How I change my patterns

Found this old draft that still rings true.

Jul 08, 2026

NB: Found this old draft i wrote in 2024 and decided to publish it (with minor grammatical edits). This practice has become second nature to me now, but it feels great to look at where my mind was at the beginning of my journey. It is like stepping back in time and watching my old self process and trying to heal old patterns. I hope you find this as revelatory as it is for me now, as much as it was in 2024.

We have heard it a thousand times; we don’t choose relationships that will make us happy or willingly enter into a toxic one. We choose relationships that feel familiar.

And I want you to let that sink in.

Because it means that what is “familiar” isn’t necessarily what is good or pleasant or bad; it is simply the emotional climate of the relationship you inhabited as a child that you become used to, and now operate from.

For example, if childhood was chaotic,

Chaos becomes familiar because it has been deeply programmed in your psyche or nervous system, and this is what you will seek out in adult relationships

So, while you may consciously want a good relationship, this subconscious program goes against your conscious will and makes a choice based on what it has been programmed to be familiar with.

So the question is, if love is a magnetic force to what feels familiar, how do we figure out what this familiarity is? How do we figure out this subconscious programming?

Because many of us don’t know… we don’t knooowwww!!

First, we need to look at how we behave objectively.

What is the one action that you do that cascades into this avalanche of repeating the same situations?

A little exercise that I do is to write the exact problem down.

For me, it looks like “I tend to overfunction in most of my dynamics, and that leads to carrying a lot and resentment ”Then i go deeper by asking (and writing. I find writing it down brings more clarity), “Why do you do this?”

“I do this because I don’t want people rejecting me, and so that I can feel comfortable around others.”

I go further. ”How do you do this?

”I do this by people-pleasing”

“The first thing i do when i am in any situation is scan for the uncomfortable parts and then try to make myself comfortable by making the problem go away through pleasing, overfunctioning and fawning.”

Here, the pattern reveals itself.

“Naturally”, I will always get drawn to people or situations with “problems” so that I can people-please to save them.

This is my pattern. This is my familiarity.

Next, I try to trace it to where it began.

For me, it traces back to my childhood, where my mum was strict as hell and spanked a lot, and I hated being spanked. Hated it. So to avoid spanking, I tried to be the good child, pleasing my way through it all, and that became a learned strategy that continued into my adulthood.

This brings a lot of awareness.

Because of this practice, I can spot it in real time when i am getting drawn in and doing the thing, and I am like, ‘Ohhh Kachi, you are doing this again; you are people-pleasing.’ What consequences are you trying to run away from this time?

I examine what consequences i am trying to avoid and why i am avoiding them. Then i sit with that experience and the feelings it generates.

This interception allows me to pause, breathe in and give myself a chance to take another action. Psychologists say it helps create more neural pathways so our brains get accustomed to it.

I do this with as many patterns as I am trying to solve.

annnd yes, i know, you’re probably saying, “but isn’t this a lot of work?”

Yes, it is.

It is hard work. Change is very hard; that’s why many don’t do it.

But if you are trying to get out of painful loops, this is the work you have to commit to.

Kachi from Wewerenotaware

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