Why Do I Keep Repeating the Same Patterns? A Look at Family Constellations

Breaking Repeating Patterns with Family Constellations and Curiosity

The episodes introduce family constellations, a method developed by Bert Hellinger that explores how unconscious family-system dynamics can influence recurring life patterns without blaming parents. Julie explains that family constellations can be applied beyond family relationships to issues like career, money, leadership, self-worth, and decision-making by focusing on underlying patterns. 

A key reframing question is “Where else have I felt this before?” illustrated by the speaker’s experience of feeling overlooked when a company hired someone else to lead a new division, which triggered older feelings of not being enough rooted in childhood attention dynamics. Through journaling, questioning beliefs, and gathering evidence of competence, the speaker shifted from self-judgment to curiosity, emphasizing that awareness enables change. Listeners are invited to identify a repeating challenge and ask what feelings recur and where they’ve felt them before, with resources including the book “It Didn’t Start with You” and the Netflix series “Another Self.”

00:00 Why Patterns Repeat
01:31 Intro to Family Constellations
02:36 Beyond Family Systems
03:05 Where Else Felt This
03:45 Career Overlooked Story
05:34 Reframing and Doing Work
07:07 Curiosity Creates Freedom
08:23 Healing Without Blame
09:07 Your Brave Move Prompt
10:03 Resources and Farewell

Transcript

0:00

Have you ever found yourself saying, "Why does this keep happening to me?" Maybe is a difficult relationship or a difficult boss, or maybe your friendship ends in the same way with different people. And a pattern people-pleasing is the thing that you hang onto in your life. Maybe there's a pattern of feeling overlooked or a pattern of never feeling quite good enough. The faces change, the circumstances change, but somehow the feeling feels very familiar. I've asked myself that question many times throughout my life, and after years of therapy and personal development, coaching, self-help books, I stumbled across something I had never heard of before, and definitely is something that I've been fascinated for a long time. Now, I've talked about it on the podcast before, but this is about family constellations. And while I'm certainly not an expert, it gave me a different lens through which to really look at my life. Before we dive in, though, I wanna tell you that if you have been enjoying Brave Moves, you are my people. So thank you so much for being here, my friend, and I am so grateful for you. And of course, stay with me till the end because I wanna share the question family constellations taught me to ask that completely changed how I think about reoccurring patterns in my life. Now, what are family constellations, you may be wondering. It's a method developed by Bert Hellinger, and the idea behind it is that we are often influenced by unconscious family dynamics that we may not even be aware of. Now, before anyone panics, this isn't about blaming your parents. It's not about assigning fault to anyone, and it's not about finding someone to blame for your problems. It's about, something that I talk about this all the time, becoming curious. It's about asking, "Why might I be keeping repeating this pattern?" Or, "Why does this situation feel so familiar? What might I be carrying that isn't entirely mine to carry?" And family constellations suggests that some of the patterns we experience may be connected to unresolved experiences, maybe loyalties or dynamics within our family system that we're not aware of. And whether you fully believe this or not, I found this concept to be incredibly fascinating. This is not just about family. One thing I initially misunderstood about family constellations isn't only used for family relationships. People use it to explore career challenges, money patterns, leadership struggles, business growth, relationships, self-worth, decision-making, because often what we're really examining is not the situation itself. It's the pattern Here's the question that changed everything. One of the most powerful questions I learned was, "Where else have I felt this before?" Not, "What's wrong with me?" Because that's usually where we go, right? Not, "Why am I like this?" Because, this is usually what we say to ourselves. But ask the question, "Where have I experienced this feeling before?" Because sometimes a difficult boss isn't really about the boss. Sometimes the feeling of being overlooked isn't really about the current situation. Sometimes we're responding to something much older, something familiar, something that has been quietly running through the background. I'll give you an example. When I worked for this company, I had been promoted four times, and it was basically in a period of four years. Every year, I was getting a promotion, and then all of a sudden, they were going to create this brand-new division, a complete separate division, and this meant, obviously, that someone needed to lead the division. Now, the VP of business development didn't want this job, and he enjoyed doing business development for the main company. So the opportunity was there. And of course, being the person that I had developed this brand-new department from its infancy, I thought, "Surely it's going to be me." And I went on vacation. I went on vacation for two weeks. I went to Russia, and I went to Sweden and Finland, and this was a amazing trip. I was really disconnected. But when I came back, the first thing that my team told me is that they had hired someone to lead this new division for the company. And I thought, "What? Why would they hire someone? Who the hell is this person?" And I felt so angry and unappreciated and overlooked. I will tell you, I really struggled. I know that this was one of the pivoting points in my life and career because at first it would have been easy to blame others. It would have been easy to tune out. I had to work with this person. Now, mind you, this person was probably one of the most difficult people I've met in my life, and eventually this person left and I was given the promotion. However, they didn't give me the promotion because I made this person leave. I was given the promotion because I realized that this circumstance had nothing to do with me feeling inferior. It had to do with my own drama that I was carrying. I think at times, especially someone that has the type of history that I have, coming from a family that is multi, generational, right? I lived with my grandparents, but also sometimes I didn't feel like my parents paid enough attention to me, or maybe if they did, it was more to my sisters. So much BS that we carry. But ultimately, I realized that it wasn't about the company overlooking me. It wasn't about this person being better than I was. It was about me really sorting through, and the company took a decision they felt was the best decision for them. And what I needed to do was put my head down, stay above the fray, and do my job, continue to thrive in what I did. And any time that I felt that I wasn't enough, that maybe something was wrong with me, I went back to figure out and really did some of the work. And how did I do this? I journaled and I questioned a lot of things that I was led to believe about myself. And I thought, "Why do I believe that?" And I started to find the evidence of the things that I was good at. I started to find the evidence that what my brain was telling me was not real. And eventually, yes, I was given the promotion, and that's another story. But here's what I want you to think Curiosity in your life is going to create freedom. So staying curious. And what I love about the work of family constellation is that it encourage you to be curious instead of judging yourself, and many of us spend years criticizing ourselves. You're probably still doing it, and I still do, but I go back to that curiosity many of us spend years criticizing ourselves and saying things like, "Why am I doing this? Why can't I fix this? Why do I keep repeating this pattern?" But curiosity sounds extremely different. Curiosity is going to ask, "What am I here to learn? What might this pattern be trying to show me? And what if there's another way?" And when we become curious, we create space to change for me, being able to understand family constellations is a work in progress, my friend, it has helped me to see something that I hadn't seen before. And sometimes that awareness also was the first step into healing many of the things that I carried around for a long time. Now, healing, my friend, is not about blame, and one of the biggest misconceptions, like I said, about personal growth, is that healing requires blame, and I don't believe that. I believe healing requires awareness. Our parents, and I'm living this with my mom now, I believe she did the best she could with what she knew. We do the best we can with what we know, and our responsibility isn't to blame, it's to become conscious. Because that moment we see the pattern, we can choose differently. The truth is that you can't change the pattern that you refuse to notice. So here's your brave move. Think about a reoccurring challenge in your life. Maybe you're, haven't been good with money your whole life, or maybe you keep running into these difficult people, a situation that maybe in your life it seems to be repeated time and time again, and ask yourself, "What feelings keep showing up? Where else have I felt this before?" Don't judge the answer. Just get curious, because curiosity is often the healing that starts for you in your life. And my friends, we all have stories, we all have patterns, we all have experiences that shape how we move through the world, and the goal isn't to blame the past. The goal is to understand it, because when we understand the pattern and we gain the power to change it, that is your brave move, my friend. And if you wanna learn more about family constellations, I wanna encourage you, there is a book, and I've talked about it on the podcast, but I'll put the book in the show notes. It's called It Didn't Start with You, and this is a really great resource for you if you're interested in patterns, family systems and understanding emotional experiences that may not have originated with you. The other thing is Netflix has a series, and it's dubbed. It's a Turkish series, but it's really cool. It's about three friends living their normal lives. It's called Another Self. And that also explores family constellations, and it was really fun to, after reading the book, It Didn't Start With You, to go in and watch the Netflix series. There's two seasons, and I really have enjoyed watching it. So go and check it out. And until tomorrow, my friend, remember, go confidently in the direction of your dreams, and you too can live bravely daily, and I'm cheering you on.