Why Do I Keep Repeating Patterns When I Know Better?

A question I’m frequently asked is: Why do I keep repeating patterns when I know better? This is not a new question. It’s one of the frustrating paradoxes at the heart of psychotherapy: Why is breaking negative patterns so challenging? In therapy, my clients and I often spend significant time identifying and creating clarity around these patterns. And yet, they’re often left with the same question: “Okay, I understand it. Now what?” “I know scrolling for hours on end is making me feel bad about myself. But I do it anyway. Now what?”

Even a recent New York Times opinion piece points back to Freud’s grappling with this very question more than a century ago, what he referred to as “repetition compulsion”: why do we continue to repeat harmful emotional patterns even after we’ve learned to recognize them and, perhaps more importantly, how do we stop? Of course, the answer is layered and individual, but the moral of the story is this: you keep repeating patterns, even when a part of you knows better, because a part of you learned something different through experience… an illusion of safety.

Conceptual vs. Experiential Understanding

First things first, let’s talk about “knowing better,” or as I refer to it, conceptual understanding. Conceptual understanding means intellectually recognizing your repeating patterns.

To use the example above, “I know I shouldn’t spend more money” is a conceptual understanding. You’ve identified the pattern, that it doesn’t serve you, and understand that you’d like to, and should be able to, change it.

Experiential understanding is what your nervous system has learned through lived experience. You can understand the most fundamental truth in the world intellectually, but if you don’t experience it as true, safe, or acceptable, what’s going to win out? The experience, almost every time.

The Protective Function of Repeating Patterns

We are shaped most fully by our early experiences. As children, if our environments were defined by fear, shame, or judgment, we developed patterns as a replacement for the fulfillment of our individual nurturing needs. Instead of learning to count on acceptance, safety, and connection, we learned various forms of distraction and gratification that became unhealthy patterns for our nervous systems to count on.

This is because, as children, we didn’t learn that we could identify and fulfill our emotional needs in healthy ways. So even as adults, our nervous systems continue responding as though those early conditions still exist, even when our thinking minds know they don’t.

Learn more about repeating patterns in relationships.

From Knowing to Understanding 

What I want to help clarify is the bigger picture: the patterns you’re currently stuck in are serving a function. Somehow, someway, they are helping you feel safe. So, start by asking yourself: What need does this pattern meet? What does it reveal to me about what I need?

Take spending money, for example. What need does this pattern meet? Do you need a sense of control when life feels out of control? Excitement when you feel bored or disconnected? An escape from an uncomfortable feeling?

Understanding what the behavior is actually doing for you can help you understand what’s keeping you stuck. If spending gives me a sense of control, simply telling myself to stop spending won’t address the need underneath the behavior. I first have to understand what that part of me is trying to accomplish before I can offer it a different experience. 

This is why understanding your patterns matters! The goal isn’t to shame yourself out of the behavior. It’s to get curious about why you need it in the first place.

Maybe I don’t need to spend the money. Maybe I need to feel in control. Once I understand that, I can begin creating a new experience for the part of me that believes it needs the pattern to feel okay, rather than continuing to fight the pattern itself.

From Understanding to Experiencing

Changing, especially if we want to break negative patterns, requires new experiences, not just new insight. That’s a primary goal of AEDP therapy. Our work at myTherapyNYC is not only about gaining insight to help you identify unsupportive patterns. We also help you identify the needs you are actually seeking to fulfill, and then show you through direct, experiential psychotherapy that more is possible.

Learn more about AEDP therapy.

And the great news is, you can practice this outside of therapy, too! 

Instead of meeting your repeating patterns with shame, try meeting them with compassion. The kind that says: “I went through something real. It shaped me, but it does not define me.” Then, start by asking yourself: What am I feeling right now?

Is there anything truly threatening to me at this moment? Or am I experiencing a familiar feeling that my nervous system has learned to interpret as a threat? Do I really need to spend the money, or can I pause, take a few deep breaths, and remind myself: “This feeling is uncomfortable, but I can handle it. There is no real threat; it is just a feeling. I can stay with myself while I feel it.”

That is the new experience. And the more you give yourself what you actually need, the easier it becomes to let go of the distractions and quick hits of gratification that have been keeping you stuck. That’s how insight begins to become change.