Wake Up From Your Deep Slumber

Can you release unconscious relationship patterns?

This is not for the faint of heart.

I hear many of my clients say: “I can’t believe  I do this to myself over and over again. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I find someone to love me?”

Patterns are about being unconscious, about thinking, feeling and behaving in ways that are automatic and repetitive. The forces that propel these patterns are outside our range of understanding. We re-create what we know and this provides us with a sense of security, control and continuity.

Patterns have a life force of their own, a deep magnetic pull. The way to resist the pull is to become fully conscious and activate your power of choice.

A comfortable but itchy old sweater.

It is much easier to fall into old habits than to take the time to establish new ones. But once they are established, they are coded into our neural pathways. And then they replace and become as constant as the old, unconscious patterns.

A classic exercise in IMAGO Therapy is to list the personality traits of the people that you have seriously considered as mates. You will likely find a lot of similarities.

When selecting a mate, the conscious mind scans for the positive traits and the unconscious mind scans for the negative traits.

This trait exercise will give you a picture of what love looks like to you.

The pain and pleasure locked deep in familiarity.

We grow attached to what is familiar. Imprinting happens early in our family of origin. We develop strong bonds with the patterns that were acted out by one or both of our parents. Children watch their parents carefully and absorb their interactions. Children swim in their parent’s unconscious.

We chose to partner with someone who will recreate the hurt of the past and be unprepared to meet our needs.

Why would we do this?

Because we need our partner to trigger us so that we will know what work we have to do. That is the gift and purpose of committed partnership.

Questions For Reflection

• What is the pattern I have experienced over and over again in my romantic relationships?
• What specifically am I doing to create the results that I am getting?
• In what ways was this pattern acted out by one or both of my parents?
• Which of these patterns do I want to release from my life?
  What would you have to give up in order to do this?
• What in your relationship with yourself is being mirrored back to you in your relationship with others?

Tags: Imago, Relationship, Relationship Patterns

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 9:57 AM and is filed under IMAGO and Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.