Recently, I read the book The 5 Personality Patterns by Steven Kessler. It’s one of the best self-help books I have read in a long time.
Of course, like any other book, there were a couple of things I didn’t quite agree with. But on the whole, it’s a very insightful book that I highly recommend you read! It talks about the defensive patterns we develop as we grow up to ward off feelings of stress and overwhelm. These patterns become our go-tos when we are going through difficult times.
We usually have two coping patterns that we fall back into when things get rough. But we all also have a primary pattern. This is the first strategy we will use to defend ourselves from getting overwhelmed. If this defensive strategy doesn’t solve our problem, it’s then that we’ll switch over to our backup pattern.
Unlike personality theories such as the MBTI or the Enneagram, this map of the survival patterns “does not describe who you are, but instead describes the survival strategies you automatically go into when you start to feel overwhelmed.” So, “this map does not describe who you are, but rather what obscures who you are.”
So, I might be laidback normally but when I am in my pattern, I might be rigid and unbending or anxious and flighty, as the case may be.
What’s really, really interesting is that energy flows in a certain way in our body when we are in our pattern.
So, as we grow up and use the pattern again and again, this energy flow even shapes our body as it grows.
This energy flow creates bodily armour. It creates tension in specific muscles. The pattern shows up in our very physicality, in the way we actually look.
That’s why it’s pretty easy to recognize which pattern is your primary pattern. It’s also pretty easy to guess, quite accurately, at least the primary pattern for the people around you.
I won’t let on as yet exactly what pattern I am (although you could probably guess if you read this blog regularly). But I found the information very on-point. If you just take a look at this photo, you will probably recognize yourself and some of your friends and family.
Eerie, right?
And yet, not so eerie. Depending on our pattern, our attention flows in specific ways and creates patterns of holding in our body, which show up in our musculature.
The 5 Personality Patterns can Give us Insights Into Ourselves as Empaths and Highly Sensitive People.
The 5 patterns are the Leaving Pattern, the Merging Pattern, the Enduring Pattern, the Aggressive Pattern, and the Rigid Pattern. We are, of course, not always in our primary pattern. We are only in one of these patterns during stressful times. ut when we are, it turns out we are pretty automatic in our behavior.
We play out the same steps in the dance.
The way our energy flows at these times is also predictable. If we have the Leaving Pattern as our primary coping strategy, our energy moves away from others. If the Merging Pattern is the primary pattern for us, then our energy moves towards others when we are feeling overwhelmed.
In a similar way, in the case of the Enduring Pattern, energy moves in and down during times of stress, for the Aggressive Pattern, energy flows up and out and for the Rigid Pattern, energy flow is constricted.
Reading about these patterns gave me several a-ha moments. It also made me think of how, sometimes, we don’t recognize the gifts (each pattern has its gifts and weaknesses) of some other patterns that are unlike ours.
For example, the gift of the Enduring Pattern is the ability to ground.
These are the people who can stick it out during the toughest times, who are almost like those deep-rooted trees or like an immovable mountain. Their pattern means that while they can often feel stagnant, they also have the gift of being exceptionally grounded.
They send their energy deep into the ground and are very rooted.
Like other people who have a specific gift, people with this pattern can also feel that everyone around them depends on their gift a little too much. They can feel like they are doing the grounding work for the entire group they are in.
Sometimes, this is actually true. When the people around them are ungrounded, the person with this pattern does compensate for that lack of rootedness. Then, to them, it can feel like they are carrying the burden of this entire task.
But sometimes, this great burden that people with the Enduring Pattern perceive might not actually be there.
Because they have played this role in the past to so many people, people with the Enduring Pattern might feel like they are carrying the weight of the world even when others around them are well-equipped and taking care of their own grounding needs.
Learning this felt so interesting to me.
Do You Have Limiting Beliefs about Being a Highly Sensitive Person or Emotional Empath?
Like other empaths and Highly Sensitive People, I have had many experiences that used to make me feel as if helping process people’s emotions had become my specialization, similar to how economists say that “if you are better at something than many others, then that becomes your “task” (forever and ever, even if you don’t feel like it, even if you would rather not do it.)
Just like other empaths and HSPs, I have had experiences where people have opened up to me almost within minutes of meeting me and told me deeply personal things about themselves. For me, sometimes, it also happens that people don’t remember me for a long time. We won’t talk for months, but then, one day, they will call me out of the blue and just vent to me.
While I am definitely a listener and definitely interested in people, there have been multiple times when being used as a place to vent at has only left me feeling resentful.
Now, after all my experiences, I have much clearer boundaries in place around giving. But I know just why it’s so easy to develop the faulty belief that many empaths and Highly Sensitive People have, that we are here to “help other people process feelings.” This can definitely feel like our “role” if people are always gravitating towards us in times of trouble or when our connection with so many others is built on doing things for them or listening to them.
But that’s not who we are. We are more than what we give. We are more than the roles we play by default.
While the world of feelings might be a natural home for us, this doesn’t mean that’s where empaths should always be residing. It doesn’t mean that we should do the feeling work for other people just as people in the Enduring Pattern are not obligated to do the grounding work for the rest of humanity.
Yes, that might be their gift. But that’s what it is.
Their gift.
They can choose to use it or not. They can channel it in any way they choose. It also has to work for them.
As empaths and HSPs, I think that’s something for us to remember as well.
I do think many of us have the Healer archetype inside us. But healing is not the same as temporarily fixing or saving or rescuing.
There are many ways to help channel the energy of the Healer, and the truly healthy way is to find Win-Win ways of doing it. It’s also important to see that maybe a sacred gift needs a sacred container, boundaries within which it can flourish.
For myself, I have found that if giving leaves me feeling drained and resentful and believing that my sensitivity is this terrible monster riding on my back, then it’s better either not to give or not to give in the exact same way I was giving before.
Maybe, I can give a little less or give something else or let someone else give to this person instead of mistakenly thinking that I am their one sole support.
That’s also kind of egotistical, isn’t it?
Reading about the Enduring Pattern really brought up these thoughts for me. It’s also easy, as Highly Sensitive People and emotional empaths, to think that we are the ones carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. But reading this book helped me see that there are other people, with possibly very different strengths and weaknesses than ours, who might also be carrying a different kind of burden.
I know I have a tendency to be ungrounded. What if people with this survival pattern are grounding my energy when I am around them? Maybe, they feel like how I feel when people come to me with emotional problems or at times when they are looking for someone to sit with their intense emotions (Sometimes, these are also times when I am a much better expert at their feelings than at my own.)
Neither people who are better at grounding nor those who are more at home in the realm of emotions have to do what is easy or natural for them for others willy-nilly. We don’t have to carry the weight of everything because everyone has the ability to develop and learn to carry the weight of their own problems and emotions.
As a decidedly upper-chakra person who has to remind herself about grounding again and again, at the end of the day, it is my responsibility to be grounded by doing things that are grounding.
It is my responsibility to walk or dance or eat the right foods or organize my kitchen and closet so I am grounded in the real world. When I don’t do these things (and that is something I keep dropping time and again), it is not someone else’s responsibility to step in and make up for that deficit because I was not mindful enough.
In the same way, it’s not our responsibility as empaths and Highly Sensitive People to always be the one to help people process their emotions (unless we are therapists and getting paid for it). We can, of course, choose to do it, sometimes out of love and sometimes because we do want to give.
But when have tos and obligation enter the picture and giving becomes our primary identity, there is no room left for choice. There is no room left for nourishing our self. There is no room left for boundaries.
There is also no room left for being discerning about who we are giving our energy to. Giving to a narcissist or a taker is not the same as giving to a genuinely needy person.
As empaths and Highly Sensitive People, we have to remember this. We have to remember that giving is a value, but so is fairness, so is balance, so is truth. We have to remember that giving at the cost of our own true self is not true giving, but co-dependency and people-pleasing.
We have to remember that truly channeling our gifts means that we can’t be all things to all people, all the time.
There’ll be times when we forget this, but as before, we have to keep coming back, keep finding our center.
There’s a reason we are who we are.
We are not here to get entangled with unhealthy people. We are not here to be ego-boosters for narcissists. We are here to value ourselves and use what’s best inside us in the service of something bigger than us.
What do you think? How might you live if you consciously chose who and what you gave to?
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the memoir The Empath’s Journey, which combines personal experiences from her own life as an emotional empath with insights from different psychological theories to give empaths more tools and resources to connect with themselves.
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