When You Fall Back Into an Old Pattern

Falling back into an old pattern does not mean the work you did was undone. It usually means you have arrived somewhere unfamiliar and the body reached for a shape it knows well. Rumination and listening both feel like paying attention, though only one of them moves you anywhere. Rumination keeps circling the story your mind is telling, while listening finds where the fear is actually sitting in the body. That is where the useful questions come from.

By Victoria Duarte, trauma-informed Reiki practitioner and neuro-somatic coach, co-founder of Healing Arts Center, Virginia Beach.

Most of us are afraid of the unknown. We doubt our skills, our strategy, our intelligence, our emotional intelligence. We can feel like we are flipped upside down and shaken by our ankles.

Fear settles in the chest. The breath goes shallow, the chest feels hollow, and rumination starts its circling until a heaviness has worked its way into the muscles.

It feels like returning to a familiar shape. One we may have promised ourselves we would stop visiting, and yet here we are again, feeling fear knot itself into the body.

We struggle to forgive ourselves. We convince ourselves that this old shape is where we live now, and that all the work we have done is completely undone.

The difference between ruminating and listening

Rumination is a spell that comes over you, spiraling you down into your own fear. Peace does not live in the story your mind is telling.

Researchers who study rumination have arrived at something similar from another direction. A 2008 review found that rumination amplifies negative thinking and gets in the way of solving the problem a person is actually facing. An earlier analysis separated rumination into two components, brooding and reflective pondering, and found the two behave differently from one another.

So stop listening to the story and listen to the body underneath it. Listen for the twists and swirls, for whatever feels hot and bitter.

How I teach this

I teach people to notice the body first, and to find what is pressing on the heart. Acknowledging that pressure is what makes the fear something we can sense, instead of something that simply runs us.

Once we can sense it, we can also feel how much power it has been holding over us.

This is where the recognitions tend to arrive. We start to see the illusions of safety we have been living inside, and underneath those are three questions. What am I afraid I will lose? What identity am I holding onto? What am I afraid I will become?

I have written more about the groundwork for this in Returning to Yourself Through Somatic Resourcing.

What I see in sessions

Noticing does not always mean staying still.

A client of mine had been asked by her therapist to write a letter to her mother. She had been carrying that assignment for a week, and every time she thought about sitting down to do it she froze.

I invited her to stay with the resistance rather than push through it. She found it in her belly, an unsettled energy that would not stop moving and left her feeling nauseous.

Silence and stillness only brought her more agony, so we did not stay there. We worked with movement and breath instead, exploring what those waves actually felt like, and inviting an energy of love to make contact with the resistance.

What surfaced is hers to keep. What I can tell you is that she reached something she had not been able to think her way to, and it was enough to let her move forward. She got there by turning toward the survival response rather than forcing her way past what was guarding her.

Meeting it with compassion

What if we met that shape with compassion instead of shame? Shame dims the light. Compassion turns it back up slowly, the way your eyes adjust when you walk outside.

Common questions

What is the difference between rumination and reflection?

Rumination circles. It runs the same thoughts about a fear without producing anything new. Reflection moves, because it starts in the body rather than the story. Noticing where a fear is sitting, and what is pressing on the heart, gives attention somewhere to land other than the loop.

Why do I keep falling back into old patterns?

Old shapes are the ones a body knows best, so they are the fastest thing to reach for when something feels uncertain. Returning to one is common and it does not undo earlier work. It usually signals that you have arrived somewhere unfamiliar.

How do I stop ruminating?

Change the question. Instead of asking why something is happening, find where it is sitting in your body and what is pressing on your heart. Acknowledging that pressure is what makes a fear something you can sense, rather than something running underneath everything you do.

What questions come up in somatic work?

Three tend to surface once a person can feel the fear rather than only think about it. What am I afraid I will lose? What identity am I holding onto? What am I afraid I will become?

Does somatic work always mean sitting still?

No. For some people stillness increases the distress rather than easing it. Movement and breath are another way into the same noticing, and a good practitioner adjusts rather than insisting on one approach.

About the author

Victoria Duarte is a co-founder of Healing Arts Center in Virginia Beach, a trauma-informed Reiki practitioner, and a meditation and neuro-somatic coach with more than fifteen years of practice supporting adults through stress, grief, and life transitions. She has been vetted through several Special Operations Forces foundations and has offered Reiki, mindfulness, and somatic practice at retreats and in sessions for the military community. Book with her at vagaro.com/healingartscenter.

This is a coaching and wellness perspective, not clinical care, and it does not replace working with a licensed mental health professional. Our collective includes licensed clinical services, and we refer both within and outside the collective when that is the better fit. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 in the United States.

Healing Arts Center is a collective in Virginia Beach at 4652 Haygood Road, Suite A. Ask us anything before you book, or schedule at healingartsvb.com.

Sources: Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco & Lyubomirsky, Rethinking Rumination, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2008. Treynor, Gonzalez & Nolen-Hoeksema, Rumination Reconsidered, Cognitive Therapy and Research, 2003.