliness, I take that as a denial of love.” Or something like that.

Now we’ve identified the true cause of the relationship conflict. It wasn’t the partner’s actions; the actions triggered the childhood emotional material. Clients verbalize these realizations in different ways, but the common thread is a feeling of pride and excitement about achieving this level of emotional awareness. It shows that the work they’ve put into therapy so far has paid off. It’s an example of how powerful self-awareness can be. Of course, that feeling of satisfaction quickly becomes a desire to go further. Now the question becomes: How do I change?

This is where the concept of the record grooves comes in. A record is designed to sound the same way every time, as the grooves guide the needle in a predetermined direction. Our personalities have grooves, and when the needle of relationship drama drops on us, we react in a certain way. We play a certain song. The same song we’ve always played. The grooves of this song are cut early in our lives, shaped by our childhood experiences, and grow slowly over the course of our lives, their edges getting higher, eventually becoming canyons that can be very hard to break out of.

How Do We Change?

Repetition. Through our work in therapy, we will eventually wear down the grooves of the client’s song. Think of the typical fight our client has with their partner about cleanliness like it’s a song. We’ll analyze how this song sounds, what it's really about, and question why we’re listening in the first place. We examine the root causes of the song, including who taught us this song, who taught them this song, and the point of this particular song. Through this line of thinking, we begin to wear down the grooves and eventually the record skips, and all of a sudden we’re listening to a different song.

As this process plays out, the client becomes especially aware of the emotions behind their actions. It becomes second nature for them to think about why they’re reacting the way they do, not just reacting mindlessly. And then, quite often, there is another wonderful moment in the therapeutic process. The record scratch moment. The client reports that they were in a situation with their partner recently. In the past, such a situation would have resulted in a fight, the same old song playing again, but instead this time the record scratched, the song changed, and they found themselves handling the situation differently. There was less anger or fear than they typically experience, and more of a sense of calm and normalcy. Oftentimes, the partner notices this too and comments on how the client is acting differently, and for the better. It’s a moment of success, a happy day when the client can appreciate that “somehow” they were able to react differently.

Of course, this “somehow” actually consists of all the time we spent up until this point talking about the fights, the family history, the struggles, the fear, listening to the song that they had been playing their whole lives. The hours of talking, questioning, and self-examination now make perfect sense, because they have led us to the point where we are finally able to change. It is the hard work of talk therapy to wear down the grooves of our own personal records, and realize we have the power to choose to hear a different song.