We all have coping strategies that we’ve sometimes mistaken for personality traits or even identities. Learning to distinguish these strategies and recognise the specific patterns behind them is key to breaking through the long‑held assumptions we have about ourselves.
We are so much more than our emergencies or our so‑called disorders. I don’t mean this in an abstract or lofty way, but in a very practical sense: none of our dysfunctional, limiting or self‑restricting narratives are actually rooted in reality. They may manifest in the body or in certain behaviours, but there is already evidence that the opposite is true — we all have moments when we do not operate from those patterns.
So the question becomes: how do we notice the moment when an unhealthy or outlived coping strategy takes over our behaviour, and how can we, in that moment of awareness, choose a different path?
[It’s important to not label the coping strategies as bad in themselves: they are a manifestation of our problem-solving capability and resilience. We employ those strategies because they have kept us safe in the past.]
We can learn to get to know the parts that are acting out. When learning to identify those parts, it is helpful to know that they often follow archetypal patterns shared by all humans. For example, a child part may want to play and explore the world in all its beautiful innocence, or it may recoil or lash out in search of security.
In learning to hold these parts as separate from our true identity, the Big Self, we give every aspect of us a seat at the table while strengthening our connection to that Big Self and the widest expression of our soul.
This is where the real invitation lies: to turn toward the places we’ve avoided, to listen to the voices we’ve pushed aside, and to discover what becomes possible when we meet our shadow patterns not as enemies, but as guides. There is something profoundly alive waiting in that encounter — a deeper intelligence within us that begins to reveal who we might become when we are no longer run by what once protected us.
