I like to hike, when I can. Hiking paths generally have two options - loop or out-and-back. When you hike a loop, you’re always walking a new path you haven’t seen before, until you get back to the trailhead. When you hike an out-and-back, you retrace your steps on your way back. Loops are an opportunity for constant surprises and new challenges, while out-and-backs offer the comfort of familiarity, albeit from a slightly different perspective.
In therapy and in life, we’re usually walking a hybrid of these two paths, which looks like a spiral. We encounter the same patterns, habits, memories over and over again, but from a new vantage point. Sometimes this can be frustrating, feeling like we’re stuck in the same cycles - dating the same types of people, making the same kinds of mistakes at work, melting down in response to the same triggers.
What makes it a spiral and not a cycle is how we understand ourselves and what is happening. We bring awareness to these patterns, and use that awareness to make different choices. So maybe the next time we make a mistake at work, we realize the problem is that no one has ever explained exactly what they want us to do. Or maybe we realize that we always have a meltdown when we skip a meal.
Some patterns are easier to change than others, and some aren’t really in our control at all. But by encountering the same types of challenge - the same rock scramble, the same fallen log, the same set of stairs - from a different vantage point - coming back down the mountain, a sunny day versus a rainy one - we’ll get better at recognizing what we need to do differently to succeed.
