BREAK FREE FROM YOUR PROTECTIVE PATTERNS

Moving beyond understanding the inner child and looking at the protective patterns that may still be influencing our adult lives.

Once Upon a Time

In the last blog, we began to understand our inner child and how our need to belong, in order to survive, could lead us to alter our natural forms of expression.

As children, the moments when our belonging and survival felt threatened could be hurtful and scary. In those moments, we sometimes learned to put parts of ourselves away in order to maintain connection, safety, and security.

We explored how these protective responses were not necessarily something to judge. They were ways our younger selves adapted to the world they were experiencing.

But we grow up.

And sometimes, the walls that once protected us remain, even though they are no longer needed. This is where we begin to take responsibility for the patterns that may be limiting our freedom and considering those that we need to let go.

When Protection Becomes a Pattern

When a child experiences a difficult or frightening moment, they may adapt in order to regain connection, safety, and security. Perhaps they discover that being quiet avoids conflict or that making others laugh eases tension. Perhaps being agreeable keeps people happy and being helpful brings approval.

Whatever the response, the child learns that there are ways to protect from those hurtful or fearful moments. A wall of protection has been placed around a particular expression or situation, and a new behaviour was created to move around it instead of through. The behaviour keeps the child safe and because it works, it may be used again and again. Over time, the response can become a pattern of protection.

The need to belong in order to survive may long disappear however these protective patterns and behaviours will remain unless consciously removed from our expression. We may continue responding to situations in the same way long after we have grown into someone who does not need the approval of others in order to survive.

The patterns become more ingrained over time, until they feel like such a part of us, we no longer consider changing them.

When a Pattern Becomes an Identity

Something else can happen as these patterns become more and more familiar. They can become part of how we understand who we are. They can become our identity.

We don't necessarily think:

“I use humour to protect myself from rejection or the criticism of others”

By the time we are an adult we may simply think, “I’m Funny”. There’s nothing wrong with being funny. In fact, humour can be a wonderful expression of who we are. But like any tool or ability, how it is used is also important. Humour can also be used to mask a subtle form of abandoning one’s self for the safety and security of a connection or belonging.

Imagine, for example, a child who experienced criticism or unfair expectations and discovered that humour helped them become accepted. Perhaps making people laugh eased tension when they felt uncomfortable. Perhaps joking about themselves helped protect them from the criticism of others.

Humour became the child’s clever way of protecting survival by understanding how to maintain connection to the group. It worked. It helped create belonging and safety. There is nothing to regret about that. But over time, the protective behaviour can become an identity.

“I'm the funny one. I'm the life of the party.”

And when that identity is accepted by the people around us, and gives us a sense of safety and security in our external environment, then the protective pattern laying underneath can become almost invisible. It isn't something we recognize as protection anymore. It's simply me.

We may even come to love the identity because it has brought us connection, acceptance, and belonging and we may spend time mastering and defending it.

But what happens when the identity no longer feels like the whole truth of who we are?

When the Identity No Longer Feels Like You

Sometimes a protective pattern can work very well and still not feel right inside. Perhaps being the funny person has created a lot of pressure. Perhaps you rarely feel free to be quiet, sad, serious, or vulnerable around others because people expect you to keep everyone laughing. Perhaps you want something deeper in your relationships, but you find yourself returning to humour because it feels safe and familiar.

You may leave an interaction thinking, “I was being myself, but I didn't really feel like myself”.

This feeling of restriction or contraction can be important. It may be telling us that there are other parts of ourselves waiting to be expressed. There may be a version of ourselves hidden behind the familiar one, on the other side of that protective wall. One that feels more authentic, more complete, and more like home.

We have to be willing to have an honest conversation with ourselves and ask, “Am I freely choosing this expression of myself, or am I using it to protect an old identity?

REFLECTION

Finding Your Patterns of Protection

We can begin by noticing the moments in our adult lives when we feel restricted, contracted, or limited in our freedom of expression. Perhaps it happens when we are people-pleasing, trying to control an outcome, avoiding conflict, or overthinking. Perhaps we stay quiet, try to be nice, seek validation, withdraw emotionally, stay constantly busy, or find it difficult to slow down.

These behaviours can be difficult to recognize because sometimes we feel virtuous about the identities and patterns we have developed. We may believe that the behaviour is evidence of a good quality within us. I might believe I am kind and a peace keeper when I am protecting myself from conflict by being quiet. I may believe I’m generous while I am putting everyone before myself and belong by care giving.

The virtue isn't what needs to be questioned. The question is whether we are including ourselves in the kindness, peace, or generosity we offer.

Am I being kind to myself when I suppress my feelings or my voice? Am I keeping the peace, or am I abandoning myself to avoid discomfort? Am I giving freely, or am I giving because I don't feel safe choosing myself?

These questions require honesty, but they don't require judgment. They invite us into a loving conversation with ourselves. In this honest reflection we can see what needs to be healed.

HEALING

Moving Toward the Fear

A protective pattern is often protecting an old fear. It may be connected to a situation or circumstance that was hurtful or frightening when we were young. When we can begin to recognize a protective pattern, we can become curious about the fear underneath it. What am I afraid might happen if I don't behave this way? Will someone become disappointed or angry? Will I no longer be connected or belong?

We must decide to move toward the wall rather than continually finding ways around it. We need to walk through the fear that this wall represents and so we are going to require love. We must begin directing love toward ourselves.

We can start by reminding ourselves of who we are in our highest form. We can command this truth and love back into our being.

I am safe and I am loved.

I love myself.

I trust myself.

I honour myself.

I know myself.

These simple statements can help us create an internal sense of safety and security rather than needing to maintain connections to external safety and security that others provide.

We can then begin imagining what it might feel like to enter a recurring situation without the old fear making the decision for us. What would the version of ourselves who felt completely free and had no fear choose? While we imagine ourselves in our highest and freest form and direct and command love toward ourselves, we begin to dissolve the walls and move through the fear.

Instead of being consumed by what might happen if we choose differently, we can begin noticing what authentic expression feels like. The internal calling grows louder that the external pressure of others or the unspoken expectations you’ve place on yourself.

EMBODIMENT

Choosing Yourself and Freedom

Choosing differently can feel uncomfortable at first. It can even feel cold or mean. When we have spent years protecting connection and belonging by putting ourselves aside, choosing ourselves can feel like we are doing something wrong. The old identity may resist. And sometimes the people around us may resist as well.

If others have become accustomed to the version of us who always says yes, always keeps the peace, always makes them laugh, or always puts their needs first, our changing behaviour may be uncomfortable for them. They may even struggle with the change more than we do.

This is where the temptation to return to our protective patterns can become strong. We may want to go back to what is familiar simply to restore the connection. But every time we make a choice that reflects love for ourselves rather than self-abandonment, something begins to change.

We begin to feel the freedom of saying no when we need to say no. We feel the energy that comes from speaking our truth. We begin to create healthy boundaries. We stop taking responsibility for the emotional experience of everyone around us. And perhaps most importantly, we begin to discover:

I am here for myself, too.

This creates a different kind of safety. We no longer have to rely entirely on the external environment to tell us that we are okay. We begin to carry that safety within ourselves and it follows us no matter where we go, no matter what is happening. This allows us to be free.

What Lives on the Other Side of the Wall?

As an old identity begins to loosen its hold and the patterns that supported it begin to fall away, something interesting can happen. Space opens. And into that space, something new can emerge.

Perhaps it is a part of yourself that has been waiting to be expressed. Perhaps it is a quality you have always carried but rarely allowed yourself to show. Perhaps it’s a rare gift or ability that you didn’t even know you had. Perhaps it is simply the experience of feeling more at home within yourself.

The new version of you will feel more authentic and carry more truth about who you are. As you begin to embody that expression, your life will begin to take shape around it. You begin to live with greater alignment. You begin to feel more like yourself. And you begin to experience what it means to move beyond the walls that once protected you and your life changes to match the background for the more authentic, loving, and joyful expression of you.

That feeling is freedom. That feeling is home.

Continue Your Freedom Journey

In the first part of the Freedom Series, we explored Understanding the Inner Child and began to recognize how our early experiences of belonging and survival may have shaped the ways we learned to protect ourselves.

In this part, we looked more closely at what can happen when those protective responses become patterns, when patterns become identities, and when we begin protecting those identities as though they are who we truly are.

But there is another question waiting for us.

What happens when we begin moving toward fear instead of away from it?

In the final part of the Freedom Series, we turn toward fear itself—not as something that needs to control our choices, but as something that can guide us toward greater awareness, authenticity, and freedom.

NEXT: Let Your Fear Guide You Back to Freedom →

Learning to live with freedom.

Experience It: Break Free From Your Protective Patterns →
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Go Deeper: Freedom Series Workshop →
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