Relationship Dynamics – “Behavioral Patterns as Life Themes”

One of the difficulties we tend to have in fully comprehending our true ability to self-create through various dynamics that we act out in relationship with others, is that we have conscious and unconscious aspects of an experience, as well as a tendency to identify with every role in a behavioral pattern, and are moving in and out of them all the time in a completely natural and spontaneous way. We tend to view life as happening to us, largely because our fundamental patterns are established through childhood conditioning, when we are only partially aware in our experiences, while associated to the position (role) of having stuff done to us by others while having no real control over the situation. Yet, in reality, we are being conditioned to the behavioral pattern as a form of living drama that we eventually, once we mature and become an adult in the same behavior, we can play any role within the same dynamic, and simultaneously act to initiate the pattern by first doing unto the other what we want (cause) them to do back unto us. We then get to experience it as though once again . . . it’s happening to us.

 How we are treated by others as children not only teaches and trains us to the actions inherent in the pattern, but also the values, beliefs, and emotional states that the behavior is an expression of. The belief provides the composition as an enactment, the values as what’s important, what’s not and why, and the emotions as the charge or expressive component the behavior is given and the attitude employed in order to effectively act it out. If for example, we are made to feel (told and treated as if) that we’re not important, or were a burden of some form, and consistently treated that way (parents beliefs projected onto us), we form it as a core belief, meaning a primary belief that spawns other beliefs based on it, that acts to shape our life in a powerful way as the central theme of our life’s story that later develops our identity around and by way of it. We then develop an array of behaviors around it as a means of compensating, defending, deflecting, or denying and immediately reacting to it. We are always acting it out and creating it as a consistent experience in some way by how we interpret other people’s behavior and events to make them somehow mean that we are not important or wanted, and recreate the same experience of being rejected once again within our own life in some way.

 The belief forms a mental filter that we use to perceive everything through that reshapes it through how we interpret it to mean we’re not good enough, while also producing the behaviors that causes others to react to us by treating us the way we believe we deserve to be treated. In relationships where rejection is not immediately acted out, we will behave in a way that causes them to feel rejected by us, responding by rejecting us back, or we’ll produce the behavior that is repulsive is some way, producing the natural response of someone not wanting to be with or around us. We then experience being rejected by them without direct awareness that we did the rejecting to begin with, or created the behavior we knew would cause them to not like us. We act to perpetuate the very behavior we imagine is being done to us by others.

We are conditioned not to singular behaviors or a specific perspective or role within an overall dynamic, but to the dynamic itself as a thematic story, where we can play any role in it. We attract and are attracted to people, situations, and events that can be used to unconsciously act out the same type of dramas as joint experience that serves to tell the same type of story about us, about others, and they way things are over-and-over again throughout our lives. Whatever role the other naturally falls into, we will play the complementary role. The only way to break this pattern is to become aware of it, realize your own tendencies and part in creating the pattern, and choosing to replace it with new behaviors by consciously reconditioning ourselves to become in character the type of person that can naturally act to tell a new type of story, and attract the proper elements to co-create it as a joint reality-experience.

As long as we remain in denial, not realizing and owning our part, and projecting and blaming it on others, imagining it’s being done to us beyond our control, and we continue to unconsciously create the behaviors that initiates it as a action-reaction pattern that takes on a life of its own, we will remain stuck in its grip, feeling helpless to break-out of our own illusion. Once we can take an objective, dissociated perspective, and see ourselves in the story as an active participant from a non-personal position, we can see fully how we engage in the very behavior we imagine is being done to us, and catch ourselves in the moment when we are about to engage in it through some form of stimulus, because we realize how we’re acting to do it. What it is we do exactly that initiates it, while justifying and validating it somehow through the story we tell ourselves about it and through a basic form of self-awareness, we can choose to behave in a different way by interpreting their behavior or the situation in a new way, seeing something different, and breaking the unconscious pattern as a result. We can identifying the feelings as an emotion that triggers an unconscious reaction as defensive behaviors.

All healing is only possible by bringing what is unconscious and therefore automatic, into awareness as self-realization. By realizing that we are the sole creators of our own experiences, even as a child, we can realize that the thematic patterns we use to create a consistent story about us and our life, resulted from how we interpreted events from the mind and emotions of a child that we continue to use as an adult to live out of the same basic emotional interpretations as an adult. Our inner child becomes the story-teller that continues to shape us from an unconscious perspective for the rest of our life, unless we wake up in the midst of our own illusions, and beginning forming new interpretations from the mind and emotions of the adult. All transformation comes through self-knowledge as self-awareness and the employment of our own mind to recreate ourselves by how we choose to use our imagination to create a sense of ourselves through the stories that we tell about ourselves, others, and life in general. We are always the author (authority) of our own life and the sole creator of our internal experience as the thoughts and emotions we entertain willingly on a regular basis. True self-mastery comes from realizing how we use our mind to create realities, then using it intentionally to create the ones we truly want to tell! The ones that will shape who we are through the telling.

 Dr. Linda Gadbois

 Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher