Why Understanding Your Patterns Doesn’t Stop You Repeating Them
(And what actually leads to change in relationships)
Many people come to therapy already highly insightful.
You may understand your attachment style and have a clear sense of how you tend to respond when relationships deepen. You may recognise your relationship patterns clearly — perhaps even painfully so. You may even understand why you withdraw, over-adapt, become irritable or feel anxious about closeness. For a deeper exploration of attachment and withdrawal patterns, see my blog Why You Push People Away When You Want Closeness.
And yet, despite all that understanding, the same patterns get activated in the moment. You promise yourself you’ll do things differently next time. You may spot the pattern earlier. You tell yourself to stay open, speak up or not to react strongly. And still, when closeness deepens, your mind may be aware, but the pattern takes over.
This can feel confusing and demoralising. If I understand it, why can’t I change it?
The short answer is this: understanding a pattern, and even where it originated from, doesn’t stop it when it is driven by forces outside conscious control.
Why insight feels helpful — but often isn’t enough
Understanding your patterns can bring relief. It gives language to something that once felt chaotic or shameful. You may feel less self-critical and more compassionate toward yourself.
But most relational patterns don’t live in the thinking mind. They operate automatically, shaped by emotional memory and unconscious conflict from early relationships. When closeness stirs old emotional conflicts around acceptance, dependency, autonomy and safety, familiar strategies take over long before conscious choice is available.
That’s why insight often arrives after the reaction:
After you’ve gone quiet
After you’ve agreed to things you don’t want to do
After you’ve snapped or become irritable
After you’ve felt needy or controlling
They aren’t deliberate decisions, but familiar responses that take over automatically.
Patterns are emotional protections, not habits of thought
Relational patterns aren’t just habits that can be reasoned away. They are protective strategies designed to manage emotional conflicts in close relationships that once felt overwhelming.
At some point, relationships may have caused pain for the child, for example when they:
Experienced unpredictability or inconsistency in a caregiver’s responses
Were dismissed, criticised or ignored
Lost autonomy or emotional safety
Were overwhelmed by another’s needs or expectations
In order to survive as a child, connection with the adult caregiver had to come first — the child's very survival depended on it. This often required swallowing their own feelings, wants and needs, compromising themselves, or adapting in other ways to preserve connection or safety, even when the adult was emotionally unavailable, violent, or inconsistent. Over time, these survival strategies become automatic patterns.
As adults, these patterns manifest in different ways. Some people struggle to say 'no' and constantly prioritise others over themselves. Others cover anger and assertiveness with depressive moods or self-criticism, repeatedly taking a one-down position in relationships. And some people react quickly in close relationships, sometimes straining connections, while feeling misunderstood themselves.
Withdrawal, compliance, control, humour, irritability or blame can all emerge as strategies to preserve connection or safety and manage internal emotional conflicts and challenging life circumstances. In the case of blame, this can involve staying engaged through criticism or complaint when direct vulnerability feels unsafe.
Understanding this matters — but it doesn’t dismantle the protection, because these strategies continue to operate outside conscious awareness in the present.
Learn more about how I work with relational patterns on the Difficulties in Relationships page.
Why change doesn’t happen through willpower alone
Many people try to change their patterns through effort and intention:
I’ll speak up more next time
I’ll stop overthinking
I’ll stay present instead of shutting down
Effort and commitment matter. Therapy itself requires attention, courage and a willingness to engage. For some people, especially those who habitually avoid responsibility or agency in their lives, strengthening the will is an important part of the work.
But effort alone rarely leads to lasting change when emotional patterns are driven by unconscious conflict. When old fears and internal tensions are activated, familiar strategies can take over automatically, even when you know they are unhelpful. This isn’t a failure of motivation — it’s how the unconscious responds under emotional pressure.
In these moments, change doesn’t come from reminding yourself what to do differently. A post-it note saying “speak up next time” cannot, on its own, resolve an unconscious conflict around anger, desire or grief, for example. True change requires attending to the deeper emotional dynamics that drive these patterns, rather than relying on willpower or simple instructions.
What leads to change
What leads to change is not applying a single technique or following a fixed set of steps. It involves turning toward what is being avoided in ways that are specific to the person and the difficulty they bring.
For some, this may mean learning to listen to their own feelings and bodily signals when making decisions, rather than relying on external rules or others’ opinions. For others, the work may focus on recognising rising emotional states and building the capacity to experience them without acting them out by shouting. In other situations, change involves noticing the assumptions and expectations that come from past experiences, seeing how they influence the way you experience your relationships and testing whether they reflect what is actually happening now.
While the focus differs, the underlying process is the same: bringing into awareness what has previously operated outside awareness and developing the capacity to relate to your internal experience and to your relationships with greater clarity, responsibility and choice.
Change happens not by overriding these responses, but by understanding and working with what drives them — so that clarity, presence and choice become possible.
What happens in therapy to enable change
Therapy offers something that insight and effort alone cannot: a focused relational space where emotional patterns can be noticed, explored and worked with in service of change in your present life.
At times, familiar ways of relating may emerge in the therapeutic relationship itself. At other times, the work centres on situations outside therapy — moments with partners, family members, colleagues or others where the same difficulties arise. In both cases, therapy helps slow things down and brings attention to what is happening emotionally, rather than staying at the level of explanation.
How the past is used — and why it matters
Past relationships and early experiences may be explored in therapy, but never as an end in themselves. Therapy is not about simply revisiting or retelling the past to vent, purge, or ‘get it out of your system’. While grieving losses or facing unmet childhood needs can be important, the goal is always purposeful: to work with patterns that affect your present life.
When the past is explored, it is done experientially rather than as storytelling. You are guided to feel and process emotions you may have avoided — grief, anger, sadness — in a way that fosters self-empathy and allows you to “parent” yourself in the present. This helps you connect early experiences to how you feel, respond and relate today.
The focus is on understanding how these patterns remain active now and learning to relate to them with compassion and awareness. In this way, the past is acknowledged and worked with intentionally, always in service of present change and greater emotional freedom, rather than pursued for its own sake.
Because therapy provides a safe and contained environment, feelings and conflicts that have been avoided, redirected or shut down can be approached more directly. As these experiences are faced and worked through, the protective strategies that once served a purpose no longer need to dominate. This can free up emotional energy, clarity and flexibility for how you live and relate now.
Over time, change becomes possible — not through insight or effort alone, but through a deeper capacity to experience yourself, your relationships and your life with greater vitality, freedom and choice.
Why Doing the “Right Thing” Still Feels So Hard
Therapy is not primarily about changing behaviour on the outside. You may want to set boundaries, make decisions differently or relate to someone in a new way — and often these changes follow. But lasting change begins with understanding the internal emotional conflicts that make choices and relationships feel confusing, costly or overwhelming. Only from a more settled and coherent inner position can action in the outside world emerge naturally.
Without addressing these conflicts, behavioural change often comes at a price. You may do the “right” thing on the surface while feeling self-critical, anxious, resentful or emotionally drained underneath. What feels like guilt, self-punishment or even resentment is often a response to having your own needs, limits or desires. Therapy helps uncover what drives these responses so choices and boundaries can arise from clarity rather than internal conflict. Simply learning to tolerate or “bear” this internal pressure can bring outward change but leaves the underlying conflict intact — and the internal cost may persist or even intensify.
This work takes a different approach. Instead of trying to override or endure these responses, therapy explores what drives them, what they protect, and what feelings or conflicts are being avoided. As these patterns are understood and worked through, behaviour shifts naturally. Decisions become clearer, you naturally act in ways that respect your limits, and your actions are guided less by fear, self-attack, or reactive resentment — and more by connection with your own emotions, values, and reality. The result is choices made with greater ease, confidence, and alignment with yourself — without unnecessarily jeopardising closeness or connection with others.
Learn more about how I work with relational patterns on the About page.
Why this work can feel challenging — and transformative
Real change isn’t comfortable. Growth means facing what holds us back and that is hard. It involves turning toward feelings and conflicts you may have spent years managing, avoiding or redirecting. This can bring up discomfort, vulnerability or even a sense of exposure.
At the same time, it can be profoundly transformative. As old patterns are faced and understood, the unconscious pressure that once drove them begins to soften. Clients often notice:
Feeling less reactive without having to control themselves
Speaking more honestly without rehearsing or second-guessing
Staying connected without over-adapting or sacrificing their own needs
Experiencing intimacy and closeness with more ease and less fear
Feeling more grounded in their own sense of self rather than being pulled by others’ expectations
Relief comes not from learning new techniques but from developing the capacity to experience difficult feelings, conflicts and desires without having to shut them down, act them out or become overwhelmed by them. This involves meeting reality as it is, including uncomfortable feelings and limitations, rather than trying to manage or override them. As a result, protective strategies that once had to dominate are no longer necessary, freeing up energy and attention for genuine engagement, choice, and presence in relationships and in life.
Read more about supporting self-esteem in relationships for ways this work can enhance your confidence and connection.
A final thought
If you understand your patterns but change has felt difficult, it doesn’t mean you’re resistant or not trying hard enough. Relational patterns are learned in relationships and they usually shift in a relationship — through emotional experience, not just intellectual understanding. Change is possible, and it can bring a sense of relief, ease and more natural connection with yourself and others.
If you’d like to explore what keeps you stuck in familiar ways of relating and what might allow closeness to feel safer and more secure, I offer a free 15-minute introductory chat. It’s an opportunity to ask questions, talk through what you’re struggling with and see whether working together feels like the right fit.