PATTERN THOUGHT: WHO WAS JOE?

     A pattern is a repeating, systematic, strategic process that negotiates life stress. Taking any individual, one can find an explanation for past behavior based on experiences and decisions made during specific times in life. The more information the greater the predictive detail, but most data provides some insights. 
     This person, let’s call him Joe, was an only child, but lived in a large group of other children from the same family. Culturally, this was a typical situation. His father was a very rich man (billionaire) with a huge income. The father demanded a very strict religious and moral code from his children. He also required independence and individuality. The father wanted his children to become confident and self-sufficient at an early age. Shortly after Joe was born, his parents divorced. He remained with his mother who remarried and had four children with her new husband. Joe’s biological father married two more times. When he was ten years old, his father died in a plane crash. 
     In high school, Joe entered a small study group that learned about strong religious practices. The influential teacher used violent parables and teachings to illustrate dogmatic religious messages that supported death and destruction as a means of religious success. He and a small group mimicked activists and preached pure religious observance. By age 18, Joe married. He graduated from high school and went to college.
     What can we learn about this man’s pattern? First, we don’t have an abundant amount of information, but maybe enough to present some ideas about patterns. To start, Joe’s environment was rich. His physical needs caused no stress. He was not abused or traumatized until the death of his father, unless the divorce was a problem for him (very young), about which we have no information. In general, he had all the things he needed. His care and support was excessive from a physical point of view. He was not put into risky situations and his boundaries were extreme. One point about extreme verses poor boundaries. When a person has excessive boundaries (meaning rigid demanding rules), to grow up he or she must comply or rebel. Finally, Joe had no biological problems and appears to be bright and capable, as indicated by his success in school and religious training. 
     Joe’s problem arises in relationships. He appears to have been one of many. He was sent to a group but told to be independent. He was born an only child but raised in a group. His father left him, but he had his mother who remarried and had four children. Again, he was in a group, alone. He may or may not have felt he fit into his new family. When he reached high school. He found a way to do what daddy said. He could adhere to religious structure. He could be accepted as part of a group. He could lead and establish an independent identity. To reduce the non-specificity in his early life, he orchestrated a pattern that incorporated his need to belong and his father’s wishes. This outcome gave Joe a successful platform even if it was not a mainstream strategy. 
     What’s the theme to Joe’s story? It goes something like this, “Follow what I say, then I will love you.” He needed to show what he could do to receive the love he wanted. To do so, he behaved independently as expected. He followed strict religious tenets as expected. And, he became successful and better known than his father. He took the same thematic strategy with others, requiring that they do what he says. Those, that did not, he waged war on them. He applied this theme across nations and around the world. Who was Joe? Osama Bin Laden

PATTERN THOUGHT: BEST WAYS TO HELP OTHERS KEEP BOUNDARIES

     Many people have problems with boundaries. In pattern formation, boundaries are an extension of safety. During development, boundaries (rules) are limits that parents impose on children for their protection. For example, a young child does not understand the danger of streets and cars. So a parent places limits on where and when a child can approach a street. To ensure safety, the caregiver teaches the child safe methods for streets, such as holding someone’s hand and looking both ways. A child, who is well trained about streets, reaches up for someone’s hand when she approaches it. 
     Problems arise when the training is either poor or excessive. Years ago, I worked with a head-strong five-year-old whose mother did not have time for him (poor training). I liked him. He was bright and independent – too independent. Unfortunately, his parent did not teach him to understand risks. As a result, he did whatever he wanted in his neighborhood. In his world, he discovered the risks, and negotiated them for himself. One day his football went into the street. Without stopping, he raced between two cars to get it. He was struck and killed by an oncoming car. It was a sad and tragic event that happened because the boundaries were poor. While his parent was absorbed in her life, the choices belonged to my young friend – choices he was too young to make without direction. Caregivers must control children until they can make safe and productive decisions for themselves. Because young children do not know the dangers their actions might produce, grownups have to be in charge. So how do you handle boundaries in life when you received either too little or too much control growing up?
     The first and most common option is for a person to continue the pattern that they learned as a child – healthy or unhealthy. If it was healthy and offered problem solving opportunities, it does fine. If, on the other hand, the caregiver was over-protective or under-protective, the person faces a dilemma. As an adult, do I keep my caregiver’s limits my whole life or do I change them? Being personally healthy requires making individual decisions and owning the responsibility for them. In safety, it means assessing what the risks and rewards are for an action and deciding how to proceed. When you decide, you are in control of your life. This answers how a person creates self-control. What happens in relationships with others? 
     The same decision applies to relationship boundaries. As a person becomes confident about abilities to make decisions independently and retains responsibility for the outcomes, this confidence means behaviors show self-control. Emotions are expressed in an adult way, not like a child. Emotional statements are factual, about specific feelings, and expressed without fear. The goal is to keep a personal boundary and control yourself. There is no desire to control another person. Other people have the right to make personal decisions for themselves. Keeping consistent boundaries demonstrates clear personal limits. Once consistent self-control exists, you decide how you want to care for others. This decision includes how you can or cannot extend your boundaries to help others, when to accept or reject another’s actions that are unhealthy for you, and how you choose to close or open your boundaries to others. 
     So what is the best way to help others with boundaries? Keep your own boundaries in good repair. To do this, you have to ask yourself when an emotion arises, “Does it belong to me?” We are social beings and sense other’s feelings particularly from people whom we care about. It is easy to become absorbed in other people’s drama when you are not deciding who owns it. The best help anyone offers another person is to give them responsibility for their decisions and keep responsibility for our own.

PATTERN THOUGHT: Are you talking about things or people?

     If you ever want to witness relationship miscommunication, watch what happens when one person is talking about things and the other is talking about relationships. A woman says her son is incompetent because he did not feed the cat. The mother is not talking about a chore, but is attacking the child personally. She hasn’t considered she is angry at her husband for forgetting their anniversary. A couple wants to work together in the yard. The wife offers suggestions about shrub placement only to be told that her ideas are poorly thought out and she has no experience in landscape design. She does not hear “no experience”. She hears incompetent. So why do people talk about things when they want to talk about relationships? 
     Eric Berne called it games where the purpose was to create a way to pass time between people with no intimacy. The feelings are avoided, but the interaction continues. As a result, people talk at cross purposes and nothing changes. People start talking about an issue, such as getting kids to do homework, when what they really want to talk about is why their spouse said a hurtful thing last night. Anytime a person is talking about things, expressing them in an emotional way, it is highly likely that they are really talking about some issue in the relationship. In other words, talking about a thing when your concern is a person. 
     So how do you know if you do this? Take a minute before you speak. Breathe several deep breaths. Scan your body and see if a feeling is present. If there is, what is it? Identify the feeling and, in a calm voice, express the feeling. Watch the difference in the reaction you receive. Patterns operate in a repeating fashion. They repeat in the same way and produce the same goal. And the reason the pattern exists is to negotiate stress. If a husband is angry about sex deprivation, and criticizes his wife’s cooking, the goal is to notify his wife that he is not getting what he wants. Think this action will produce a willing partner? No, the outcome is continued frustration. The husband produces the very thing he does not want by talking about things when he needs to talk about the relationship.