You Know Your Patterns. So Why Do You Keep Repeating Them?

Most men can articulate exactly why they're stuck. The childhood wound. The attachment pattern. The father issue. The abandonment trigger.

You KNOW it. You've talked about it for years.

But you still react the same way. Shut down in the same conflicts. Avoid the same hard conversations. Feel the same tightness in your chest.

Here's why: Understanding is not embodiment. Your mind knows the pattern. But your nervous system hasn't learned the new response yet.
This talk is about closing that gap.

Transcript

Hi and welcome to this talk today where I'm going to be going over a little bit more about myself.

Normally I go straight into the meditations but today I want to give you a bit more backstory on myself and why I create these meditations and who they're for.

So first of all my name is Andre,

I'm a shadow work coach,

Guide and I create meditations mostly for people who feel like they're in need,

Who feel like they're doing everything right on paper,

That could be therapy,

Journaling,

Reading books but still feel stuck.

I'm now also opening up the shadow work journey for healing the father wound for men who understand their patterns intellectually but still repeat them anyway.

Men who articulate their trauma beautifully,

Name their triggers and explain their father wounds but still snap at their partners,

Snap at work,

Avoid hard decisions or carry a type of tightness in their body.

It doesn't have to just be the chest but just a tightness either their shoulders are quite raised so if that's you,

You're probably in the right place.

My content will be aimed towards you and helping you because I was in your shoes.

I started this work because I lived it,

I spent years trying to think my way into an emotional freedom and I stayed stuck not because I didn't understand myself but because I was living in my head and not my body.

There was an element of processing I hadn't experienced until I went on a men's retreat and this was with the Mankind Project and I was able to do some carpet work they called it at the time which really was shadow work.

I was able to see my own shadows,

I was able to understand that I was carrying a lot of shame,

A lot of fear and untapped anger I hadn't realized was leaking in all other areas of my life.

I used to hear it from a few people mostly people who were close to me that I was very passionate on topics that didn't require that level of passion as if I was transmuting energy into a new format to pass on a message but really that was my anger that was leaking out.

It was hard to get my head around at first but it all became clear after doing some carpet work and seeing what was in my shadow.

After that I became trained in shadow work which was an intensive two-week course of really excavating your own traumas but actually processing them somatically in a group format allowing you to be witnessed.

This was really powerful for me and this is what I now do with men one-on-one.

I'm able to show you your shadow,

I'm able to expand your way of looking,

Your idea of yourself which is a really relieving thing with a lot of the men I've worked with.

The work I share here isn't about more insight,

I would say it's about embodiment,

It's about bringing the understanding down from your mind into your nervous system where real change can happen.

So if you're tired of knowing what's wrong but not feeling different,

Stay with me.

So I want to talk about a belief that most of us carry.

If I just understand myself enough,

If I process the right memory,

Name the right pattern,

Connect the right dots,

Clarity will come and once I have clarity I'll finally be able to move forward.

So we go to therapy,

We journal,

We do the inner child work,

We read the books on attachment,

Trauma,

Listen to the podcasts,

Go to the seminars and we even get degrees in it and we do all the things and we do get some insights,

Some real ones.

There's nothing wrong with that at all.

We understand why we shut down in conflict,

We fear commitment,

Why people-pleasing or self-sabotaging or feeling paralyzed by decisions,

We can explain it.

Most of the time a lot of people can articulate it,

We might even be able to talk about it vividly in session but when we go home we do the exact same thing,

The exact same patterns.

I did this so much from partner to partner,

From job to job,

I always found myself getting the same reactions from people,

Even friends.

So I realized some internal work still needed to be done and I wasn't currently doing it.

People have the tendency then to kind of turtle up and retract and think what's wrong with me or why do I know all of this but still can't change it.

Here's what most men I would say,

Don't realize you're not broken,

The insight was never,

The insight was never meant to be the destination I would say,

It was just a map.

Clarity doesn't live in your thoughts I would say,

It would live more in your body,

That's where you'll find real clarity.

So what's the cost of not doing that?

What is everyone paying when not going into doing this work?

Let me tell you what happens when we stay in the cycle of insight without embodiment,

We become really articulate about why we're stuck,

We can give a TED talk on our patterns but we're still living them,

We can intellectualize our emotions instead of feeling them,

We confuse understanding with healing and we stay safe in the story.

So the cost,

Years of therapy,

Zero transformation,

That alone should shake your boots.

It truly shook mine when I actually realized what I'd been doing for 10 years and still not being able to make real concrete changes,

Even though knowing my patterns are playing out in front of my eyes.

Years of therapy,

Zero transformation.

So you're the most emotionally intelligent guy in the room who can still show up differently when it matters,

That's not your fault but it is your responsibility to now shift it.

Once you know better,

That cheesy saying,

You can do better,

It holds weight.

All right,

So let's reframe this,

Let's have another look at this.

Here's the truth,

Most healing modalities won't tell you this,

Understanding is not embodiment.

So talk therapy,

Counseling,

CBT,

A lot of these things don't allow you to really excavate and actually get to the root of changing a pattern of behavior.

It allows you to dress it up and garnish it and make it look really nice and so you can take a nice Instagram picture and you can say what you've got on your plate.

It does not remove the food off the plate,

It doesn't do that at all.

So let me say this plainly,

Truth isn't conceptual,

It's somatic.

We can live in a realm of concepts and theories and speak about it and we can do a lot of mental masturbation whereas somatic is bodywork,

It's movement,

It's processing,

It's what animals do when you see an animal become scared in the woods or wherever they are,

They turn around after the conflict's gone and they shake their body vigorously.

I mean we have so many sayings,

Shake it off,

You know,

These are things that kind of point to what we have to do to actually make the actual change,

You have to somatically move the body.

So when you finally feel safe enough to let your shoulders drop,

When you can stay present with the tightness in your chest without running to a distraction,

When you can feel the anger rising in your throat but choose not to explode or suppress it,

That is clarity.

Not because you've figured something out,

Because your nervous system learnt a new response.

This is why men can spend years in talk therapy and still act the same way under stress.

Shadow work isn't about excavating more trauma though,

It's about meeting what's already here in your body right now and teaching your system that it's safe to feel it.

That's where the shift happens,

Not in the understanding,

In the capacity to stay present with what arises.

So here's what I want you to do today,

To practice,

Not tomorrow,

Not after you get clear today.

Notice one bodily contraction and don't override it.

Here's what I mean,

At some point today you'll feel something uncomfortable in your body,

Maybe it's tightness,

Clenching of your jaw,

When your partner asks can we talk,

Maybe tension in your shoulder,

Sunday's coming along and you've got work on Monday and you're feeling a bit tight.

A knot in your stomach when you have to think about a decision you've been avoiding,

Sorting out your taxes or looking at your finances with your partner or something that you've just been avoiding and you know that's an area for your growth for you but you're not stepping into it.

Your habitual response is to override it,

To power through it,

To distract,

To rationalize it away or to scroll online or to work even or to even work out,

To fix something external so you don't have to feel the same internal.

Today don't do that,

Instead 1.

Stop physically,

Pause whatever you're doing.

2.

Place your hand on the part of your body that's contracted,

Chest,

Jaw,

Belly,

Shoulders,

Wherever you feel it.

3.

Take three slow breaths directly into that space,

Don't try to fix it,

Don't try to analyze why it's there,

Just breathe into it.

4.

Ask it,

What do you need me to know?

Then listen,

Not with your mind,

With your body,

Let the answer come as a sensation,

An image,

A word,

Try not to force this and then the hardest part,

5.

Stay for 30 seconds,

That's it,

Just 30 seconds of being with the discomfort instead of running from it.

You might not get an epiphany,

You know,

I know I didn't when I first tried this practice,

But that's okay,

You're not trying to solve it,

You're training your nervous system at this point to tolerate the feeling without fleeing,

Without going into flight.

This is how you move from knowing to embodying,

One contraction at a time,

It's a practice,

This is something you have to keep coming back to.

So if this resonates with you,

You're not stuck forever,

You're just learning a new language,

The language of your body and like any language,

It takes practice.

The meditations I create here are designed to help you keep building that capacity,

To slow down,

To feel,

To stay,

To give you that mid-day check-in,

Whatever it may be.

I'm building a container for men ready to do this work,

Not just understand it,

But to live it.

But for today,

Start with one contraction,

One breath,

One moment of staying instead of fleeing.

That's where clarity lives.