5 Personality Patterns - Which Are You?

In today's episode of the Art of Attraction, we look at the 5 personality patterns - these are character structures formed both by your inherent gifts and your human trauma. You were born with certain innate qualities, and when you felt threatened as a child, you leaned on these strengths to defend yourself and survive. Now, these survival patterns are on auto-pilot and are restricting your life and keeping you from what you want. Here, learn to identify your pattern and find freedom at last.

Transcript

Good evening everyone and welcome to the Art of Attraction with Dominie Drew.

I am your host,

Dominie Drew.

Thank you so much for joining me for this amazing podcast episode.

I'm coming to you live on Facebook Live in the land of the Book of Face and I'm coming to you in podcast format in Spotify,

ITunes,

Google Play,

Wherever it is that you are downloading,

Wherever you are joining me from,

Please,

By all means,

Welcome.

So glad to have you here.

I have a great show lined up for you today.

As I mentioned,

My name is Dominie Drew and today I want to talk to you about the personality patterns,

The way that we structure our systems,

Not just our natural gifts,

What we're truly gifted with,

What we naturally excel at when we don't try.

I call that a core quality,

But also the way we distort those core qualities into defenses and we keep ourselves from getting the things that we want.

So this show is really about,

For a long time it has centered around single men and how to attract a life partner.

And that is still in a lot of ways the angle that I take in this work.

And if you're a fan of this show or you've listened to a lot of episodes,

You will know that the show isn't really about dating.

It's not really about men.

It's not really about relationships.

It's about you.

It's about how you work and how you keep yourself from working at your best.

My name is Dominie Drew.

I've studied this work for about 15 years and I'm incredibly good at it.

And what I do,

My area of expertise is that I help people see how they're holding themselves back from the things that they want.

So you'll notice there I don't tell you what you should want.

I don't tell you who you should be or what you should do with your life.

I just want to give you the option.

So if you're desperately wanting a career and you can't seem to manifest it,

You can't seem to make it happen,

You're getting no's everywhere in your life,

There's a reason for that.

There's something in your system that is blocking you from what you want.

Some belief that you're caring about why you can't have it or who you have to be or what you have to do.

And as long as you carry those things,

You're unable to get what you want.

Period.

That's just how the world works.

So what I do is I show you how you're self sabotaging.

I show you what it is that you're doing that's sabotaging your desires.

It's blocking you from what you want.

And once you know that,

Then you can fix it on your own.

I had a client come to me recently and he said,

Man,

I've just never had success with women.

I don't know why I approach and I either get rejected or they're not interested or I can tell they're not really into it and I feel really undesirable.

What is the problem?

And he said this has been going on for decades.

Unless you really look deeply into this issue underneath the surface,

Right?

That's why I work in the area of subconscious self sabotage is that it doesn't change on its own,

Right?

It doesn't.

This won't fix itself.

This isn't something you'll grow out of or you can pray away or if you just keep going long enough and cross your fingers that it'll change on its own.

The fact of the matter is if you've been struggling for as many years as you've been struggling,

Then you know,

You're a smart person,

Right?

If you could figure this out on your own,

You would have done so by now.

So there's something going on under the surface and by under the surface,

I mean things that you,

That you by definition can't see,

Right?

By that,

By definition are beyond your awareness.

They're not conscious and you are only aware of the things that are conscious.

Okay.

That's the definition of conscious and subconscious,

Right?

So so I work with that,

That man in one session,

He spoke with me about for maybe we talked for about 30,

35 minutes or so in one of our coaching calls because he's in my coaching program and he it turned out he had an underlying belief that he was not good enough.

Okay,

That that nobody would want him.

And so as a result,

When he was approaching women,

He was exuding the certain belief because of rejections he's had in the past.

He's decided he took those personally and he decided,

Okay,

I'm not good enough.

Nobody wants me.

So then he approaches a woman,

You know,

Wearing this,

This aura,

This cloud of I'm not good enough.

And that's what they see.

If you decide you're not good enough,

That's what people get from being around you.

They go,

Oh,

That person he's,

You know,

That may not be a conscious thought,

But it's certainly an energetic response.

Okay,

So this is why this is one way,

Sort of a more surface level,

More psychological way in which we create our own reality.

Okay.

Make no mistake,

You create your own reality.

Okay.

We all look around the world and we think we're seeing the same world everybody else is seeing and not one of us is.

Let me say that again.

Most of us,

We look around the world and we think we're seeing the same world that everyone else is seeing and we're wrong.

Not one of us is.

I experience a different world that can really be on a pretty literal level,

Actually.

And so,

You know,

And we can come back to that.

And sometimes I shift levels in this podcast.

Sometimes I'm talking about the mental level and thought structures and the psychology and more mentally,

More things that you can grasp mentally.

And sometimes we dive down real fucking deep and we go down into the energetics and what,

You know,

On a,

On more of a soul level,

How did these things work?

How do you block yourself?

Where's the lesson?

What's the point of the whole thing?

Right.

And so,

Um,

And so this is,

This is my passion,

Right?

This is my work.

Um,

I just started creating actually so that you guys know on Facebook live on insight timer,

Which is a meditation app.

I've just started uploading meditations that allow you to practice this kind of thing and,

Um,

And really,

You know,

Repeat it this same as any other skill is really,

Um,

Is really,

Uh,

Uh,

A skill,

Right?

Same thing with,

Uh,

Energy work or psychic skills or things like that.

People tend to think,

Oh,

You have to be a medium or you have to be born with it.

I've heard mediums say you have to be born with it.

That is inaccurate.

Okay.

That's not true.

It's a skill,

Right?

Reading energy,

Feeling energy,

Healing on energetic level.

These are all things that can be learned.

Okay.

There are schools where you can learn them.

Please go to a good one.

Actually,

If you're thinking about it,

Just send me an email and send me a note and ask me because some of you don't want to learn that from crazy people and it's around the tracks.

A lot of crazy people.

So,

Um,

Let's go ahead and dive in.

So today I really want to talk about,

Um,

The five personality patterns.

So last week,

Um,

I took sort of more of a LeVar Burton approach and I started reading.

Okay.

And I just read from this book that I had just found called the five personality patterns and it writes out exactly what I teach.

I mean,

I truly had I written a book,

It's,

I think it would have been exactly like this one.

Um,

And that's great because more people need to teach this kind of work.

It's real,

Right?

It's tangible.

The work that I teach changes your life.

Okay.

If you'll allow it to,

Right?

Not to say that I couldn't have a session with somebody and it wouldn't change their life,

But you have to put effort in.

And by the time you're sitting down with me and having a session,

You're usually,

Um,

You know,

You're,

You're,

Um,

You want to change,

Right?

You're already set up for it.

You want the success,

Right?

So so I,

I pulled out this book last week and we started talking about,

Um,

The witness,

How to develop the witness.

The inner witness is something that's required for change.

Okay.

You need to observe yourself in order to really change.

Now I'm not saying that you can't hire a coach who talks a great game and,

And has a great game face and,

Um,

You know,

Speaks in elevated tones and is really encouraging and maybe really knows some stuff that doesn't mean you're going to change or get what you get your problem fixed,

Right?

The work happens inside.

People who talk a good game can't necessarily access the levels that on which your problem exists.

So if you want to do that,

You need to go down and down into yourself and you need to go deep.

So that's what my training is,

Is I put you in touch with the part of yourself where you're self sabotaging and I allow you to release it.

Okay.

I have no agenda for you to do this.

I don't,

There are no shoulds in my work.

There's nothing that you ought to do that you're not doing.

There's nothing wrong with you.

You're not broken.

You're on a journey.

This is if you want that journey to be easier,

Happier,

More joyful,

More fulfilling,

More passionate.

I have people come to me because they want to be more successful.

I have people come to me because they are wrapped in anxiety and they can't get out.

I have people come to me who,

Um,

Have a gift they want to share with the world,

A past,

Something they're passionate about in their life and they can't do it right there.

They,

They get anxious or they can't perform.

I have people come to me because they want to have better sex.

I have people come to me because,

Um,

You know,

They're,

They're lonely or they're doing all the right things and they can't figure out what the problem is.

Right?

So this is incredibly diverse work because really what do all those issues have in common?

Why is this work not really about men and dating?

Because you don't have problems with dating sweetness.

You have life problems that are showing up in your dating life,

Right?

All of the things I just mentioned,

In fact,

Every problem you could possibly bring me comes down to how you're sabotaging yourself inside,

Right?

Because the fact of the matter is every single thing that you want is available in the world.

It's all physically possible.

So if you,

If you don't have it yet,

Then there's something that's stopping it from coming.

And that's where I come in is I show you where you're blocking yourself from what you want.

Okay.

So this is incredibly powerful and transformative work.

And the work that I teach is,

Uh,

Is permanent,

Right?

The,

The,

The solutions are permanent because it's an awareness type of thing.

You can't become unaware of something,

Right?

It's not learning.

It's not information.

You're already very smart.

If that could fix it,

You know,

You would have done that by now.

So this is really,

You know,

And this is what we're here as humans to do,

Right?

This is the path.

So last week we talked about the inner critic and,

Um,

And how that sabotages ourselves.

I highly recommend checking out that,

Um,

That,

Um,

Episode if you are inclined to.

So today I want to look at an overview of the survival patterns.

And so what I want to do with that is I'm in this,

I'm in this book here,

The five personality patterns is by Steven Kessler.

Okay.

K E S S L E R.

And as I said,

I've studied with this work for about 15 years.

And um,

And this is the structure that I learned actually in two different schools.

One school I went to for four years,

Actually both schools I went to for four years.

Um,

And you know,

I,

I ended up learning this exact structure.

So he studied the same people that I studied essentially.

Okay.

And so these are the five survival patterns.

And so survival patterns are,

Um,

Actually here,

I'll just,

I'll just go ahead and dive in and we'll,

We'll use his words.

Okay.

Each survival pattern grows out of a strategy that a child's employees to buffer itself from the sense of overwhelm it feels when its needs are not being met with repeated use.

The survival strategy gets conditioned into the bot,

Into the child's body and becomes a survival pattern.

What defines a survival pattern is the particular strategy it uses to manage the sense of overwhelm,

Not the age when the pattern first appears or the wounding that happened at that time.

Although all five patterns perform the same function,

They buffer the child from directly experiencing the feelings of overwhelm.

They employ five,

Oh,

Excuse me.

Although all five patterns perform the same function,

They buffer the child from directly experiencing the feelings of overwhelm.

They employ five different methods to accomplish this.

Okay.

So essentially what he's saying is that there's a kind of a trauma that occurs at a young age.

Okay.

That can be a trauma,

Like you might think of the word trauma,

Like a terrible car crash or a parent dying or something like that,

But it also could be something that,

Um,

Uh,

That you don't even remember.

Okay.

Oftentimes people I work with don't even remember their,

Their childhood traumas.

In fact,

They go,

Oh no,

I had a wonderful childhood.

Consider this.

Your trauma is not trauma quote unquote,

Like you would think of as your adult mind.

Okay.

So trauma or a childhood wounding occurs when the child sees itself,

Sees its life as threatened.

Okay.

And so if you think about it,

That's pretty easy to do for a child,

Right here,

He talks about a sense of overwhelm,

Which is like discomfort,

Right?

So a baby is,

Um,

Is hungry and it cries and if it's allowed to cry,

Then it will be able to release that pent up energy of and frustration and it will stay.

It keeps its,

Its system in balance,

Much like a traumatized bunny will freeze and then shake until the shock is out of its system.

It'll go into shock and then shake until the trauma is released and then move on with its life.

That bunny does not carry that trauma.

We carry the trauma because we don't handle it properly,

Right?

For all of the,

Oh,

Humans are so much better.

Um,

And they,

You know,

We're capable of so much more and we know we exist and shit like that.

Animal's system is always in balance.

Okay.

They automatically,

Because it's just pure being.

So they are,

They are being that,

Right?

They're just,

They're just being as they are.

We're like,

Oh man,

I really should be different.

What based on what?

That's,

That's not even logical.

If you should be different,

You would be different.

Right?

We have that lack of trust in the system,

So we're far more complex beings and far more fucked up,

To be perfectly honest.

So these,

So what he's talking about with these survival strategies are,

Um,

Are when a child gets overwhelmed.

So let's say,

Um,

You know,

They're,

They're hungry and they want to do something,

You know,

The child needs food,

But you can't get,

They can't get food,

Right?

It's not like you're a bad parent.

Maybe you're at a doctor's appointment.

You don't,

You know,

You can't breastfeed somewhere or you can't,

You know,

You don't have to bottle with you,

You know,

Whatever,

But the child then can't get its pro it's it's um,

It can't regulate itself.

It's not getting its needs met.

And so,

You know,

Um,

And so it goes into these defensive to protect itself from feeling that kind of,

Of overwhelm of not having its needs met.

Okay.

So yeah,

You're saying that childhood environments exist on a,

On a spectrum ranging from nearly ideal to unspeakably horrible,

Right?

And so the patterning can be,

Can,

Um,

Can vary as far as,

Uh,

In intensity,

But your defenses,

Your defenses will come up when you feel overwhelmed.

So if you're,

You know,

You don't,

You don't want to go to work today,

Right?

Or let's say you're at work and you,

You know,

Your boss comes and says something that you think is stupid and you get,

You know,

Really angry and then you get resentful and you just like sit on it.

That shit will make you very unhappy by the way.

All right.

Clearing these defenses doesn't just make you happier.

It makes you healthier.

Health risks,

Health concerns are always based on what's going on in your energy because the physical follows the energetic.

Okay.

Um,

Here's an easier way of thinking about that.

Forget about energy.

Just look at emotion.

Happier people are healthier,

Right?

They're lower stress.

Um,

Actually turns out,

I don't know if you've got to have heard this,

I found a wonderful Ted talk on this,

On the reality of stress.

Turns out that stress isn't what hurts you.

It's the belief that stress hurts you.

So they did this fascinating,

I'm just going to pause for just a second and use it because this is so fucking good.

Um,

They did this incredible,

Um,

Study maybe at Harvard or something like that where they took a few groups of people and measure their stress level.

It was a longitudinal study.

So it went over a long period of time and they divided them into groups and one group was,

Um,

Uh,

Or so they measured their stress,

Right?

So high level stress,

Low level stress,

Um,

Medium,

Whatever.

And then they looked at how long they lived.

Right?

So it turns out that,

Oh,

Sorry.

They asked whether or not they were stressed.

Um,

And then whether or not they believed stress was good for you.

Okay.

So it turns out the people with lower stress lived longer than the people with higher stress.

That's what you'd think,

Right?

Except get this,

Except for the people who thought stress was good for you.

People who believe that stress was good for you lived longer than people without stress.

So it's not about whether or not you're stressed out.

It's not,

It's,

It's how you perceive.

It's not what's happening to you in life.

It's how you perceive what's happening.

The fact of the matter is if your life is falling apart and you look around,

You're like,

This is great.

There was so much that needed to get fixed in my life.

Anyway,

I can't wait to see what's going to happen next.

You will come through that.

It's like a buffer,

Like an emotional,

Um,

Safety zone that allows you that,

That buffers you from the pain.

So like there's no,

There's,

This doesn't need to create things that people see as painful don't need to be painful.

There are people who orgasm during childbirth,

Fucking anything is possible.

And we're talking about emotions of all the things you can change your emotional state in a snap.

If you want to,

I've actually,

I can now do that.

Um,

If I'm just feeling unhappy,

I can just decide to be happy and I can feel happy.

Like it's,

It's crazy,

But I practice that skill,

Right?

I just open up the space and I allow myself to,

To,

To do it right.

There's also a long period of time where I couldn't do that.

So it's not like you should be able to do that,

But try it because you can.

Okay.

So it's what you believe to be true.

That is the most powerful thing on the planet.

Truly.

That is what literally creates your reality.

So someone can be,

Um,

You know,

In a,

I don't know,

Let me think of an example.

Somebody can,

You know,

Talk about,

You know,

Walking up a mountain,

Like I'm going to,

I'm going to climb this mountain.

It's going to be so great and someone can be like,

They can be doing that because it's like a,

It's like a should,

Or they have to prove something and they don't really want to do it.

And that can be a huge ordeal and so much work and it's terrible.

And,

Oh my gosh,

Somebody else could be like,

That sounds like so much fun.

And every single aspect can be joyful and light.

Okay.

That's an amazing example,

But it's an okay one.

Um,

So,

So,

So think about that.

You are in control of your emotional state.

When you say things like,

I'm sad,

You're not sad angel.

You're a being of divine light and love.

And you're currently experiencing sadness.

Can you see how those are different things?

When you say,

I am sad,

You're making a statement about yourself.

I am this.

No,

You're not.

You just feel sadness.

That's okay.

And when you phrase it in that way,

Not only are you being more accurate,

But you're creating some distance between you and the sadness,

Right?

Between you,

The real you and the sadness.

You're just feeling sad.

I'm lonely.

I feel loneliness.

Big difference.

Actually try both in your system and see what you think because that's,

That's more accurate.

I'm just feeling a thing.

I'm having a feeling.

Well,

That sounds far less overwhelming than like,

Oh,

I'm lonely.

Which kind of like indicates that that's who you are.

And so when you repeat that all the time,

Whether consciously or not,

That's my realm,

But also whether you know,

Inwardly or not in your head to yourself or outwardly,

You're making that happen.

You see what I mean?

So so,

So don't make yourself into,

Especially the things that you don't want.

Right.

And I feel I just,

I was just having this little practice thing cause I was,

You know,

I was doing a puzzle.

Right.

And I was thinking,

Man,

Can life be effortless?

Right.

And so I thought,

Okay,

I'm just gonna,

I'm gonna,

Every time I get what I want,

I'm just gonna say,

Oh my God,

Life is effortless.

And so I was looking for like the edge pieces.

Right.

So I just opened up this big puzzle and it's huge.

And I'm looking for edge piece.

Every time I found a edge piece,

I went,

Oh my God,

Life is effortless.

And sure enough,

They start coming faster and faster and faster.

And I've got this big puzzle.

There's only so many edge pieces.

And even though I kept finding them and taking,

You know,

There were fewer and fewer to go,

I kept finding them just as quickly.

So there was a sort of experience of,

Oh man,

Life is effortless.

Life is effortless.

You know,

I just kept repeating it over and over and like,

That's what I,

I decide to be so.

And so that's just sort of like a little silly mental game,

But the,

The,

The premise is,

Is accurate.

And if you decide who it is that you want to be,

Don't,

Don't put the blame for who you are onto the world around you.

Cause it's not,

It's nothing to do with that.

So the first survival pattern that starts at the,

At the youngest age is the leaving pattern.

Okay.

And my training,

This was called schizoid characterology.

And it happens very,

Very early at birth or before,

Sometimes during pregnancy when you have a really difficult pregnancy or there's a lot of stress or there's fear in the,

In the mother's system that gets,

You know,

Obviously the child is totally enmeshed at that point.

So here in the leaving pattern,

The wounding happened very early.

Steven says most likely during pregnancy when the baby's incoming spirit did not experience the safety that it needed to complete its transformation into the physical world.

So this wounding is about not feeling safe.

During this time,

The developmental task,

In other words,

What the,

What the spirit or what the human needed to accomplish at that age is embodiment.

The process by which the spirit reorients itself from the spirit world to the physical world and bonds with the physical world and the physical body.

So people who have a hard time really existing deeply in their physical body,

This tends to be that that this survival pattern or his characterology.

Ideally the physical body and the physical world feel safe enough for the baby's spirit to settle into the body and claim it.

Then her spirit can use the body as a reference point,

A center to return to if it gets lost or shattered.

As time goes on,

Her physical body then develops an energetic boundary that keeps out foreign energies and increases her felt sense of safety.

So in other words,

Here's your buffer,

A boundary,

Right?

I am here.

You are there.

That's important for being an adult in a,

In a human body,

Right?

In the formation of the leaving pattern,

However,

Something in the physical world repeatedly shocks the incoming spirit so badly that it's attention fragments,

Causing it to flee back to the spirit world to protect itself.

Being shocked out of the body this way interferes with the spirit's process of orienting itself to the physical world and rooting itself in the physical body.

These shocks leave the newborn baby's delicate self so vulnerable that any intense energy directed at her can cause herself to once again shatter into fragments.

So anybody listening right now,

Does this resonate at all for you?

Okay.

The schizoid personality structure are people who tend to be highly creative,

Very spiritual,

Because again,

You can see their defense is to go back to the spiritual world or to try to,

Right?

So they leave their body a lot.

And so they tend to actually have these sort of tall willowy bodies,

Right?

Sometimes they can be quite sort of ethereal.

They're not like,

You know,

Like,

Like,

Like on the ground,

Like solid,

Like,

Yeah,

Like that's like the person like tree trunks,

Right?

They're very sort of like ethereal and wispy and tend to be very intelligent,

Very creative.

And again,

Very connected spiritually,

But not very connected here on the earth.

And so their default is to,

Is to leave the body.

So and so when they,

When she feels overwhelmed,

Right,

She shatters,

She goes into pieces,

Goes back into the safety of the spirit realm,

Or attempts to,

Right?

That only works in your baby,

By the way,

Like you're leaving your body,

But it's not like you're connecting with spirit when you're an adult and you're in a leaving pattern defense.

That's not what this is.

Okay.

That's the core quality.

As a result,

You're more spiritually open,

But it's not,

You're not,

It's not a good thing,

Right?

It's done through fear and distortion,

Not through,

You know,

Intention and like,

I want to connect with spirit more,

Right?

Such repeated shattering prevents the child from ever coalescing a strong sense of self,

Firmly anchoring it in the body and creating a strong energetic boundary around her body that will make her less vulnerable to future shocks.

This means that even as an adult,

She will be easily overwhelmed.

This is very typical of this,

Um,

This character pattern herself will tend to fragment under pressure,

Which may leave her unable to function because she cannot find a center from which to operate.

Most likely she will maintain a strong connection to the spirit world.

Here we go.

And we'll be highly creative,

Sensitive,

And aware of energetic phenomenon.

I told you I could have written this book.

This is,

I haven't read this chapter yet,

But,

Um,

He's talking about the same thing that I teach.

Um,

But she will doubt her right to exist in the physical world and will have trouble functioning here.

Okay.

So that's the leaving pattern.

Um,

You know,

All of these defense patterns are difficult.

They are,

They're painful.

It's painful to be here incarnated as a human and almost not be able to tolerate being human,

You know,

Which is kind of the case with the,

With the schizoid,

With the,

Uh,

Leaving pattern,

Right?

They can't tolerate,

Well,

The belief is they can't tolerate,

Right?

This is all fixable.

Every single thing I'm talking about here is fixable.

This is what I help people get through.

Um,

But I think it's useful to see it in the way of,

Of being so,

Um,

Of being so,

Um,

Particular,

You know,

Of going through each one and,

And doing it clearly,

Looking through it clearly.

All right.

So that's the second pattern merging and compensated merging.

This is called the oral characterology in my training.

Same thing.

Sometimes the name,

Sometimes the names change here.

The unfulfilled need was for nurturance.

The deprivation happened during the first few years of life,

Usually in relation to nursing and or bottle feeding.

This is the example I gave you earlier.

The child didn't get or couldn't take in the nourishment and soothing she needed.

So she never felt full and satisfied.

The tension of being hungry or otherwise upset was not fully released.

So something,

So some anxiety always remained in her system.

This anxiety further inhibited her ability to take in and metabolize nourishment and she got stuck in a cycle of needing,

Not being able to effectively receive and never getting full.

This left her feeling hollow and empty inside.

So this,

The oral characterology,

The merging characterology is,

As you said,

Based in need and they tend to feel empty inside.

So they're the people,

Have you ever heard the term energy vampire or vacuum cleaner eyes?

Both of those things refer to people who pull with their energy,

Right?

So they're,

They're,

They're sucking,

They're sucking at you.

And the reason they're sucking,

That's the oral character,

Is because they believe that they're not enough.

So they're trying to get it from you.

Okay?

So those kinds of people and you're like,

Oh man,

Or I'm just exhausted energy vampire.

Oh man,

Just exhausted after hanging out with this person.

Right?

So the reason is because,

Because they're always pulling,

Right?

So Stacy says on Facebook live,

No vacuum cleaner eyes.

So when you have,

When somebody has vacuum cleaner eyes,

They're,

They're pulling at you.

It's kind of like this.

I'm,

I'm mirroring it on Facebook live.

And so they're just always kind of pulling.

They talk a lot.

Sometimes they talk in like very low voices to make you kind of like lean in and in all these ways they're pulling at you to try and fill themselves up to get this need met.

But the problem is that the underlying need or the underlying belief is that I'm not enough and that that doesn't change.

I'm not enough.

No matter how much you have or how much they pull from you,

It's never going to be enough.

You see what I mean?

So it's constantly not enough.

Back to our book.

There are two ways that she could handle this situation.

She can identify with the need and wait for rescue or she can project her needs onto others and then try to fulfill their needs.

The first method leads to pure to the pure merging pattern.

The second to the compensated merging pattern.

These are fundamentally the same survival pattern but in the compensated merging pattern,

The feelings of need and helplessness are covered over by a pretense of self-reliance and power.

You'll tend to see these types of people as like I was going to say empaths but that really actually fits the next character structure better than this one.

People who give themselves t-shirts.

I'm just going to help you.

I'm going to help you.

I just really want to,

You know,

What can I do?

And there's nothing wrong with helping but when it comes from that particular place,

From a defensive place,

They're actually trying to fulfill their own needs through someone else's because they're afraid to even ask to have their own needs fulfilled because they're so sure that they won't.

A child in the pure merging pattern will be clingy,

Fragile and need a lot of attention.

There's the desire for attention but they're always sucking at it.

A child in the compensated merging pattern will act self-reliant too soon by rejecting her own needs and focusing on helping others instead.

While the second child looks more functional,

The compensation is only a mask covering the unfinished work of this stage of development.

In both situations,

She practices referencing others but avoids referencing herself.

The gift of this strategy is that she then becomes skillful at sensing the needs of others and providing what is needed.

So remember,

All of these structures,

All of these defensive patterns are based on core qualities.

They're based on you genuinely want to help and then as a defense,

You help others or you lose yourself in helping others in order to avoid helping yourself or facing the reality of what's going on in your life.

But it's based on that core desire of desiring to help,

Right,

Of kindness.

Okay,

Here's the third strategy pattern,

Survival pattern.

Enduring.

Now in my work,

This is called the masochistic character structure.

It's not masochistic in the sense of how we would normally use that word so don't panic but it is just sort of described this character structure would rather hurt itself than hurt others and so that's where the term masochistic comes from.

Okay,

So the enduring pattern,

He calls it the enduring pattern.

At around the age of two,

A new need arises in the child.

He is now walking and talking and grappling with the discovery that he is separate from his mother.

This discovery of separateness brings with it the need for autonomy.

Here's where this happens.

The need to be in charge of his own body and actions.

He begins to say no and to oppose attempts to control him.

While this assertion of his autonomy is exactly what he needs to do to complete this developmental stage,

This is also a distinctly new behavior,

Something a baby doesn't do.

If a parent or caregiver cannot tolerate his budding autonomy,

A conflict will arise.

As the parent tries to suppress his autonomy by controlling and punishing him,

He will feel humiliated and enraged.

And I think that the humiliation is really about,

It's such an authentic impulse.

It's what you're supposed to do.

You're supposed to become autonomous.

So to be sort of cut off at the knees at that stage of development,

Right?

This is like the helicopter parent of like,

Oh no,

I don't want you to go do anything on your own.

Jesus,

I could slap them all.

If that is you and your parenting,

You are damaging your child more than you realize.

You need to get your own needs met from your friends and your loved ones and your adult relationships and be a parent and not fill your life.

Not use your children to fill your life because you mess up their developmental stages.

They need to have autonomy.

Yes,

You need to be there,

But if your life is about them or you're helicoptering around them because you can't tolerate it because you,

The parent,

Can't tolerate the idea of them getting hurt and by the way,

They might.

So tolerate that idea.

Keep them safe,

But if you're,

You know,

If you're obsessive about it,

Then you,

You,

You stunt growth.

It's not,

It's not a good thing.

It's not being protective.

It's being obsessive and you're,

You're compensating your,

You're filling your own needs with your children.

He will actively resist the parents' domination for as long as he can,

But will eventually conclude that he cannot win,

Right?

Obviously because he's so little and you're so big and will switch to resisting passively.

He will withdraw deep inside himself to protect his last shred of sovereign territory and in a last act of autonomy,

Turn his will against himself to suppress his own desire to act and even to express himself.

He will hunker down and limit his opposition to you can't make me right because that's the only real boundary he can hold.

He's a two year old.

You can pick him up and you know,

It's like,

Um,

People do this with small dogs,

Right?

They have these small dogs and they,

Um,

You know,

That are,

They're like yapping,

Right?

And they're yapping cause they're either panicked or they're angry.

They're doing their dog thing,

Right?

And people pick them up and go,

Well,

When you pick up a dog,

You disempower them,

Right?

A dog stands on four legs.

He does that.

This is,

This is who I am.

This is my being.

When you pick them up,

Then it's a,

It's like a movement of control.

Um,

And,

And I'm not saying,

You know,

They,

They jump on you and they,

You know,

Are,

Are you,

You know,

However you have your relationship with your dog,

But when they are,

When you're doing,

You do it in this,

In a way of controlling shush,

Because they're barking is inconvenient for you or is,

You know,

You took them somewhere you probably shouldn't have taken them and they're acting like a dog.

Then you,

You cut off their,

Their autonomy.

Right.

And so you,

They become,

Uh,

Ungrounded and it makes them really even more,

Actually more panicked.

So,

Um,

So anyway,

So there's only so much two year old can do,

Right?

If you tell them not to be autonomous,

No matter how much their natural system is telling them to be autonomous,

They won't be right.

They can't be you,

You will win that fight.

You're an adult,

Obviously.

And so they,

They,

You know,

He hunkers down,

Limits his opposition to you can't make me this method of relating to the world is the core of the enduring survival pattern to make this survival strategy work.

A child must have the will and strength required to silently persevere,

Even while enduring hardship and mistreatment.

He does this by sending his life energy,

Even his very self down into the ground and hiding it there.

The difficulty is that he gets stuck down there,

Unable to move and act in the world.

The benefit is that people who do this survival pattern are typically more grounded than others and often have great stamina.

I have friends who have this survival pattern and they can tolerate fucking anything.

It's amazing.

I'm one who like works in the Navy and hates it and they're awful to him.

I mean,

Not like,

Oh,

I have an opinion and it's not respect.

I mean like awful to him and he just sits there and endures it.

At some point I sort of said to him,

I was like,

You know,

They're your feet.

You could leave.

And he has all these reasons why he can't.

So there's the distortion and the enduring.

Right.

Okay.

Next,

Next,

Um,

Survival pattern is called the aggressive survival pattern.

Um,

In my work it was called the psychopathic.

Um,

But again,

Don't panic.

You're not a psychopath.

It's just psychopathic energy.

It's a aggressive energy.

So if people who default to anger,

Um,

To solve problems,

Right?

So the aggressive here,

The unmet need was,

Was the need to feel contained and protected by something larger and stronger.

This child won the battle for autonomy and felt proud of his strength and will.

But then in what felt to him like a life or death situation,

He discovered that what he loved and trusted was not there to protect him.

So he faced his fear alone and survived by someone summoning all his internal resources and willing himself through it.

He felt betrayed and it was his trust in others that was shattered.

The unfulfilled need was once again safety,

But here the focus was on the interpersonal emotional safety of being able to depend on others.

This is resonating with people on Facebook live.

Yeah.

Betrayal is the key,

Um,

Wounding in the aggressive character.

This feeling of being failed or betrayed was by what he thought was protecting him can be created in several different ways.

The sort of classic example of this one is like the Caesar,

Right?

And Brutus,

So the,

The betrayed by one closest to you.

And this character,

By the way,

Will continuously attract betrayal.

So if a guy comes to me and says,

I don't know why,

But every woman I date cheats on me,

Then that's something that,

And I don't know what my clients look like cause I work online.

Um,

But that's one of the things that I will,

I will be curious about.

Like,

Okay,

I wonder if there's a,

An aggressive wounding there.

Nothing wrong with that.

One's not better than another and we all have all five.

So don't,

Don't panic or if there's any self,

Um,

Flagellation or self doubt or any shoulds happening in your head,

Just be aware of that and let those go.

In one scenario,

The child simply has such a big energy that his parents are not able to energetically contain him.

He wins all the battles,

But discovers that he faces the world alone.

Conversely,

The parent may be authoritarian and dominating,

But this child refuses to give in even though he loses most of the fights.

In a third scenario,

One parent seduces him into a coalition against the other.

This is very common for this character.

In doing this,

The seducing parent is ignoring the child's needs and using the child to meet his or her own needs.

That's what I was talking about with the hovering or being a helicopter parent,

But this is in a different way.

The seduction may include sexuality,

But it's often purely emotional.

When he realizes that his love for the parent was used to manipulate him,

The child concludes that loving is dangerous and that it opens the door to being used and betrayed.

He closes his heart and the,

And unconsciously resolves,

You will never do that to me again.

I also learned that when I studied this character structure,

That it can also be a seduction like the child will tend to fall in love with the parent of the opposite sex.

Your mom is a little boy,

Your daddy's girl,

Right?

And there's a,

At that age,

Sexuality starts very,

Very young,

Three,

Three and four kids are rubbing themselves on things and shit feels good,

Man.

Let's explore this,

Right?

Very natural,

Perfectly normal.

As they sort of develop those sexual feelings toward the parent,

If the parent does not,

You know,

If daddy doesn't leave mommy for me,

Which of course doesn't happen,

Then that is seen as a betrayal.

Does that make sense?

So if there are romantic feelings towards daddy,

But daddy loves mommy in the way I want to be loved,

Right?

He loves me in a different way,

But I want that.

And of course I can't really have that.

And of course,

If I were to get that,

That's not really what I want anyway,

Right?

And so just by virtue of them continuing to be a parent and loving appropriately with the other parent,

The wounding is created that way.

So these are really all about expectations,

You know,

Sort of impossible expectations,

Right?

I want every need to be met.

I want to become autonomous perfectly.

I want you to love me,

You know,

More than you love mom.

I mean,

It's like these sort of like kind of little demands the kids have and when they don't get them,

Then the wounding happens.

So that's not,

You know,

That's fine.

We're here to be wounded.

So don't be afraid of that.

And please don't think that you're not going to wound your kids because you will.

And that's okay.

That's what they came here for.

The child who develops the aggressive pattern has developed a cohesive sense of self,

A strong will and the ability to defend his own personal space.

But he is always a little guarded.

Okay.

He finds it hard to trust or depend on others or even to let them have their own space space that he does not control.

He still harbors a deep unconscious terror that he will once again be used and betrayed.

Dominating every situation becomes his only way of creating a sense of safety for himself.

He does,

However,

Become skillful at making things happen in the world.

And this becomes one of the gifts of the aggressive pattern.

So the psychopaths,

The aggressive pattern folks,

And that's my character structure as well,

Or one of my two main ones,

Tends to be an incredible leader.

They are sensitive to betrayal.

Yes.

But they have very strong senses of honor.

Okay.

Honor is a huge,

Is a strong element there.

Strong sense of honor.

They're leaders.

They have incredible clarity.

Other,

The masochistic character structure,

The enduring survival pattern,

Tends to have a huge amount of unclarity around it,

Of lack of clarity around it.

And the aggressive pattern has just perfect clarity.

Yes,

They're maybe a little bit bullheaded or they're a little bull in the china shop or they're aggressive.

They fight to survive.

The leaving pattern leaves to survive.

So all of these,

Again,

They are survival patterns.

But they're incredible gifts with all of them.

And we'll come back to that at the end here.

And so the aggressive pattern comes with a huge amount of clarity,

With clarity.

Leadership,

Confidence,

Honor,

A sense of justice,

Things like that.

Very sensitive to injustice.

And this is our very last survival pattern here.

Okay.

And this is called the rigid.

And it's also called the rigid in my work.

Rigid character is the last,

Is the latest wounding developmentally.

Okay.

And he says,

And we talked a little bit about this last week.

He says through that,

And I love the way that he phrased this,

And this is new to me,

The way that he phrases these survival patterns tend to be he,

He,

He words it developmentally,

Right?

So in other words,

If you have the leaving pattern,

Then you're wounding,

You were sort of messed up at the first developmental stage.

And so the rest of them tend to be wonky as well.

But if you got through that developmental stage,

Okay.

And you didn't get wounded until the aggressive,

Then you've got all of those developmental stages in place.

And so they either kind of happen or they get messed up.

And my work didn't really focus on it that way as sort of at the developmental stage,

It was taught that way,

But he's got a real clear way of putting it.

And I really appreciate that.

Okay.

Here is the rigid.

The injury here was that the parents could not value the child's inner experience.

Take a deep breath here.

Feel the breath fill you.

All this talk of defenses of different kinds can be triggering and it can be insightful.

And I invite you to see both those things as the same.

Another deep breath.

And let it go.

The injury here with the rigid was that the parents could not value the child's inner experience.

Having lost contact with their own inner life,

They could not nurture their child's inner life.

Instead,

They focus on the child's appearance and performance on things like manners,

Posture,

Correctness,

And grades.

They taught her to follow the rules they followed and to obey the authority they obeyed.

So I go to church and church is right.

And so you go to church and church is right for you.

They could love their child for her achievements and performance,

But not for her feelings and beingness.

Each of us needs our inner self,

Our being to be seen and valued.

If our parents see only our appearance and performance,

We tend to lose contact with our inner experience and come to believe that our surface,

Our performance is all that we are without contact with our inner self.

We are unable to find our own inner guidance.

We have to rely on an outer form of guidance to help us make decisions.

A child who suffers this injury becomes focused on the forms and rules of life and loses touch with life's essence and substance.

She tends to experience the world indirectly through words rather than directly through sensations and feelings.

Rules replace personal feelings in her decision making process.

She may use language well and become a terrific performer,

But for her doing has replaced being and the map has replaced the territory.

In new situations,

Her plea will be,

Tell me the rules because without the rules,

She has no way to navigate.

When any,

When extra energy hits her system,

She will attempt to contain it so that it doesn't really affect her and interfere with her performance.

Instead of allowing it to emotionally move her,

She will shunt the energy into activity.

She will get busy and do something.

While people who go into the survival pattern may not have much feeling,

Creativity or color in their lives,

They are often very successful on the outside living in model homes with perfect lawns.

So the rigid character,

As he said,

Does tend to be quite successful.

They also are incredibly passionate actually once they are able to connect with themselves.

They're just disconnected from their core.

They tend to be very beautiful,

Very well put together.

Nails are often done,

Outfits match,

Hair is good,

Makeups always on,

Won't leave the house without makeup,

That kind of person.

Often,

Even though they can be very successful,

They will tend to not be happy,

Right?

It's the type of complaint of I have everything I want and I'm still not happy,

Right?

I have people come to me for that.

They go,

I don't know what the problem is,

Everything is great.

I have everything I said that I wanted and yet I feel empty inside.

As soon as someone says that to me,

I know that they have the rigid defense because that's the only one where you can't feel,

Right?

That's not true.

The schizoid will have moments where you can't feel.

I mean they'll all have moments where you can't feel but the schizoid and the rigid in particular,

That is the essence of it.

The schizoid can't,

Excuse me,

The leaving pattern can't feel because they're out of their body which they did to avoid feeling which happens in the body.

Feeling happens in the body,

Yeah?

So if you leave your body which by the way is the purpose of defense,

You don't feel as much,

Right?

We leave whether that's leaving or enduring or forcing out aggressively or cutting off inside,

We do those things to avoid feeling because in the moment,

Feeling hurts,

Right?

So what's the first thing that happens when you experience feeling or that feels overwhelming or it feels too much?

The first thing that usually cuts off is your breathing,

Right?

You'll stop breathing.

I mean you won't literally stop breathing but you'll cut it to be very,

Very,

Very shallow because,

Notice I had to take a breath there because my breath got shallow just as I was talking about that because when you breathe less,

You feel less,

Right?

You're in your body less.

You're not as much here in the moment and so when you go to say a yoga class,

Right?

The first thing they do is say,

Okay,

Bring your awareness to your breath.

Take a deep breath,

Right?

And when you do that,

You start to come into your body.

You feel a little bit safer.

You feel a little bit more present.

You feel a little bit more here.

All of those things go with safety,

By the way,

And you're able to connect more with yourself in the moment.

What am I feeling here in the moment?

And if you can allow yourself to feel safe enough,

That is the question to ask.

What's here now?

Who am I right in this moment?

What's happening?

What's here now?

Right?

And look,

Look in your body.

Where's your breathing?

How far down your body does your breath come on its own if you don't change it?

Does it come all the way to your chest?

Does it come to your belly?

Does it come to your lower belly?

Does it come to your pelvis?

Down into your legs,

Knees,

Calves,

Ankles,

Feet into the ground beneath you?

And one way is not better than the other,

Right?

Deep breath isn't better than not deep breath.

The goal here and always through all of these survival patterns,

Through learning this particular way of being through learning who you are,

The purpose is to be to become aware.

That's it.

That's it.

So it doesn't matter.

That's why I don't tell people how to be.

I don't care how you are.

You can be however you want to be.

What matters to me,

If I can be said to have an agenda,

Which I don't really,

Because that would set me up for expectation and then,

You know,

Being potentially being let down,

Right?

And it puts pressure on my clients,

Which is not my intention.

And so instead I'm able to hold a space for whatever's here.

Whatever is here is okay with me.

That's the space that I hold.

And in doing that,

It creates a safe space for you to see what's really going on in your system,

Right?

It creates a safe place for you to be here in the here and now.

And the only way to do that is to remove the agenda,

Is to create that safe space.

It doesn't matter whether your breath is deep or it's not.

It's just interesting.

What matters is whether or not you know,

Whether or not you notice,

Right?

I want you to be off of autopilot.

Okay?

These character structures,

These show you how you defend yourself,

How you hold yourself back from what you want,

Right?

Because the fact of the matter is all of these that I just read to you are based on fallacy.

They're based on misconceptions from childhood,

Right?

And about,

You know,

I can't handle it.

Life isn't safe.

Well,

It's not safe.

Your mother just had a,

It's not that life isn't safe.

It's that your mother had a difficult pregnancy.

It's not that your needs will never be met.

It's just that she couldn't get the bottle to you in enough time,

Enough times.

You were never in danger.

It's not that,

You know,

There's anything wrong with who you are at your core and your,

To express that would induce anger.

It's just that your mother was afraid and unwilling to let you go because she either wanted you to stay for her own sake or she,

You know,

Worried about your safety,

Right?

It's not that,

Let's see,

For the aggressive pattern,

It's not that you need to guard and protect yourself because if you allow yourself to be vulnerable,

You'll be hurt.

It's just that,

You know,

Someone made a mistake or someone betrayed you and that kind of thing happens,

But it doesn't happen all the time.

Doesn't need to be always,

Right?

You don't need to count on it.

You don't need to defend against it.

You can just allow it to be.

And with the rigid,

It's not that there's anything wrong with your,

With you at your core.

It's not that the only way you can get love and appreciation is by doing wonderful things.

It's just that your parents had their limitations and they were maybe disconnected from their own core and so they weren't comfortable seeing you in yours.

So all of these five character structures are based on fallacy,

Right?

They're based on you,

On what you thought was true.

And when you're very,

Very young,

Children generalize their life experience,

Right?

You can see here,

One betrayal when you're young and you have a lifetime of guarding yourself.

You don't need to guard yourself everywhere in life because you had some bad experiences.

I'm going to tell you something,

Bad experiences are guaranteed,

Right?

Life is what it is.

There's pain in life.

It's inevitable.

Might as well settle in.

Instead of trying to avoid it,

Which is by definition impossible,

Try to practice getting through it better and better.

Master that skill and then no matter what life throws at you,

It will,

It'll be something you can handle.

In fact,

The ideal is to get to the point where you start looking forward to that.

When you start seeing it as a challenge,

Oh man,

You know,

When you start seeing discomfort,

When you start moving toward discomfort,

That is when you're really at the next level because you start going,

Oh man,

What can I learn from this point?

This is tough and it's painful.

I can't wait to see how strong I'm going to be when I get through this.

The only people that died younger from stress are the ones that thought that stress was bad for you.

Look up this Ted talk if you can.

It's absolutely fucking fantastic.

Think about that.

You know,

It's amazing that people can look at research like this and still say that we don't create our own reality.

That is so profoundly based in denial that it blows my mind.

The statistics are right in front of us.

So I hope that helped.

I hope that gave you an idea that you resonated with one character structure or another.

If you'd like to share on my Facebook page or anywhere that you like in which one you resonated with and which one you thought was yours and why,

I would love to hear it.

Please don't hesitate to share and reach out to me on my business page or on my personal Facebook page.

Again,

I'm on Insight Timer.

I'm doing meditations and daily studies for you to be able to practice these things in a more real and regular way.

So please look me up there.

This has been The Art of Attraction.

Don't forget to download and subscribe and tell anyone that you think would get benefit out of this work.

It's really my intention to help as many people as possible.

My name is Dominie Drew.

If you're interested in working with me,

Please come by my website,

DominieDrew.

Com.

I would love to hear from you and thank you so much.

Love you guys.

Bye-bye.

Reviews

beautiful and enlightening!

Very enlightening. I will have to look the book up to delve a little deeper. Thanks for putting this on Insight Timer for those of us that don’t Facebook 🙏🏼

I thought it useful enough to share w a new parent