I've Had Therapy and Understand My Patterns — So Why Do I Still Feel Stuck?

Perhaps you've already had counselling or therapy.

You've explored your past. You understand yourself much better than you once did.

You may know where some of your beliefs, fears and patterns came from — and perhaps therapy helped you enormously.

And yet you still find yourself thinking:

I understand why I do this. So why am I still doing it?

• You still overthink.

• Still doubt yourself.

• Still find it difficult to set boundaries.

• Still worry about what other people think.

• Still respond in familiar ways even while part of you is watching it happen and thinking, I know exactly what I'm doing.

That can be incredibly frustrating.

But there's an important distinction between understanding a pattern and changing it.

Insight is valuable — but it isn't always enough

Understanding ourselves can be enormously powerful.

Perhaps you've realised that your fear of conflict developed because conflict didn't feel safe when you were younger.

Perhaps you've recognised that people-pleasing became a way of gaining approval or avoiding rejection.

Perhaps you understand why criticism triggers such a strong reaction or why making a mistake can feel disproportionately threatening.

That understanding matters.

It can help us make sense of our reactions and approach ourselves with greater compassion rather than judgement.

But you can understand exactly where a pattern came from and still find yourself repeating it.

Awareness is where change begins. It isn't where change ends.

Why do old patterns keep repeating?

Many of the ways we think, feel and respond have become habitual.

They can happen quickly and automatically.

• Someone is disappointed with you → you immediately try to fix it.

• You have an important decision to make → you start looking to other people for reassurance.

• Someone challenges you → you become defensive or withdraw.

• You make a mistake → your inner critic takes over.

You've learned why you do it.

The next challenge is learning to recognise the pattern while it's happening — and discovering that another response is possible.

That's where awareness begins to create choice.

Sometimes we need to understand the past

I don't believe coaching requires us to pretend the past doesn't matter.

Sometimes understanding what's happening today means becoming curious about where a particular belief or response came from.

My background as an Integrative Counsellor informs the way I work as a coach, so I'm comfortable exploring earlier experiences when they're relevant to understanding what's happening now.

But we don't have to stay there.

Your past can help us understand where you are today, but it doesn't have to define what happens next.

We can't change what happened.

What we can change is how we relate and respond to it now.

From understanding to experimenting

This is where coaching can offer something different.

Rather than only understanding the pattern, we begin experimenting with what happens when you don't automatically follow it.

• If you know you're a people-pleaser, perhaps the experiment is saying no and allowing someone to be disappointed. These kinds of patterns can become particularly visible in our relationships.

• If you know you don't trust your own decisions, perhaps it's making one without asking three other people what they think.

• If you know you avoid conflict, perhaps it's expressing what you actually think even though doing so feels uncomfortable.

• If you know perfectionism drives endless overthinking, perhaps it's sending something when it's good enough.

That can feel uncomfortable.

You're doing something different from what your mind has learned is familiar or safe.

But something important can happen when you step into that discomfort:

you get new information.

The real learning comes through direct experience

I can teach you models, tools and frameworks.

I can ask questions that help you see something differently.

I can challenge an assumption or invite you to consider another perspective.

But I'm not interested in persuading you of anything.

What matters far more is what you discover for yourself.

You can intellectually understand that setting a boundary doesn't make you selfish.

But actually setting one — feeling the discomfort, allowing the other person's response and discovering that you can cope with what happens — gives you a different kind of learning.

You experience it.

And that experience can begin to challenge the old belief far more powerfully than simply being told to think differently.

Coaching isn't “better than therapy”

It's important to say this.

Coaching and therapy aren't competing approaches, and one isn't inherently better than the other.

They have different purposes, and what someone needs depends on their circumstances.

For some people, counselling or psychotherapy may be the most appropriate support.

For others, coaching may be a good fit. And someone who has benefited enormously from therapy may later reach a point where they want something more active, practical and focused on applying what they've learned to how they live now.

That's often where my approach can be particularly useful.

My counselling background means I bring psychological understanding to the work, while coaching keeps us focused on awareness, choice, experimentation and change.

You can read more about [how I work and how change happens through my coaching].

You don't have to become someone different

The aim isn't to erase your past, eliminate every uncomfortable emotion or never fall into an old pattern again.

It's to become increasingly able to recognise what's happening, understand it and decide how you want to respond.

Over time, those different choices can become more familiar.

And gradually, you may find yourself needing less external reassurance and trusting your own ability to navigate what life puts in front of you.

That's the kind of change I'm interested in.

Not simply knowing yourself better.

But using that understanding to live differently.

Understand the pattern but still feel stuck?

Susy Rudkin, Energy Leadership and Transformational Coach

If you've already done a lot of work on yourself but still find yourself repeating familiar patterns, a free Clarity Call gives us an opportunity to explore what's happening and whether my approach to coaching could be a useful next step.

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