Specialty · patterns that will not shift
When the same pattern keeps repeating
This is for the person who understands their pattern perfectly and still cannot stop doing it mentally, emotionally or physically. You can name it, date it, trace it to its source, predict it in advance — and then watch it happen again anyway. My work is about building the new pattern by tenderly unwinding the non-preferred pattern energetically, emotionally, mentally and physically, while helping you find tenderness and kindness for yourself in the frustration.
Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.
How patterns actually change
Patterns change when they are addressed from a variety of our navigational aspects. The deepest aspect is the soul's resonance with the Source light. How we vibrate controls our capacity to shift patterns. Guided meditation or hypnotherapy will address this. These modalities, as well as all others offered, are optional. In initial sessions we find out which modalities best suit your personality, beliefs, values, comfort and growth. No modality is forced. You always get to choose.
The next aspect is the physical body. If a body is holding unprocessed energy in organs, or cyclical ways of movement that lock flight, freeze and fight patterns in place of spontaneity, fluidity and options, we work with that. Movement therapy, simple motion shifts and breath therapy are all available.
Emotional patterns are also key. Non-processed grief, sorrow, disappointment, frustration, anger, bliss, laughter, joy, peace and contentment cause blockage. IFS can help us love our emotional selves back into health. EMDR can help us digest emotions that never had a chance to cathart.
The mental aspect is vital in keeping change alive and lasting. As we explore mental patterns, new options become evident.
Personally, I have found that those who choose to incorporate their spiritual or religious guidance receive mysterious miracles and deeper help. Prayer and requests for help to a Higher Source work wonders. If this is not within your own belief system, no need.
The dance among all these aspects is not in a linear order. Each aspect affects the others. I help you find out which patterns are in need of change, and which approaches work best for you.
What this looks like with me
The same emotion, thought, or entanglement with another person persists despite your intention to think, feel and interact differently.
Insight alone rarely changes a pattern. A pattern is not an opinion you can be argued out of; it is a well-worn route that your mind and body take because it is fast, familiar and once kept you safe. Analyzing it more thoroughly makes the map clearer without changing the terrain. So we spend our time differently: less time on why the old route exists, and more time unwinding the complexity of energy, feeling, thought and physical habit. This naturally makes room for a new route to evolve. IFS loosens the stuck places, leading to options in what you feel and think. EMDR digests the pent-up emotion, leaving you with more peace. Cognitive behavioral examining opens up different opportunities for thoughts, feelings and interactions.
I am also careful not to treat the pattern as an enemy. Most patterns began as intelligent solutions, or as behaviors passed down through the generations. The person who over-functions learned that nobody else was coming, the person who leaves first learned that being left is worse, and the person who cannot stop crying often came from a family in which doing so was the norm. Patterns come about in other ways as well, such as DNA or past lives — for those who believe in past lives; not everyone does, and that will be honored. We respect what a pattern was used for, or that it had no purpose other than understandable habit, then build something that valuably fits the life you actually have now.
I help you build new mental, emotional and spiritual patterns so that you can enjoy the life you live.
Patterns people bring here
The same choice of partner
Relational discomfort with the same or a different name, but the same dynamic. We look at what the pull is made of and clear whatever is inhibiting a new choice.
The predictable collapse
Things go well up to a point, then something in you dismantles it. We map that point and build a different response to it.
Over-functioning
Holding everything for everyone, resenting it, and being unable to stop. Repatterning here is mostly practice at learning to parent yourself, understanding your unmet child needs, and setting new limits.
The same disappointment
An experience that persists despite your best attempts can be frustrating and painful. Discovering the different parts of yourself that are re-creating this experience, learning to care for and love them, and opening doors to new experience is the work we do.
Self-criticism on a loop
The commentary that runs no matter what you achieve. We work with the part that believes criticism is what keeps you safe. We find the emotions hidden under this and begin a healing process.
How we would work
We begin with a free 20-minute consult, then weekly sessions by secure video or audio anywhere in California. In the first few sessions we get very specific: not "I have trouble with boundaries" but the exact moment, the exact sentence, the exact physical sensation that arrives half a second before the old pattern takes over. Specificity is what makes a pattern workable.
From there I use Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning alongside Internal Family Systems, which gives us a respectful way to speak with the part of you running the pattern instead of trying to override it. Somatic work matters here too, because a pattern lives in the body's timing — the tightening, the flush of heat, the going-blank — and those arrive before language does. Mindfulness practice is what widens the gap where a choice becomes possible. Success Love Now (SLN) is a highly effective addition for those who are positive-prone and spiritually based.
Between sessions there is usually something small to practice. Not homework for its own sake; rehearsal is the mechanism. Patterns change through repetition of the new response in low-stakes situations, so that it is there when the stakes are high. Some weeks that is one sentence said differently. That is enough to be real work. For those who believe in prayer, of any spiritual or religious kind, we incorporate prayer.
- Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning, my own approach
- Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Somatic and nervous-system work
- Mindfulness practice
- Hypnotherapy — certified hypnotherapist
- ACT and CBT where structure helps
- Success Love Now — a process I created
Questions people ask about patterns
- I already know why I do this — why hasn't it changed?
- Because insight and pattern live in different places. Understanding the origin of a pattern is a thinking task, and it is genuinely useful. Running a different pattern in the moment is a nervous-system task, and it needs rehearsal, not explanation. Commonly a pattern change requires finding and catharting stored-up grief, sorrow, fear or anger. Most people who arrive here have already done years of accurate self-analysis and can narrate the whole history of the pattern while it is happening. What is missing is a new route that has been practiced enough to be available when the old one fires.
- How long before something feels different?
- I will not promise a timeline, and I would be cautious of counting on one. What I can describe is the usual order of events: first you notice the pattern earlier than you used to, then you express, embrace and release the feeling involved in the pattern, then you notice it while it is happening, and then a gap appears between the trigger and the old response. That gap is where the new pattern gets built. How quickly that arrives depends on how old the pattern is, how much it has protected you, and how much practice happens between sessions.
- What is repatterning?
Positive Re-Narrative and Repatterning is my own approach, based on my Success Love Now theory. Success Love Now has helped many people shift problems that were stuck for years or decades. Being a very spiritual and positive-focused person, I created it first for myself. As it worked wonders, I brought this formula to many others whose lives changed in many happy ways.
- Reset to gratitude as a foundation (heart feeling).
- Clarify your intention of what you do wish to experience (mental awareness).
- Embrace the feeling opposing what you do wish to experience (somatic cleansing).
- Subtract anything from your intention that no longer serves (mental strategy).
- Watch your non-preferred experience as a movie (visual shift).
- Add new elements to your intention that you do wish to experience (wiser strategy).
- Offer up the work you just did and let go — let Life, or let the Divine, take over (spiritual approach).
Re-narrative is the work of changing the story you tell about yourself inside the pattern, since most patterns are held together by a sentence such as 'I always ruin this' or 'if I stop managing everything it collapses.' Repatterning is the practical half: choosing the specific new mental, emotional and spiritual response you want, then rehearsing it deliberately, in session and in small real situations, until it is the one that shows up on its own.
If you are tired of understanding it
Text or email and we can talk about the pattern you want to stop running. Stopping the loop is worth a great deal, and it is still only the opening: what the freed-up room is for is peace, joy, purpose and fulfillment, on terms you set. Telehealth only, by secure video or audio, for people physically located in California. Laurie, LMFT.