Self-Patterns

“To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle or Socrates or some other dead white dude. In my last post I talked about self-exploring in order to get to know yourself more. In this post we’ll explore the topics of self-patterns and self-awareness.

Defining ‘Self-Patterns’

The OED has no less than 13 different meanings of the word “pattern” /ˈpatn/. But for the purposes of this blog post, one stood out to me in particular:

“A regular and intelligible form or sequence discernible in certain actions or situations; esp. one on which the prediction of successive or future events may be based“

So, my proposed definition of a self-pattern is: something that happens regularly, a thought or a behaviour, which you can identify about yourself in certain situations, and which is likely to repeat itself in a similar context. Because us humans like familiarity, we develop ways of acting and thinking, so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time we do something. And it’s very useful, most of the time, to rely on what we know works. But it can also cause us to get stuck in patterns that actually don’t work for us anymore. And you cannot change your patterns without first becoming aware of them. When we do that, we can determine whether they work for or against us, and adjust accordingly.

How?

So how to you discern self-patterns? By being self-aware. And how do you become self-aware? Through introspection. And here I have to correct myself on something I said in my previous post. In preparation for this post I read a few articles and watched some TED-talks about self-awareness and I have discovered that what-questions may be more helpful than why-questions when it comes to introspection. That’s because approximately 95 percent of brain activity is unconscious. So even if you were to ask yourself ‘why’ all the time, the only answers you can come up with are coming from that remaining 5 percent. Such an answer may feel right, but it’s probably not. Besides, even if you could find a satisfying answer, it can stop you from reaching true self-awareness because you have come to a conclusion. Introspection done, you can go about your day again. Many people operate this way. They reach a certain conclusion about why they are the way that they are and they use it as a hard truth to justify their behaviour. If I believed in that method, I would have called this post Self-Conclusions. But that sounds way too finite to me. Patterns, when recognised, can be changed. And recognising patterns as well as changing them can only happen by asking what-questions. Let me illustrate this with a personal example:

Why vs what in action

Anger is a very difficult emotion for me. Always has been. I either push it away because my brain doesn’t see it as logical or helpful in most situations, or it completely consumes me and I get scared of the overwhelming feeling in my body. I find it especially difficult to express my anger in a constructive way towards people I care about, because I feel guilty for feeling it towards those I know would never actively try to upset me. Now when I thought about why this might be the case, I concluded that, growing up, I didn’t see anger expressed in the most healthy ways a lot of the time. So if I only asked the why-question, I’d be done here, right? I got my answer, wow I’m so reflective. But the way I got to be how I am now doesn’t really matter. Someone who did see anger expressed healthily in their childhood might also have issues with it. So I started to ask myself questions like these: ‘What do I do when I feel irritation towards a friend?’ ‘What can I do the next time I notice I’m pushing this feeling away?’ ‘What would be a constructive way to express my irritation?’ Now we’re getting somewhere, right?

Exercise of the Day

Try to uncover 1 pattern in your behaviour or thoughts that you don’t like, and 1 that you do. Write them down if you like. And since I’m pretty comfortable with vulnerability, I’ll go first (the anger-pattern you got for free).

Dislike: every time I don’t feel 100 percent happy or energised, I tend to not wanna meet up with friends, because I feel like I always need to be ‘out there’. So when I feel less than optimal, I cancel or go home.

Like: whenever I go to watch a movie from my bed, I make sure I have everything I need (phone, drink, sweet snack, salty snack, stuffed animals) within reach, so that I don’t have to get up anymore and rest in the knowledge that I can get completely comfortable.

Your turn!