when you're feeling overwhelmed,
you tend to go into the:
AGGRESSIVE PATTERN
The safety strategy of the Aggressive Pattern is to become powerful and in charge.
When you're in the Aggressive Pattern, you tend to doubt whether you can trust or depend on others. As a result, you may try to dominate and control yourself, others, and situations in order to feel safe.
The results are in!
So what does this really mean?
The Aggressive Pattern isn't a personality type like the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. Rather, it describes the safety strategies you immediately go to when you start to feel overwhelmed. It doesn't describe who you are, but rather what is blocking who you are.
The inner journey takes time and effort, but once you know where you're going, it will be much easier. Without a map, you may have been running in circles for years. But with this map, you can finally find your way home.
Fortunately, there is a map to the Aggressive Pattern that shows both how you got stuck in this pattern, and how you can break free and return to your true self.
- You tend to doubt whether you can trust or depend on others.
- You feel like you're stuck in a fight response.
- You have a great B.S. detector.
- You're street smart.
- You often feel a need for dominance and control.
- You fear vulnerability.
- You feel like your needs are too big for anyone else to handle.
- You fight to the finish.
- You opt for charm or aggression to get what you want.
- You really value competence.
- You're quite sure of yourself.
- You prefer to be the leader in a group.
- You rarely ask for help.
- Courageous and resourceful
- Like challenge, risk and competition
- Bold and entrepreneurial
- Lively, aware, and highly engaged
- Fight hard for causes you believe in
- Good sense of humor
- Adventurous and fun
At their best, aggressive-patterned people are highly competent and have a strong, focused will.
Examples:
- Tom Cruise
- Military special forces
- Lucy in Peanuts
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Senator John McCain
- Something happened that overwhelmed your nervous system.
- You used whatever skills you had at that age to solve your problem. Maybe you copied what you'd seen others do, or maybe you invented a new strategy. You try different things out.
- If the strategy works, you keep using it. If it doesn't work, you try something else.
- Over time, you settle into a strategy and as you use it repeatedly, it becomes conditioned into your body and develops into a survival pattern.
- As you grow, that pattern becomes the lens through which you experience life. It influences how you see yourself and the world.
Aggressive Patterned people typically were in distress at a young age and made it through by willing themselves to survive. There wasn't help from others when they needed it, so they learned to distrust others and rely only on themselves.
As a certified Master Coach, I took a deep dive into personality patterns. They're pretty fascinating, right?! I really wanted to help other moms learn how to identify their patterns, recognize when they're acting in pattern, and heal their patterns so they can parent and live as their true and authentic selves.
Before understanding my pattern, I was often overwhelmed, and my inner critic kept piling on the mom guilt. I couldn't figure out why seemingly "little" things would send me over the edge and cause me to lose it. I didn't understand how my survival pattern was distorting my motherhood experience. I couldn't see that how I was viewing life and motherhood was filtered through the lens of my pattern.
Working with a coach and healing my own patterns changed my life! Learning how to get out of pattern and back to the present, gave me full access to all the help, resources, and maturity I'd worked to develop as an adult, and made me such a better mom and wife.
Hello there!
BEFORE WE GET TOO FAR INTO THIS...
Tell me more about 1:1 coaching!
The Aggressive Pattern is distorting your perceptions and your experiences. What you're upset about may not be nearly as bad as it looks through the filter of your Aggressive Pattern. And even if it is, you need to be able to see it clearly to find the best way to respond. Remember, following a distorted map will not take you where you want to go!
Whenever you realize you've gone into the Aggressive Pattern, your first job is to get yourself out of the pattern and back to being present. When you get out of the Aggressive Pattern and back to the present, you will once again have access to all the help, resources, and maturity that you have worked so hard to develop. Once you are back in the present, you will be able to find the best way to respond to any situation.
The healing work of the Aggressive Pattern is to feel safe by being held, contained, and protected by something bigger than yourself - something good and kind, but also stronger and more capable than you are. Within this safety, you need to have all parts of you accepted, valued and reflected back. You need to learn to value your connection to others and integrate love and power within yourself. You need to become capable of feeling both strength and need at the same time. As you begin to feel protected and contained, you will gradually be able to surrender into feeling your own vulnerability and needs, asking for what you need, and receiving it from others. As part of healing the Aggressive Pattern, it's vital that you unearth your buried anger and release it. You also need to learn how to contain your own energy and change your internal relationship with your inner critic.
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We all have blindspots in our lives. That's one of the reasons why working with a coach is so powerful. Awareness is the foundation to all change. You can't intervene in a world you can't see.
Join me in the journey of understanding why you do the things you do. Let's work together to recognize when you're operating in a survival pattern that's distorting your motherhood experience.
I can teach you how to get out of pattern and heal your core wounds so you can get back to the present - back to your true self - where you're able to parent and live with full access to all the help, resources, and maturity you've worked so hard to develop.
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