You can spend years in therapy understanding yourself. You can understand your childhood, your relationships, and your reactions. You can even explain exactly why you do the things you do.
And yet, when something difficult happens, you still find yourself reacting in the same way.
This is something I hear from people who have already spent years working on themselves. They haven’t ignored their problems, nor have they avoided the work. And yet, when something triggers them, that old reaction takes over.
So what is it that’s still keeping you stuck?
I've done years of therapy, so why do I still feel the same?
When something traumatic happens, there can be a point where the mind simply can’t process it.
You survive it first and find a way to carry on. You get through school, get a job, have relationships, raise children, and continue with your life.
The experience becomes something you’ve learned to live around.
Over time, you’re able to talk about it. You might understand what happened and even be able to look back and acknowledge how it affected you.
That understanding matters. But I’ve found that there can still be a lot happening beyond what you can rationalise.
The way I understand this through my work is that the shock can become trapped within the body and your energy system. The mind can understand the story while another part of you is still responding to what happened.
That’s where a lot of people get stuck. Your mind is saying one thing. That you’re safe, you’ve grown, and you’re away from the situation. But your responses say something completely different.
You can know exactly where a reaction comes from and still find yourself having the same reaction.
This is why you can say, “I know exactly why I do this. I know where it comes from. I understand my childhood.” and still feel the same way when something triggers you.
The understanding is there, but the reaction is also still there.
Why do I keep repeating patterns I already understand?
We’re smart. We can observe ourselves, learn about psychology, and start putting the pieces together. You might even become very good at spotting your own patterns.
Take someone who keeps choosing emotionally unavailable partners.
She might know exactly why she does it. She might understand that her childhood may have affected her self-worth. She might recognise that she keeps looking for attention from people who can’t give it to her. She sees the pattern.
And then she meets someone new and somehow finds herself in exactly the same situation again.
That can leave you thinking, “But I know this already. Why am I doing it again?”
Because knowing something doesn’t automatically stop the pattern.
Patterns can become deeply ingrained. Once something has been repeated enough, it becomes a habit, a coping mechanism.
Even when something isn’t good for you, you can still find familiarity in it.
That’s why I describe it as a comfort zone. It isn’t necessarily comfortable in the way we normally mean the word. It’s just familiar. You know what to expect.
And when you start wanting something different, you are stepping away from something you’ve known for a very long time. That can feel frightening.
What’s the difference between understanding a memory and releasing it?
This is where most people get confused. You can understand a memory and remember what happened. You can talk about it and understand how it affected you.
When I work with trauma, I’m not trying to erase that memory. The memory will always be there.
What we’re working with is the trapped shock; the blockages and the patterns that formed around the experience.
When that starts to shift, the way you relate to the memory can change.
You may still remember exactly what happened, but it doesn’t have the same grip on you. You can look at it from different perspectives and remember something without feeling completely swallowed up by it.
That’s a very different experience from forgetting. And this is something I think is important because sometimes people assume healing means reaching a point where their past no longer matters.
That’s not how I see it. Your experiences are part of your story. The change comes from being able to stand somewhere different in relation to that story.
Have I done something wrong if I still feel the same?
Don’t decide that you’ve failed because you still feel the same.
If you understand your story now in a way you didn’t before, something has changed.
If you can recognise your patterns now, something has changed.
If you’re able to look at your childhood and understand yourself with more compassion, something has changed.
Insight is valuable. Understanding yourself is important.
But for some people, it only takes them so far.
This is one reason I work differently. My work is about going deeper into the patterns and conditioning that can still be affecting someone, even when they understand intellectually where those patterns came from.
So if you've spent years in therapy, that doesn't mean you've wasted your time. Quite the opposite.
You have already done a huge amount of work. You have just reached the point where understanding isn't the part that's holding you back anymore.
A client who spent years struggling with the same patterns.
I worked with a man in his late 40s who had experienced trauma as a young child.
He had spent most of his adult life struggling and looking for attention in ways that weren’t helping him. He had also turned to substances to cope.
There were very deeply ingrained patterns there. After working together, something shifted for him. One of the things that stood out to me was that he was able to stop smoking weed for the first time in his adult life.
That might sound like one small change. But when something has been part of the way you’ve coped for most of your adult life, being able to let it go can be significant.
It reminded me that you can understand what’s happening in your life and still need something else to shift before you can respond differently.
What do you notice about people in therapy that they can't see themselves?
Usually, they’ve made more progress than they realise.
They’ve taken steps in the right direction, even if they haven’t reached the place they want to be yet. That takes courage.
Starting any kind of healing work takes a lot. You’ve already had to admit that something isn’t working and decide you're willing to look at it.
Then you have to open up to someone you don’t know and allow yourself to be seen in a completely different way.
That is a huge step.
Sometimes people come to me thinking they’ve got nowhere because they’re still struggling with the same things. But when I look at where they started, I can see how much they’ve already done.
You just can’t always see it yourself.
So what needs to change?
If you’ve spent years trying to understand yourself and you still feel like you’re reacting in the same ways, it might be worth looking at what’s still keeping those patterns in place.
You’ve already done the work of understanding. Now you can start asking a different question: what needs to change for me to actually feel different?
That might mean looking at the patterns you keep repeating, the beliefs you still carry about yourself, or the ways you’ve learned to cope.
You don’t have to keep going over the same ground just because you know where it came from. There may be more work to do, and that’s okay.
This is where I work with people over a longer period of time. My 8-week 1:1 healing programme gives us the space to explore those deeper patterns and work with what is still keeping them in place.
It’s not about rushing to fix everything. It’s about having enough time to go deeper, understand what is still keeping you stuck, and begin creating a different way forward.
If you feel like you’ve already understood so much about yourself, but something still isn’t shifting, this may be the next part of the work for you.