You Make Sense | A Somatic Meditation to Understand & Release Old Patterns
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You Make Sense: Understanding the Roots of Your Old Patterns
Most of us know what it’s like to feel baffled by ourselves and our reactions to life.
You notice how certain reactions seem to take over before you’ve even had time to think. Feelings swell quickly. Familiar thoughts rush in. You find yourself responding in ways you’ve seen before and promised yourself you’d outgrow.
And what often makes this hardest is that you are aware. You can see the pattern forming even as you’re caught inside it.
And it’s easy to judge yourself at this point.
Why am I still doing this?
Why does this keep happening?
Why hasn’t this changed by now?
But what if the most important thing to understand about your old patterns is not how to get rid of them, but why they exist in the first place?
Your Old Patterns Make Sense
Your old patterns make sense.
You make sense.
Not in a vague, everything-is-fine way. In a very real, grounded way.
Everything about how you respond to life now makes sense in the context of your lived experience. In the context of the nervous system patterns you developed long ago. In the context of who you had to be to belong, to stay connected, to stay safe, especially during your early years.
We now know that most of what shapes our thoughts, feelings, motivations, and behaviors happens beneath conscious awareness. The majority of the forces shaping our inner world were formed early in life in response to our environment and relationships. So the ways you brace, manage, withdraw, overthink, push through, or disappear didn’t come from nowhere.
They emerged in response to something.
They were ways of staying oriented and connected when things felt overwhelming, confusing, or emotionally unsafe.
And if you could see the full picture of those forces inside you, you wouldn’t see chaos or failure. You would see coherence. You would see logic. You would see that you make sense.
Why Old Patterns Feel So Automatic
One of the most frustrating things about old patterns is how automatic they feel.
You don’t decide to people please.
You don’t choose to shut down.
You don’t consciously opt into spiraling self-judgment or over-functioning.
It just happens.
From a somatic healing perspective, this is because these patterns aren’t habits sitting on the surface. They’re protective responses held deeper, in the body and the subconscious. They tend to come online when something in the present even faintly resembles the past, long before your rational mind has weighed in.
This is why insight alone doesn’t automatically create change.
You can understand a pattern perfectly and still feel pulled by it, because the part of you that learned this response isn’t operating from adult reasoning. It’s operating from memory, sensation, and emotional learning. It learned something important at a time when survival, belonging, or emotional safety was at stake.
And that part doesn’t change through willpower.
Old Patterns as Self-Protective Strategies
Many of the old patterns people struggle with most began as self-protective strategies.
They formed when you were young and overwhelmed. When emotions were too big to process alone. When certain feelings, needs, or expressions didn’t feel safe to have. When staying connected required adaptation.
So parts of you learned how to stay alert.
Or how to stay agreeable.
Or how to stay invisible.
Or how to stay in control.
Or how to think instead of feel.
At some point, these strategies helped. They reduced pain. They created predictability. They allowed you to get through experiences that couldn’t yet be integrated.
Over time, though, what once helped can start to feel constricting. The body tightens even when there’s no immediate danger. Old responses show up automatically, even when you can see they no longer fit who you are now.
This doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It means something inside you is still doing what it learned to do.
Why “You Make Sense” Changes Everything
When people truly let the idea “you make sense” land, something important shifts.
The inner fight softens.
The urgency to fix relaxes.
Curiosity becomes possible.
This isn’t about excusing behavior or resigning yourself to old patterns. It’s about understanding them deeply enough that they no longer need to run on autopilot.
From a body-centered parts work perspective, change happens when we meet the parts of us holding these patterns with enough presence and support that they don’t have to keep working in the same way. Our goal isn’t to push these parts away or talk ourselves out of them. Our goal is to come alongside them.
When parts feel understood at the level where they live, in the body and the subconscious, the nervous system can begin to settle. The repetition loses some of its grip. And new responses become possible because something inside finally feels supported.
A Somatic Meditation to Understand and Release Old Patterns
This is the orientation behind today’s Somatic Meditation to Understand and Release Old Patterns.
Rather than trying to force change, the practice invites you to slow down and meet a part of you that’s been carrying an old pattern. Through a body-based process using Regenerating Images in Memory, you’re guided to sense where this pattern lives, listen for what it’s been holding, and bring understanding to its experience.
For many people, this kind of contact brings relief that insight alone never touched. Not because everything suddenly changes, but because something inside finally feels met.
And that’s often where real change begins.
Going Deeper with Old Patterns in Rooted + Resilient
If this way of understanding old patterns resonates with you, it’s the same foundation we work from inside Rooted + Resilient, my six-month group coaching program for deep somatic healing.
Inside the program, we work directly with the emotional roots of old patterns held in the body and subconscious, using somatic emotional processing and body-centered parts work to unwind long-standing cycles over time. It’s designed for people who are tired of circling the same issues through insight alone and are ready to meet what’s underneath with steadiness, support, and care.
This is the most in-depth way to work with me, and enrollment for the current cohort is closing.
You can get all of the info about Rooted + Resilient here.
And whether or not you take that next step, I hope this lands clearly:
If you’ve been repeating the same patterns and wondering why awareness hasn’t been enough, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Your old patterns make sense.
You make sense.
And that understanding can be the beginning of a more supportive relationship with yourself - one where patterns can be integrated and shifted from the inside out.
Try the Somatic Meditation to Understand & Release Old Patterns now!
Episode timing:
00:00 - You Make Sense: Understanding the Roots of Your Old Patterns
07:00 - Somatic Meditation to Understand & Release Old Patterns (using Regenerating Images in Memory®)
38:20 - Conclusion and reflections
How was that Somatic Meditation to Understand & Release Old Patterns for you?
What shifted within? And what do you understand about your old pattern now that you didn’t understand before?
➡️ If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this podcast!
And please join me every Friday on this beautiful journey out of your head, and into your more embodied and authentic self. 🩷🩷🩷
Thanks so much for joining me today!
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Enjoy more like this: RIM® Exercises, Parts Work, Get to the roots, Somatic Emotional Processing
About me
Hey, I’m Karena!
I’m a somatic emotional healing coach here to help you quickly identify and heal the subconscious blocks, old emotional wounds and self-sabotaging core beliefs that are holding you back!
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