Why You Can't See Your Own Pattern (and what actually let's you)

your patterns don't feel like patterns when you're inside them. They feel like truth. They feel like you're normal. And that is what we're talking about today, because there's a huge difference between knowing that you have a pattern and actually recognizing the pattern while it's running you.

So if you've ever had a moment afterward where you thought, oh my gosh, I did it again, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Unblocked Woman podcast. I'm Amy Sanders. For years, I believed the next level of my life and business would come from a better strategy, working harder, figuring out that perfect plan.

But eventually, I saw the real truth. The biggest ceiling in our lives is not strategy, it's identity. The patterns we don't see, the subtle ways we play small, the version of ourselves that we keep defaulting back to even when we know we're capable of more. This podcast is where we bring those patterns into the light.

We talk about identity, leadership, growth, and what it actually takes to become the woman who can truly hold the life and business she wants. No fluff, no performance, just honest conversation about stepping fully into your power. So go ahead and subscribe and follow the show. And remember, the moment you see the pattern, you can finally break it.

Okay. Last week, we had a pretty big conversation. We talked about the difference between who you actually are and who you've become. We dove into the Enneagram, the human design, conditioning, identity, all of those things, and also the patterns that you've developed over your lifetime.

And I told you why I built the mirror. But here's a problem. It's kind of a big problem, actually. And it is one of the most frustrating parts of personal growth.

You can understand all of those things that I just told you about the Enneagram, human design, your patterns, all these things. You can understand all of them. And still not see your own patterns when you're inside of them. You can know that you're a people pleaser and still swear that this time you're just being nice.

You're not people pleasing. You can know that you struggle with control and still be completely convinced that this situation actually requires you to take over. You can know that you have a pattern of abandoning yourself in relationships and still believe that this person is different. You can know that you overdo it.

You can know that you overthink while actively overthinking and somehow will believe that if we think about it for another four hours, somehow at that point you'll have the answer. That is the fascinating thing about patterns. Your patterns don't feel like patterns when you're inside them. They feel like truth.

They feel like you're normal. And that is what we're talking about today because there's a huge difference between knowing that you have a pattern and actually recognizing the pattern while it's running you. So if you've ever had a moment afterward where you thought, oh my gosh, I did it again. Ah, why do I keep doing it?

This episode is for you. So let's get into it. So here's where I want to start. When you're outside of a pattern, it's usually pretty easy to see.

You can look back and think, why did I say yes to that? I knew that I shouldn't. Or why did I send that text? Like the after 2020 vision, we can see the pattern, right?

Why did I completely change my business because of one bad week? Why did I hold back and not say what I actually wanted? Or why did I need her approval so badly? Why did I make that mean something about me?

Afterward, it's crystal clear. But during, during is a completely different experience because when you're in the pattern it doesn't usually announce itself saying hey this is this pattern you do all the time there's no little notification on your phone that pops up and says warning warning amy your old identity is currently driving would you like to continue and you just take over the wheel right i wish wouldn't that be amazing it would like really help the personal growth world but that's not how things go instead when we're inside a pattern they feel and sound reasonable they sound protective a lot of times when you're inside a pattern it can even sound wise like i just want to make sure or i just need a little more information i don't want to hurt her feelings i'm just being realistic how many times have you heard that i should probably wait a little bit longer you i just have really high standards i need to think about it maybe or maybe it's just a pattern maybe all those things are real those statements i just rattled off but it could be that it's a pattern the most powerful patterns are the ones that you don't know about they're the ones that you've mistaken for wisdom you think that you're being wise and that's where it gets interesting your brain is extraordinarily important to you and you're not going to be able to do anything about it if you don't be good at creating a logical explanation for something your nervous system has already decided your nervous system you already felt it you felt the threat then after you felt the threat your mind starts building a case around it and because it can sound intelligent you believe it especially if you're a smart woman i actually think that high capacity women can sometimes be harder to coach around this specific thing because they're not going to be able to do anything about it they're not going to be able to do anything about it because we are really good at defending our patterns we can bring up all kinds of receipts of the past like see look it worked here look we can bring up powerpoints we can even bring exhibits you can tell me why your response is completely reasonable and sometimes it really is but also sometimes it could be that an incredibly intelligent argument is wrapped around an old pattern so intelligence let's talk about intelligence intelligence can help you change your pattern and becoming aware we talked about awareness a lot last week also can help you become um or it can help you change your pattern but it can also help you justify them just as easily so why does this happen why is it that you can see everyone else's patterns from six miles away but you can be sitting right in front of yours and you'll totally be able to see everyone else's patterns from six miles away and you'll totally miss it there is actually a reason and we are going to talk about it so i want to give you an analogy i want you to imagine that you've worn glasses your entire life and the lens has a slight pink tint but you don't know that they're pink you've never seen the world without your glasses so if i ask you what color is the world you're going to describe the world to me and you're going to tell me what you see and you're not lying you're not delusional you're actually accurately describing what reality looks like through your lens but you're not accounting for the lens itself that's what identity patterns do they become the lens through which you interpret what's happening and then we forget that we're wearing the lens we don't experience life exactly as it is we experience life through the meaning that we've learned to give it that is why children and adults are so important to us because we're two people can experience the exact same circumstance and they'll walk away with completely different stories it blows my mind when i talk about my childhood and different memories that i have with my siblings our stories we were in the same house raised by the same parents and our stories and the way we remember things are completely different okay so let's talk about a scenario when people have completely different stories about the same thing so let's say that someone doesn't get invited to the party and that woman thinks oh they kept it pretty small another woman could have completely different thought like oh well nobody actually likes me when another woman can think whatever i didn't actually want to go to that anyway another woman might think what did i do wrong how come i didn't get invited to the party same circumstance four times in a row four different realities and the difference isn't what happened it's the lens that they looked at it through and that is where the default identity looped and that we went into a little more depth last week becomes really important something happens you interpret it the interpretation creates an emotion the emotion influences your behavior and the behavior creates the result and that result reinforces what you've already believed that's the difference in the default identity loop versus just a normal identity loop and that's where the default identity loop is the normal thought model is your result reinforces what you already believe so eventually the lens starts collecting evidence for itself if i believe i'm always overlooked guess what my brain starts really noticing every single time i'm overlooked if i believe i have to earn love i'm going to notice every opportunity to prove my value everywhere i'm at if i have a belief that things fall apart when i let go i'm going to notice every mistake someone makes when i'm not controlling it and i'm going to hold tighter to the control and eventually i'm just going to agree that yeah see this is just how life works maybe but maybe you're just looking at life through a lens that's been collecting evidence for 20 years or longer a pattern becomes powerful when you stop experiencing it out as a pattern and you start experiencing it as a reality that is why seeing your own patterns is so hard you're trying to see the lens through the lens think about looking through binoculars it's going to be really hard to see the lens through the lens of a binocular of how things actually are so here's another piece that changes everything your patterns aren't trying to ruin your life your patterns are trying to protect you and that's why i want you to let go of being at war with yourself is because when a woman discovers her pattern a lot of times she tries to immediately fix it and asks like why do i always do this i'm so sick of myself i should know better i i've worked on this already and here it is again and we can go through all of this like just drama in our head but remember that most of these strategies that we had picked up they made sense somewhere along our journey people pleasing may have created belonging perfectionism may have created praise and you liked that praise so you kept trying to be perfect i remember as far as like in third grade and the class pet she always looked so perfect with her brown hair and her perfect clothes and everything looked so perfect and she even like her penmanship like i think in third grades when you learn how to do cursive her cursive was perfect and the way she wrote was perfect and she'd go to school early and be with the teacher before school and i remember wanting to be like her so bad and i remember trying to write like her and i remember trying to write like her and i remember trying to write like her because she seemed perfect because she got the praise from the teacher it still has stuck with me because i wanted that praise maybe hyper independence has created or prevented disappointment if i'm extra independent i'm going to prevent disappointment somewhere control maybe control has created safety for you or when you've achieved something you got validation that was also me i used to always try to achieve achieve achieve okay maybe i still am but i would achieve for validation now i achieve for impact they're different maybe avoidance has protected you from rejection or overthinking has helped you believe that you could prevent a mistake when your brain detects something that resembles an old threat it reaches for the strategy that it knows it's going to reach back into its filing cabinet and come up with something your brain's not asking you is this the most aligned strategy for the woman that you're becoming no what it's asking is what worked last time and those are very different questions your nervous system isn't always choosing what works for you and what works for you and what works for what's best for you it's going to choose what's familiar to you and how it can protect you and familiar can feel incredibly convincing at times and that's why i don't want you to shame your pattern or feel like there's anything wrong with you i just want you to get curious about it instead of asking why am i like this try what is this trying to do for me that is a completely different energy coming from a place of curiosity really helps you answer these questions maybe the controlling part of you isn't trying to prevent disappointment maybe the overachieving part is trying to make sure that you are valuable maybe the woman who won't ask for help is protecting yourself from needing someone who might let her down maybe the woman who says that i don't care all the time actually cares deeply and learned that wanting something is not something you can do for yourself maybe the woman who says that i don't care all the time actually cares deeply and learned that wanting something is not something you can do for yourself felt dangerous when we understand that now we have something that we can work with because awareness without compassion turns into another form of self-criticism and that's not what this is about when you come at it from a place of self-criticism unfortunately it usually strengthens the exact pattern that you're trying to change so let's make all of this practical if you can't always see your own patterns directly we can't always see our own patterns directly there are four places that i want you to start looking number one is look for disproportionate reactions whenever you have this reaction that feels significantly bigger than the actual circumstance pay attention to it pause get curious because that emotion that you're experiencing is information and the intensity can tell us that we've touched something old older than what's happening right now so get curious ask why someone gives you mild feedback and you're devastated for three days why maybe your husband asks a simple question and you're instantly defensive interesting why am i doing that what am i trying to protect myself from a friend doesn't respond and suddenly you're questioning your entire friendship ask what else is this touching sometimes you're not only reacting to what's happening you're reacting to what it represents and when you understand that you can move from a better place of awareness number two is look for repetition if the characters change in your life story but your life story is staying the same there's probable reasons why you're not reacting to what's happening a pattern you might have a different boyfriend and you're doing the same thing same dynamic in the relationship maybe you have a different job you switch jobs and yet you have the same resentment as before you have a different business but you're still completely burnt out you've switched friendships you've gotten a new friend and you still feel like you're being unappreciated at some point we have to stop analyzing the characters of our story and turn the mirror around and look into it and usually when you do you'll see that there's a pattern and i'm not asking you to blame yourself or to shame yourself i'm asking you to take responsibility for your life to look at it responsibly responsibility is powerful because it gives you somewhere to create your own responsibility create the change. When you own what's happening in your life, you get to own what continually happens in your life from a place of abundance. You're like, okay, so life got me here.

This is what I know. What's next? What do I want to believe that I can create? Number three is look for the thing you constantly defend.

This is sneaky. What behavior do you do? Like, what is something that you have an immediate explanation for? I'm not controlling.

I just know how I want it done. I'm not avoiding it. The timing just isn't right for me right now. I actually love that one.

I hear that a lot in my coaching. We get to do a little deep dive on it. Or I'm not people pleasing. I genuinely just don't mind.

I want to do this massive thing. I'm not scared. I'm just being practical. I'm just being a realist.

Maybe all those things are true. But when you feel an immediate need to defend something, get curious. Ask yourself why. Defensiveness is sometimes the security system that's standing outside a pattern.

When you're getting defensive, there's definitely a reason why. And so you need to get curious. Number four is look at what keeps costing you something. Your pattern, they leave receipts.

And these receipts come in the form of time, energy, maybe money, relationships, opportunities, peace, self-trust. Ask yourself what behavior keeps creating a cost I say I don't want. And then you can look at what keeps costing you something. And yet I keep paying it.

That's data. When I have you ask these questions, ask them from a place, again, of curiosity. Do not judge yourself. That is not the goal here.

But if you continually say yes, and then you resent everyone, there's data for you. If you continually wait until you feel certain, and then you miss opportunities, that's data. If you continually work until you feel certain, then you miss opportunities, that's data. work until your body forces you to stop because you're overworking data if you continually choose unavailable people and then wonder why relationships feel unsafe that's data don't judge it I want you to study it your life is constantly giving you evidence of your patterns the work is if you're becoming willing to read it can you look at it and not judge yourself and then there's patterns that you can catch yourself but the other ones you might need reflected back to you and that is why I talked about the mirror on the podcast last week is because sometimes you do need things reflected back to you and that can be in the form of a coach a therapist a trusted friend a mentor or that tool that I built the mirror human beings need reflection because there are things that you cannot see inside your own perspective inside your own lens it's like trying to see the back of your own head you know that it's there you can feel it you can reach around but at some point you need a mirror to see what it actually looks like that's where the name came from the mirror isn't called the mirror because I thought it sounded cute it's the actual function it reflects back to you and that's why I talked about the mirror it reflects back to you what it sees the goal is not here's what Amy should do the goal is I want to help you see what's happened and what you're making it mean I want it to show you the pattern that may be activated what your Enneagram strategy might be doing here and what your design is worth considering now a good mirror doesn't give you your identity it gives you enough reflections so that you can see yourself clearly, that you can form your own opinions, that you can have thoughts.

One thing that is driving me nuts right now in the world is chat GDP is amazing. I use it all the time. But it does tell you what you want to hear. And it does really just make you feel like you're the best person on the planet.

And it can be confusing because it gives you so much information. That's not what I wanted with the mirror. What I wanted was for the mirror to remember your conversations and hold your unique blueprint, your Enneagram and your human design. But to be able to see the patterns and then have you.

It gives you choice. It helps you think through your patterns. So you can bring it all kinds of different things. A money problem, relationship problem, visibility.

Maybe a boundary problem. But the mirror is going to see the pattern that might be running around all of them. Sometimes you don't have all these different problems, five or four or five different problems. Maybe you have one pattern showing up in five different places.

And when you see that, now you can actually change. And this is the piece from the original episode that I wanted to keep because I think it's important. Pattern work has a timing component. There's a window between trigger and opportunity.

And I think it's important to keep that in mind. And I think it's important to have an automatic response when something happens and what you do next. And the more awareness you build, the wider that window becomes. But at first, sometimes you don't see the pattern for three days.

And later you're like, oh, that's why I did that thing. Great. That's awareness. And then maybe you start seeing it three hours later or maybe 30 minutes later, five minutes later, and eventually you catch it while it's happening.

Growth isn't measured by never having a pattern again. Sometimes growth is measured by never having a pattern again. Growth is simply how quickly we recognize it. And I think that we miss that.

We get frustrated that we keep having the same thing happen, but we haven't realized that that gap, that timing gap has closed. So we might think we did it again. I haven't changed. But maybe last time you stayed in that spiral for three weeks and this time it lasted an afternoon.

That is change. Maybe you used to send the reactive message, the reactive text, and this time you typed it, but then you deleted it. That's change. Maybe you used to abandon yourself for six months and this time you caught it in six days.

That's change. Don't discount that. Every time you catch a pattern earlier, you create another opportunity to choose earlier. And repeated choices are how your identity updates, how your identity changes.

I want you to think of it like a computer. You upgrade it. It doesn't usually happen in one giant breakthrough. It happens through those tiny choices again and again and again until the aligned response starts becoming more familiar than the old one.

That's the work. So here's what I want you to go do this week. I want you to choose one area where you keep getting the same result. Just one area.

Maybe it's in your relationships. Maybe it's money, business. Maybe it's your boundaries or your health, friendships, whatever it is, whatever came to mind. I want you to ask yourself these four questions.

What keeps happening? Not the story, just the repeated circumstance. What do I constantly make it mean about me? Maybe about them or about what's possible?

What do I usually do next? Do I try to take over control? Do I withdraw? Do I prove or please?

Do I try to avoid it? Do I overthink it or quit? And number four is, does that response keep, what is it that it's costing me? What does that response keep costing me?

That's your audit. And if you want to go just even a little bit deeper, ask, what might this pattern be trying to protect me from? Don't force the answer. Just get curious because curiosity is what opens the door that helps you have more possibilities and opportunities.

So here's what I want you to walk away with today. The reason your patterns can be difficult to see isn't because you're self-aware. It's because you're living inside them. They're familiar.

They're logical. They have evidence of all of these years that they used to work for you. And many of them have been with you for so long that they don't even feel like strategies anymore. They feel like they're just you, but they're not you.

And this connects directly back to the question we asked last week. Who are you and who did you learn to become? Because every time you recognize a pattern, you get another little piece of that answer. Maybe this is me.

Maybe this is conditioning. Maybe this is protection. Maybe this is an old strategy. Maybe this is what I actually want.

The goal isn't to be perfect, of course, or categorize yourself, every part of yourself. The goal is to have enough awareness that creates a choice. And that's awareness. That awareness is part of the unblocked method that I also talk about.

Awareness, alignment, and abundant. First I see, then I choose, then I build from that choice. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I know I have patterns, but I genuinely don't know what mine are. That's what the mirror's for.

Bring it something real. Don't say, tell me about my personality. Maybe say, I keep doing this thing and I don't understand. Why?

Or this situation keeps happening to me. Why? Let the mirror help you slow it down and look underneath it. And if you haven't, go back to last week's episode and ask or listen to it.

It's called who you are and who did you learn to become? Because that's where I explained why I use the Enneagram, the human design, and the identity work all together. And it's why I built the mirror in the first place. So it gives you a little bit more understanding as to why.

And why these episodes actually belong together. But bringing it back here, once you understand what you're looking at, you then have a choice. And that's where change begins. So if this episode made you see something you haven't before, I want to hear about it.

Send it to me on Instagram. I love hearing from people and I genuinely want to hear what's landed and what hasn't. Also, feel free to forward this on to anyone that you feel like you can. This would help.

And subscribe so that you don't miss next week's episode. My goal is to reach as many women as possible doing this work so that we all can live happier, more abundant lives. And as we continually lock arms together and spread this work, it can land for more people and heal more people. Okay, so with that, I will see you here next week.

But for this week, don't just ask why I keep doing this. Ask, why can't I see it yet? And with that, take care. Bye.

And it remembers the work you've already done. So the reflection is personal to you. Find the mirror in the show notes or at amysanders. co forward slash mirror.

And until next time, see it, shift it, and become magnetic.