Steven Kessler’s The 5 Personality Patterns is the best self-help book I read this year. In fact, it’s one of the best self-help books I have read in a long while!
Just like any other book, there were a couple of things that I didn’t agree with, but on the whole, there is so much good stuff in this book that I would recommend that you pick it up and read it!
The 5 Personality Patterns talks about the self-defensive patterns we develop as we grow up to ward off feelings of stress and overwhelm. Once these patterns are set, they become our go-tos when we are going through difficult times.
What’s really, really interesting is that energy flows in a certain way in our body when we are in our pattern.
So, we adopt this pattern as little children. As we grow up, we use this pattern again and again. This causes energy to flow in our body in a certain way.
This energy flow even shapes our body as it grows.
This is because the way our energy flows creates bodily armour and tension in specific muscles. See if you can recognize either yourself or someone you know in one of these 5 patterns:
Eerie, isn’t it?
I am guessing, like me, you recognized at least a bunch of people you know and their patterns (including your own!).
The 5 Personality Patterns can Give us Many 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 all usually have a primary pattern that’s our go-to and then a second pattern that we also use.
Of course, we are not always in our primary or secondary pattern. These are only self-defensive patterns that come up full-force during stressful times.
But once we are in our patterns, then our energy flows in predictable ways. So, if we have the Leaving Pattern as our primary coping strategy, our energy moves away from others when we are feeling stressed. 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.
Reading The 5 Personality Patterns really got me thinking about all this and much more! It also gave me greater appreciation for other people and the fact that we all have ways in which our gifts and challenges are intertwined. They are like two sides of the same coin.
Sometimes, as empaths and highly sensitive people, we can feel as if we are the only ones gifted and cursed by who we are, but that’s also true for many other people.
Something to think about, isn’t it?
We all feel alone and lonely in something. We all feel caught up in some Catch-22 situation that we find hard to unravel. We ALL have our challenges.
If you are on your journey to understand yourself or the people you love, The 5 Personality Patterns is an amazing book to add to your collection!
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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