Our thinking when it comes to destructive patterns is often: I’ll deal with this later.
This is a bad approach because destructive patterns are rarely things that can be contained in neat little boxes. These patterns, whether its something dark and consuming, or something small and less concerning, has the irritating tendency to bleed into other areas of our lives.
An obvious example of a destructive pattern is addictive behaviour. Once an addiction has truly taken hold, it’s hard to become free of it. There is no real benefit to the addiction except that it helps us cope with some emotional burden. Of course, it doesn’t truly help us cope—it is a way to avoid and push away, but there is this sense that the behaviour is helping us to stay functional to some degree. But anyone who has truly been taken in by an addiction will tell you that it cannot be contained in the way that you want. It has a tendency to spiral. The behaviour becomes worse over time and it also affects other areas not directly related to the addiction.
It’s easy for us to admit that addiction is bad. But some destructive patterns might not be so obvious to recognise. Certain negative patterns might seem fairly harmless over a short period of time but become disastrous when repeated over years. Procrastinating on something important isn’t that harmful in the moment—but done over years becomes a different story.
A destructive pattern doesn’t even have to be immediately apparent to us. The best example here, is being destination orientated in some area of our life that we deem unimportant, meaningless, or burdensome. It can be something as simple as doing laundry, or something harder like processing difficult emotions. We might not see the value in being present for the menial or uncomfortable moments, we might just want to power through these parts. But if we live our lives like this, being only discretely present for moments that we deem worthy or exciting, then, well, life becomes meaningless.
Life cannot just be about those moments when we reach the top of the mountain. To some degree, living only for the milestones or excitement is, in itself a destructive pattern. From this space we think that something out there will eventually make us happy and so we keep seeking and striving. Life becomes a chase where we can never really reach the place that we want. Perpetual dissatisfaction ensues.
I didn’t intend for this post to be about presence. My initial intent was to write a post about how working on our destructive patterns can benefit us. But presence is such a foundational way of being that it sets the stage for everything else.
Our best strategy in life is to be present. Be present during the meaningless tasks. Be present during the burdensome parts. Don’t simply power through the difficulties. If we get this presence thing right, other things tend to also fall into place. If we want to work on our destructive patterns it is important to become more present. The converse is also true: if we become more present we might indeed be less prone to fall into destructive behaviour.
2 thoughts on “Destructive Patterns”