The Patterns We Share
One thing I loved about facilitating these past couple of weeks was seeing similar lightbulb moments with people in very different stages of life. It also reminded me how meaningful it is when something I care about is genuinely useful to someone else.
My Organizational Behavior students are finishing their first year of university, many just starting to think about how and where they want to work. The educators in the Mental Health for Teens course have 13–30 years of experience supporting students.
In both, people connected most with the idea of saboteurs and mental fitness. Saboteurs are the inner patterns that can take over when we are stressed, like the Judge, Controller, Pleaser, Avoider, or Hyper-Achiever. Mental fitness is the practice of noticing those patterns and building the ability to pause and ground ourselves before we react.
For some of my students, that meant truly understanding not everyone thinks the way they do. They started to see how their self-saboteurs affect the way they react to challenges and the people around them. Many had been taught to avoid conflict, and several told me they now see that healthy conflict can be better for everyone involved. They also appreciated how much they value a positive work culture, especially after watching Office Space. 😉
After their final presentations, many students stayed behind to tell me how much the class had affected them personally, shake my hand, or leave with a hug. It moved me to hear that so many are leaving with a better understanding of themselves and the people around them.
For the educators, the same ideas connected to the work they do with teens every day. They could see how their own stress patterns sometimes get in the way of caring for others as well as they want to. We talked about taking care of themselves first so they have the energy to keep caring for others. One said that the class helped them look at lifelong patterns from a different perspective.
Awareness Is the Beginning
Whatever stage we're in, we all need tools for responding to stress, change, and conflict. Having language for what is happening gives us a place to start. It helps us notice our reactions before we're completely hijacked by them and see how our patterns affect the people around us, even when we have good intentions.
Those realizations can be a relief, and they can also bring a little self-criticism. Once we see a pattern, it is easy to berate ourselves for it or wonder why we didn’t notice it sooner. But this new awareness isn’t supposed to become one more thing to use against ourselves.
It gives us a chance to catch the pattern a little sooner next time, take a deep breath, and choose something different.
💛
Reflection Question: Which stress pattern do you recognize in yourself most often: Judge, Avoider, Controller, Pleaser, Perfectionist, Hyper-Achiever, or something else?
✨ If this spoke to you, I’d love for you to subscribe to my blog or connect with me on LinkedIn. And if you’re becoming more aware of the patterns that show up under stress, coaching can help you strengthen your mental fitness so you can respond with greater intention, resilience, and self-compassion.
You can always start with a free Inner Patterns Discovery Session.
