Hi there,

There’s a particular sentence I’ve heard some version of hundreds of times in therapy:

“I know why I do this.”

I know why I stay too long. I know why I have trouble saying no. I know why I shut down when someone is angry with me. I know this comes from my childhood. I know I’m choosing people who are emotionally unavailable.

And often, they really do know.

They’ve thought about it. They’ve talked about it in therapy. They may be able to trace the pattern all the way back to its origin and explain it with remarkable clarity.

And then someone is disappointed in them, or pulls away, or asks for something they don’t want to give, and suddenly they’re right back inside the pattern.

This can be incredibly frustrating.

We tend to assume that once we understand something, we should be able to change it. And when we can’t, we may decide we haven’t understood it deeply enough. So we analyze it some more.

But the part of you that knows, I don’t actually want to say yes to this, may not be the same part of your nervous system responding to the possibility that someone will be angry if you say no.

Your body can be organizing around an old threat even while your adult mind understands perfectly well that the threat is no longer the same.

That’s one of the reasons I’m interested in what happens after insight.

Can you notice the moment your chest tightens before you agree? Can you feel the impulse to explain yourself before the explanation is halfway out of your mouth? Can you tolerate the few seconds of discomfort between someone wanting something from you and deciding what you actually want to do?

And eventually, can you try something different?

Maybe you don’t give the immediate yes. Maybe you say, “Let me think about it.” Maybe you let someone be disappointed. Maybe you notice the urge to send the six-paragraph text explaining your boundary and don’t send it.

These can look like very small moments from the outside.

They aren’t.

Because healing isn’t only being able to tell a better story about why we became who we became. At some point, the story has to meet the nervous system. And then, little by little, we need opportunities to discover that we can do something different and survive what happens next.

That movement from understanding a pattern to actually working with it is a huge part of what I care about clinically.

It’s also why I created the RIFRA Method, and why this fall I’m teaching a small pilot training for therapists and helping professionals who want a more structured way to help clients move from the root of a pattern into reflection, somatic awareness, and actual behavioral change.

The pilot begins October 14. If this is the kind of work you find yourself trying to do with clients, you can read about the training and see whether it feels like a fit.

​[Learn about the RIFRA Clinical Training]​

Until next week,

Tanya