The Collapse Pattern: Why You Keep Abandoning Yourself to Keep the Peace
If peace costs you yourself, there's another way to belong.
“I believe it’s an external war taught; we spend an internal lifetime trying to resolve.”
We choose paths that either lead us away from ourselves or back to ourselves. This year, I am recreating a pattern I chose four years ago to sit with myself for a year to continue learning who I AM. I’m fortunate to have the time and financial stability to choose this for myself.
Recently, I’ve been sitting with the choice point of whether to stay in an experience I’ve outgrown. I realize we often cycle through a perpetual loop of growth until the lesson is complete. I was taught to stay in the loop, while my soul gently chose to move on. It’s at this point that friction appears.
I believe in impermanence—that a state or condition lasts only for a limited time. I’m learning that it’s my choice to keep the same landscape or to choose another. This is where friction turns into confusion.
We are taught to stay in experiences we’ve outgrown. To stay, we subconsciously learn to beat ourselves up, hold ourselves back, and collapse into prior versions of who we were—instead of moving forward. I believe it’s an external war taught; we spend an internal lifetime trying to resolve. Where 2 + 2 never equals 4, because truth lies beyond logic.
I watch couples stay in marriages only to destroy the marriage, themselves, and each other. In my experience, the friction often centers around growth. One or both parties choose to evolve, but separately—while still holding on to a prior version of the person and the relationship. It’s painful, because comfort feels safer than growth, even when it costs us ourselves.
In my life, I’ve often been the one to carry the emotional burden for the other person. It’s been difficult to understand how the old clings to the new—while energetically pulling me back and down into prior versions of myself to “keep the peace.” I created this pattern in my relationship with my parents and have continued to recreate it, until now. At this level of awareness, I can see it clearly: the pattern of being overly responsible for others’ emotions.
What I am learning into is this: it is a choice to stay—while recognizing all the intricate pieces of your why. To see that the story is always changing, even as we are forever evolving alongside it.
Walking with you, Staci