The Day My Most Protective Emotional Pattern Got Exposed

Last month, my mentor said something that stopped me in my tracks: "You must've been misunderstood a lot growing up."

I wasn't expecting it. 

We were reviewing one of my coaching sessions, and I'd mentioned how I'm reluctant to assume what my clients are feeling because narrowing someone’s experience down to something simplistic felt disrespectful. I preferred to understand people in their full complexity.

Her comment hit a raw nerve I didn't even know was exposed.

What she'd identified was my perspicacity pattern - my tendency to over-analyze and seek complex understanding of everyone around me, because at the end of the day we are complex beings. For years, this pattern kept me safe. If I could understand everyone else's complexity, I could be compassionate with them and justify any hurt they caused in my life; liberate them from taking responsibility for their doings in whatever relationship I had with them; justify their incorrect assumptions and lack of curiosity towards me. If I understood them, I could accept them fully whilst I was ignoring my own pain. I held space for them, and I would do all the mental work to understand why they wouldn’t return this curiosity and acceptance towards me.

But here's what I learned: protection patterns that once served us can become the very thing blocking our emotional growth.

I'm excellent at masking, so when my classmates kept exploring this revelation about me (which is what we always do so we can optimize our own emotional capacity), I went into complete shutdown. They didn't know I was out of my window of tolerance because I looked fine on the outside while feeling invaded on the inside. It felt intrusive. I was experiencing the same emotional responses when others have wronged me. I masked, I became passive. I knew I was capable of saying “I’m out of my window of tolerance. Let’s not dive deeper into this now.” But, it was physically impossible. My nervous system was immobilized and acted in the safest way it could at that moment.

Later that night, I realized something profound: my need to understand everything was actually keeping me from feeling everything.

What protection patterns might be running your life without you realizing it?

The emotions we're most afraid to feel are often the ones we need most to access. Sometimes it takes one comment, one moment of being truly seen, to reveal what we've been protecting ourselves from.

You might not feel ready to explore what emotions you are avoiding, but in the right space you certainly could let it unfold naturally. I work with people who are curious to move beyond their protection patterns into authentic feelings.