Break the Vicious Cycle: Heal from Your Past Relationship Patterns

Relationships endings can be devastating. From an energy standpoint, you may find yourself holding onto anger, hurt, frustration and sadness.

And the worst part? A relationship ending makes you stop because it affects EVERYTHING! Often it puts you into a stuck and holding pattern, which is when most of my clients come to work with me.

They say time heals all things, but it doesn’t heal anything that you don’t DEAL with. Usually when a relationship ends, you blame the other person for all the shortfalls and things that went wrong. While you may be able to do that with one relationship – once it happens again or seems to be a pattern, the responsibility to fix the patterns in your relationships falls 100% onto you since you are the one creating them.

1. Get Objective and Recognize the Patterns

The first thing I help my clients with before JUMPING into another relationship is to get objective and figure out your patterns.

While it is easier to keep blaming others for the relationship fails, nothing will change until you recognize what you keep creating in your relationships and how it affects your partners and your relationship with them.

The inner work here is:

Looking at your parent’s marriage. What similarities do you notice in your relationships? What isn’t working anymore for you?
How does your family talk to you? How do they treat you? What is similar with your partners?
What did people tell you as a child? You are too ____. You always do ____. You can’t ___. How do you talk to yourself because of this? What do you hear your partner saying to you that is similar?
How do you treat yourself? What similarities did you notice in your intimate relationships? If you think you aren’t worthy, your partner won’t either.

One of my clients has a mother who is always manipulating the situation and telling her one thing and everyone else something else about her. So of course, she married a man who did the same thing. Because of these two relationships, my client struggles with feeling that people don’t believe her.

She feels like she is constantly battling the lies her family, ex and his family tell. He had an affair and when she went back to their home state, the rumor mill was saying she had the affair! Because of the work we are doing together, she was able to see what was happening, stand in her power and respond in a different way – one where she was able to speak her truth and smash the lies. But in order to do that, she had to get objective and recognize her long, outdated patterns.

You have to change the patterns or you will keep getting the same results in your relationships.

2. Do the Inner Work to Heal

Time DOES NOT heal all things! I cannot stress this enough. Ignoring your pain and tucking it away to deal with later (aka never) does not make it go away. It just leaves it there to resurface in future relationships as triggers and old stories that keep you stuck.

The passing of time may make it so that you don’t cry as much or get as angry when you talk about it anymore, but the energy remains until you actually CLEAR it out.

You are carrying hurts and pains from relationships in other life experiences, from your childhood and past relationships. I guarantee it. I haven’t met a person yet that was left unscathed because you are taught to get distracted with work, another relationship or keep yourself busy. None of this allows you to process, adjust and move forward freely.

I have a client that kept going back to her childhood and how her family treated her as the reason she was putting herself last in her relationships. She didn’t feel worthy. But instead of actually healing it, she would say, “This makes me want to cry.” And she would stop there, not do anything to clear it, get teary eyed and literally freeze in that memory. Then she would energetically store all that sadness and worthlessness into her chest and NOTHING was changing. This kept her from moving forward because every time she said that, she got stuck in the moment as a child and nothing changed in her relationships. She was stuck in a vicious cycle of feeling worthless that we had to break by changing her pattern and clearing the energy she was holding onto for decades.

From an energy standpoint, you will carry the energy until you HEAL it, however long that takes.

While you may not have control over what the other person does, you do have control over what you are carrying and holding onto and you can let it go. Here is a simple but powerful practice I teach my clients to help them clear their energy.

3. Create New Relationship Patterns

NO ONE goes into a relationship whole and perfect. You go into relationships to HEAL the things it is time to heal or to support each other with the things you agreed to support each other with before you were born.

You want to stop and change:

Old patterns that make you feel awful. Catch yourself in the moment and do something different. That will get you a different result. Clear out the energy that keeps you operating in those self-destructive patterns.
Drama – you either add to it, run away from it, or try to be a peace keeper. Be aware of how you respond to drama, what it does to your relationships and make the necessary changes.
Communication problems – remember, your partner is NOT a mind reader. Clearly communicate your needs, expectations and boundaries.
Being focused on ONLY your needs. Relationships really are a give and take experience with the exception being on your non-negotiables (no cheating, no drugs, etc.) Compromising and meeting each other in the middle is key.

One of my clients has a habit of falling apart around her birthday. This shows up in her relationships with anger and frustration. She sent her (new at the time) boyfriend a break up text last year on her birthday with all of her demands listed and no discussion – it was simply the end of their relationship. It was the first he had heard of the expectations in the break up text. They did eventually get back together with boundaries and new guidelines for their relationship. This year, those patterns are resurfacing but they are less extreme.

This year she recognizes her birthday patterns. She is now able to stop herself from acting on the self-destructing patterns. She schedules in more self-care, time for energy work and is realizing that everything she seeks really does come from within.

Recognize the old patterns, the ones that make you self-sabotage and self-destruct and shift them in the moment. You know what the old patterns will do, instead it’s time to try something new to get a new result.

I have helped countless women heal past relationships and create a life that they love. They didn’t think it was possible and now they look back at how far they’ve come and they are GRATEFUL for the experience. Now they LOVE their life. You can too!

Heal the past and make room for healthy, positive experiences in your relationships. It really is a game changer!