17/05/2026
Today I want to share from my private Womens Group, Finding Freedom, about something that so many people experience during healing but often carry enormous shame around in silence.
Part 16. Why the Familiar Keeps Pulling You Back
One of the most painful parts of healing is not simply recognising the pattern. It is recognising how many times you return to it after you already became aware of it and this is often where people become incredibly hard on themselves.
Do you think these?
🌿 “I should know better by now.”
🌿 “Why do I keep going backwards?”
🌿 “Why do I keep returning to the same things?”
🌿 “Why can’t I just let it go?”
Healing is rarely as simple as consciously deciding something and never struggling with it again. Because awareness and nervous system conditioning are not the same thing.
You can intellectually understand a pattern…
and still feel emotionally pulled towards it.
You can know something is unhealthy…
and still feel safest inside what is familiar and this is the part many people do not fully understand:
The nervous system does not automatically choose what is healthiest.
It chooses what feels most known.
Most practiced.
Most predictable.
Most familiar.
Even when that familiarity has caused pain because familiarity can become confused with safety.
Not consciously but physiologically.
So many people quietly return to things they promised themselves they had outgrown.
Not because they want suffering.
Not because they are weak.
Not because healing is failing.
But because something inside them is still trying to return to what the body learned to survive within. And this can show up in so many deeply human ways.
Answering the message you already knew would hurt you.
Shrinking again after finally speaking honestly.
Over-explaining after setting a boundary.
Emotionally disappearing after feeling vulnerable.
Numbing after being truly seen.
Returning to chaos because calm suddenly feels empty.
Wanting to run the moment something healthy begins to feel real.
And these moments can create so much shame. Especially when part of you thought:
“I already healed this.”
“I thought I was past this.”
“I thought I had moved forward.”
But healing is rarely linear and returning to a pattern does not mean you are back at the beginning. In fact, one of the biggest shifts in healing is not never revisiting the pattern again…
It is becoming aware while it is happening.
Noticing it sooner.
Staying conscious longer.
Recovering more gently afterwards.
Abandoning yourself less deeply each time.
Returning to yourself more quickly.
That is healing too because there is a huge difference between:
🌿 unconsciously living inside the pattern
and
🌿 consciously recognising it while learning a new response
One is survival operating automatically. The other is awareness beginning to interrupt it and that shift matters more than many people realise.
So often people think healing should remove every difficult response immediately but the nervous system learns through repetition, safety, and lived experience, not pressure or self-punishment.
This is why shame becomes so important to recognise here because many people do not stay trapped in old patterns because they are broken…
They stay trapped because every return to the pattern becomes another opportunity to attack themselves and healing cannot grow well inside constant self-rejection.
There is such a profound difference between saying:
🌿 “I returned to the pattern.”
and
🌿 “I am the pattern.”
One is awareness.
The other is identity and you are not the coping mechanisms, behaviours, adaptations, or survival responses your nervous system developed in order to protect you.
You are the person slowly becoming aware of them. That awareness is not failure. It is the beginning of change.
So if you find yourself discouraged because something old still pulls at you sometimes please remember this gently:
You are not weak for struggling to leave what your nervous system once learned was necessary for survival.
Healing is not about never feeling pulled backwards again but about slowly building enough safety within yourself that the familiar no longer completely controls your direction.
One moment.
One awareness.
One compassionate return to yourself at a time.
With Love and Presence
Mysti~Dorne 💛🌿🌼
Founder of Finding Freedom
🌿 Reflection for today:
What familiar pattern still pulls at you when you feel vulnerable, overwhelmed, unseen, or emotionally unsafe?
And what might shift if you met yourself there with understanding instead of shame?
Link for Women only Healing group, Finding Freedom.
https://www.facebook.com/share/g/18VJ2oKZUJ/
