Patterns and Change

We all have patterns.  These are generally learned behaviours, but pervade every part of our life, conscious and subconscious. It’s hard to establish where these patterns come from and often hard to identify and be aware of them.
Counselling or psychotherapy, aim to deal with and examine the patterns that arise in our emotional and mental behaviour, aiming to understand how they manifest and how they impact on our day to day existence and relationships.

Our learned behaviours will impact everything from what we have for breakfast to how we relate two our siblings or maintain meaningful relationships throughout our lives.  We are taught and influenced by others ands by the environment around us.

What is normal?  What we might find unacceptable in our society or culture, is the norm in others. Religious, cultural, dietary or behavioural differences are generally just behaviours that haves been imparted to us and on us by our immediate surroundings.

If we are hungry and surrounded by chip shops, it stands to reason that unless we have a strong behavioural ethic which counters ours immediate need, we are going to eat chips.  Well I am anyway.

Constructed thinking might reason that if we wait a while, travel further and control our urges, some vegetables might be available.

Then we need to explore the mind which is tormented either by the guilt of eating the chips or the addiction to them.  Balance might be to feel that as I don’t eat chips every day and that generally my diet is fairly balanced, a portion of steaming chips out of the paper, might be a nice thing to experience.

In either instance we are dealing with the probability that we have been educated and encouraged to think in this way.  If our environment creates the norm that chips are standard daily parts of our diet, these thoughts might not even arise and unconscious destructive behaviours become a way of life.

So it is perhaps choice that demonises us? If we are ignorant of chips every day being bad, ignorant of other food choices and how to cook them, impoverished both culturally and economically then our behaviour becomes a standard, irrespective of its destructive qualities.

When we discuss diet as an example, the choices seem obvious, especially to the educated, affluent middle class who have both the means and the access to choice. Yet on many other levels choices are being made regarding behaviour, that is totally subconscious and yet may as easily be destructively counter to optimal health and well being.

Movement and posture is one such environmentally influential factor on all humans.  The way we move, work, sit, relax and sleep will be impacted by society and culture and the world around us.  Our immediate need defines the way we behave.  This can change instantly depending on the circumstances we are placed in.

A few years ago I travelled around India on a budget of five pounds a day.  This needed to include food, accommodation, travel and all day to day expenses.  Toilet paper at that time was very expensive, almost fifty pence a roll, ten percent of the daily budget.  If I was to use it, then I would have to miss out on other things.  The decision therefore was to go with the cultural norm of the country and use water and hands.  The pros and cons of this could be debated at length, but suffice to say the adaptation was fairly straightforward.

On returning to a western country however, I did not continue my Indian ways, but reverted immediately to type.  I use this story as an example of the remarkable adaptability of the human condition to work and take in board it’s own environmental norms.
If we for in with our societal norms in this small way, from a habitual perspective, why is it so difficult to see that we would take these on from an attitudinal and physical perspective?

Our immediate environment is going to impact on our behaviour at every level. The tattooed, pierced, punk, with high hair and outrageous clothes aims to stand out and away from this societal expectation and create a difference.

After a while, this too becomes the norm and some then seek more and more ways to extract themselves from the mainstream thinking.

Yet there will be few punks who will dress their children up the same way!