Themes, Dreams and Patterns of Behaviour

If you've been reading my blog for awhile you will know how much I love to look for themes, dreams and patterns of behaviour.  It's always a surprise to me  how much looking for themes and patterns of behaviour can reveal about how problems manifest themselves in people's lives.  I did a lot of work with this myself when I first started therapy at the tender age of 16.  I found it so useful to understanding myself.  I carried this knowledge over to my work with people with disabilities and their families and I am often drawing a genogram in my mind when assessing people's stories. These patterns of behaviour tend to repeat themselves all through our lives.  What is truly amazing is how we can't often see them. Then just like an Escher Painting once the hidden picture is pointed out to us it's so glaringly obvious. Perhaps you've stood and looked at a painting trying to see something there, knowing that there is something more to the picture yet fail to see exactly what it is, then all of a sudden the image just pops out at you. The same kind of thing can happen with your own behaviours seeing how they impact on the lives around you. Where those behaviours sprang from can come from a long line of learning it from our families.

Freud believed that dreams were the key to unlocking the subconscious mind. The subconscious being the place where our true selves reside. Dreaming, a place to discover what is really going on with these patterns and themes we hide so well from ourselves. I've spoken before about self awareness and how difficult this is to master. In previous blogs I've spoken about self acceptance, loving ourselves without conditions. Accepting that imperfection is in fact perfect for the human condition. So much of these things are dependant upon seeing these themes in our lives our patterns of behaviour. Our awareness regarding these patterns is clouded by our own cognitive bias. Our desire to appear to others and ourselves as having it all together, being completely accomplished humans. Ironically the actual key to self awareness is accepting that we are not these things. We are all imperfect in some way and striving for perfection is admirable yet somehow meaningless if we are telling ourselves big old fibs about who we are.

Genograms are a wonderful way of opening up some lost family secrets. It's also a way of discovering how some of these themes and patterns of behaviour can be linked right back through many generations. The only way we can change some of these unhealthy patterns of behaviour is by knowing about them. Our family history can also be a source of finding great strengths handed down to us by our family members. In past blogs I have mentioned the theme of rebellious strong women in my family. For the next few weeks I'm going to focus on how we can find patterns of behaviour and themes of our lives.



References

Adam Phillips (1954) and Freud Zigman (1939) "The Freud Reader" Penguin Books (2006)

McGoldrick Monica, "The Genogram Journey: Reconnecting with your family" WW Norton & Company(2011)

Teyber Edward "Interpersonal Process in therapy: an integrated approach" Belmont, Calif Thomson/Brooks Cole (2006)