I had an interesting realisation recently.

I realised that I create chaos and drama in my own life, because I’m more comfortable when things are a bit unstable in my life.

Especially in romantic relationships (yea, even with Bloody Good Chap!) and friendships with males.

I had an awesome upbringing, but I do have a bit of an interesting father (to put it mildly). So despite having the most award-winningly brilliant mum, step-dad and brother, (and a whole bunch of killer god parents – I’ve got five!) there was some instability in my first ever male relationship, and so, as my psychologist friend described it, I most likely got used to feeling a bit unstable in my relationships with males.

And so, I find myself actually quite uncomfortable in comfortable male relationships.

So much so, that I subconsciously try to destablise them. In past relationships I did this by pushing my boyfriend’s buttons, being all up and down, breaking up with them and then getting back with them, basically just trying to create mayhem for two men who were the most stable, grounded people you could ever wish to meet!

I don’t know how I did it, but I did it like a fricken pro.

So now that I’m dating Bloody Good Chap, yet another stable, grounded, beautiful man, I initially found myself slightly reverting to my old patterns.

I started talking about breaking up not long after we got together.

Even though things with us were unbelievably perfect!

I didn’t mean it, it just kept popping into my mind, so I started saying it out loud. Which is of course, not fair on a new relationship!

Even now, I persistently catch my thoughts saying “remember this [insert thoughtful gesture], Andrea, you’ll really miss this when you guys break up”. These thoughts pop up in my mind almost daily, even though I have no rational or emotional desire nor plan to break up with Bloody Good Chap in the future.

I’ve never experienced a relationship so awesome.

Yet the thoughts still keep coming.

The awesome thing is that once I realised that it was just subconscious behaviour resurfacing to try and destabilise my relationship again, it stopped having any power of me. Before I had talked this through with my psychologist friend, I let those thoughts worry me. They’d pop up and I’d analyse them as a sign that something must be wrong, even though it wasn’t. If I keep having break up thoughts, they’re probably valid right?

But now that I know that it’s just a pattern that’s popping up to recreate what I know best – instability in a male relationship, I can suddenly see the thoughts for what they are and laugh at them.

The thoughts don’t bother me anymore, I smile at them and say cheers for the input. My mind is just trying to do its job, it’s keeping me safe from harm, and it thinks that the best way to not get hurt is to predict and destabilise a relationship before the male gets a chance to destabilise me!

It’s mad, but kind of almost sane as well.

My reason for mentioning all this is to point out that our beliefs and the stories our minds sticks to are stories that it makes up in our very young life. They’re conditioned patterns of behaviour which see us living out old mindsets and behaviours over and over, and we don’t even know we’re doing it.

I used to think that delving into the past and dredging up old stories was a big ol waste of time.

I thought counselling was for sissies and people with victim mentalities.

I thought it was for people who wanted to dwell on the past and blame people and events for their life. But the more I look into it, the more I see that delving back into the past for brief periods of time (with a psychologist, counsellor or coach – someone experienced in this stuff, especially if it involves traumatic events) actually sets you free from old patterns that keep you stuck. It actually helps you LET GO of stuff that isn’t serving you.

It doesn’t make you a victim,

it sets you free from being an unconscious victim to your thoughts.

I don’t think that it’s always necessary to spend too much time delving into all that stuff, you could get stuck in it, and sometimes you can hit heavy emotions that didn’t get processed in the past which might pop up for processing now – and you need to be prepared for this by going through the process with an expert. And I do think mindfulness does wonders for getting you happy in the present moment, no matter what your situation is. But sometimes, there are a few stories lurking in there that are causing habits and behaviours that may not be serving you.

With mindfulness you can rewire your habits on a moment by moment basis, but with the right kind of therapy, you could potentially pull the rug from under your unconscious behavioural patterns altogether.

So if there are some patterns you can see that keep repeating themselves in your life, friendships, relationships, I highly recommend that you seek out someone to help you get to the bottom of it.

Or just have a think,

> What were my male relationships like as a kid?

> What were my female relationships like?

> What were my first friendships like?

> First experiences of sex and desire?

And could any of those things have contributed to how I relate to those things now?

PS – It usually helps to talk these things out, or write them down – things don’t make sense easily in the mind as it gets all up in a tiz far too easily.