What is Pattern Disruption Coaching?

"Why do I keep repeating the same patterns?"

I've been hearing this question or some variation of it from clients for over eight years, and it's a question I've asked myself many times.

"Why am I so quick to react at times?"

"Where's my self control?"

"Isn't there a space between stimulus and response?"

Automatic reactions like emotional triggers, self-sabotage, limiting beliefs and even procrastination never felt like something I was doing as much as something that happened. Try as I might, stopping certain reactions seemed impossible - they would happen before I had a chance to consider any options.

The truth is, sometimes there is no space.

Think of something you've been putting off; something you know you should probably do. Notice the feeling in your body and where you feel it, then remind yourself that you don't have to do that right now.

How much time did spend thinking about that task before your body reacted? Probably little, if any. That reaction happened before you had time to give it any thought, because it was unconscious; seemingly instantaneous.

So, it wasn't really about the task, was it?

Now think of something in a completely different area of your life that you've been putting off. Notice the feeling in your body, and once again, remind yourself that you don't have to do that right now.

If procrastination has been an issue for you then chances are the feeling you experienced in your body when thinking about the two tasks was very similar, if not identical, and both happened just as quickly. So what you felt was not the process of evaluation, consideration or prioritization - those would be conscious responses. What you felt was an automatic reaction.

It was the pattern of procrastination, or more specifically, the pattern of avoidance. When that pattern is running, there is no space between stimulus and response. Automatic patterns, left unchecked, take away our power to choose.

The good news is that these patterns follow a very specific structure - that's why they feel the same every time. In Pattern Disruption Coaching we interrupt that pattern.

How Do They Happen So Quickly?

These instantaneous reactions that seem to be obstacles on the path of personal and spiritual growth are automatic protective responses that originate at the level of the unconscious mind, which can react up to 500 milliseconds faster than your conscious mind. One-half of a second is not enough space to even realize what's happening, much less choose a different response. As anyone who has ever tried to stop a trigger can tell you, that half-second might as well be an eternity. It's a race you can't win.

And since you don't have time to think before they fire off, automatic patterns don't respond to discipline, good intentions or a desire to improve alone, and most standard coaching methods and therapeutic approaches aren't very effective against them, because you are working against the natural tendencies of the nervous system.

The Pattern Disruption Method works with those tendencies. If you understand how the pattern was formed and how it operates, you can interrupt it.

Enter Pattern Disruption Coaching

Pattern Disruption was born out of my three-year deep dive into HNLP (Humanistic Neuro-Linguistic Psychology, in which I became a Master Coach), and subsequent studies of neuroscience and learning science.

• Informed by Psychology
• Supported by Neuroscience
• Grounded in Ancient Wisdom

As you saw with the exercise we did, patterns can be the same or similar across different "issues" or contexts. That means certain patterns can actually be the "root cause" of multiple issues. The reason the pattern was formed or the situation in which it originated is much less important that the structure of the pattern itself.

Pattern Disruption Coaching is not just me telling you something or you gathering more information, and it's not focused on examining the past - you've probably done all of those things. It's working with the pattern in the here and now, using a blend of standard coaching and neuroscience-informed practices designed to take you from a place of reaction to conscious response. You're already at step two in the process with procrastination: recognition.

The practices are strategically designed, each building on the last, and they are surprisingly easy, consisting mostly of things you do as you go about your daily routine. And they leverage processes that are already happening. These are practices that will not only help you disrupt the patterns that are disrupting your life - they change the way you experience life, enhancing your awareness and reducing the episodes of reactivity. The process makes you more conscious by making you less unconscious.

What Does This Have to Do With Psychedelic Integration?

One things that psychedelics tend to do very reliably is cause old patterns to surface. This can happen before, during or after a psychedelic journey, and one of the most common frustrations I hear from clients during integration is that they are "falling back into old habits and patterns," and they don't understand why.

This isn't a defect, it's a gift. These powerful substances bring well-worn patterns to our attention so that we can deal with them - that's what integration is about, and what these clients are actually experiencing is the second stage in the Pattern Disruption Method: recognition. That's where the real work begins.

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