What is triggering you?

The context for these videos

Each post in this short series is from Alec’s weekly livestream to the Facebook group Finding the Balance with Anxiety Freedom Cards. Each week I focus upon one of our innate resources or needs as depicted in the Anxiety Freedom Cards. And the reason I’m doing this is to show you how you too can live a life free from anxiety and stress.

Please let me know what you think by scrolling to the bottom and commenting below!

Below is a direct transcript from the video shown above.

Well, hello and welcome to another Tuesday Two o’clock Topic. It’s Alec here from in8 with a livestream on the subject this week of pattern matching, on this rather cold Tuesday, the 9th of February.

How are you all doing? If you’re watching this live, please drop me a comment so that I can tell. And in fact, what I’ve really invite you to do, because pattern matching is one of these maybe slightly less than intuitive topics, you know, compared to many of the other things on the Anxiety Freedom Cards.

If you have a question about it, any question at all, please drop it in the comments. And I will do my best to address that during this talk, because I can talk forever on the subject of pattern matching. It’s something that really fascinates me, but I don’t want to bore you. And I know that I can go off on tangents and things. So if I can use this opportunity to address whatever questions you’ve got about pattern matching, that would be great wouldn’t it? So please put your question about pattern matching in the comments, however simple, however complex, however relevant or irrelevant you might feel it might be. And I would love to know what you would like to know about the subject of pattern matching.

So what are we talking about? Well, it’s one of the cards. It’s one of our innate resources. It’s card number four. So why don’t I show you the, the card that we’re talking about? I’ll just pop it up on the screen. Pick up. This is the online tool. This is the resource cards and make them a bit bigger. There we have card number four, double click on that, and we have pattern matching. So that’s what we’re talking about today. Now this is a concept that’s quite hard to convey through a single image.

I’m just gonna click back to streamyard so I can put my face on the screen as well, so that you can see me talking at the same time. Sometimes I forget to remove the screen share. So let me know if, if you find that you’re listening to a picture rather than a person. So I was taught this way of thinking about things by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell some 16, nearly 17 years ago now, and the way they describe it, they say it’s part of our internal guidance system and they use this phrase and I think I have a banner to put up here so I can, so I should be able to pop this up. That pattern matching is our innate ability to “know” – that is to understand the world unconsciously through metaphorical pattern matching.

That’s a lot of words, isn’t it. To some people that makes perfect sense and other people need it unpacking. What does metaphorical mean? What does unconsciously mean? Pattern pattern-matching is our ability to know. And I think what’s interesting about this is that there, this language is drawing a distinction between what we might understand and what we might know. And I think understanding comes about because of rational thinking, you know, w when we join the dots and we connect something and we maybe prove logically that because A leads to B, and B leads to C, then we know that A leads to C, that kind of knowing that kind of understanding. But pattern matching is a deeper concept. It’s about that gut feeling when we just know something. So let me hide that banner. So how do you convey something as profound as how you know something in a single image? Well, you can’t, but this is an approach that has some bearing on the subject, just flicking around here to check whether there are any comments coming in while I’m talking. Because I do want to hear your comments and your questions about pattern matching so that I can keep this really relevant to where you’re at.

Let’s just look at the image. What’s going on? And those of you are in the in8 membership, there is a short video that you may have watched, or I invite you to watch on the subject of pattern matching. And I don’t want to repeat everything that’s said in that video. I want to talk about other aspects of it, but let’s just start with the image and say that there’s a, somebody’s doing a jigsaw on the jigsaw that they’re assembling. There is a picture of a horse and they’re doing associative thinking. So the horse reminds them of a rocking horse. They used to sit on when they were a kid and maybe that rocking horse sort of subconsciously reminds them of a rocking chair. And they remember the sensation of being on a rocking chair and the way the runners rock forwards and backwards, but even the act of sitting reminds them of chairs in general. So then you get chair, deck chair, office chair. Office chair has wheels. Bicycle has wheels. It’s associative thinking. It happens very rapidly and very unconsciously. And it’s going on all the time for all of us.

And you may have heard me use the analogy of when you first walk into a room that you’ve never been in before. And you sit down on a chair, we all have a pattern for chair. We don’t have to check out that it’s strong enough to support us. We just know because we’re familiar with the idea. And whenever we recognise anything, there is a match between what we’re perceiving through our senses externally, and what we already know. Notice that recognition, recognising something is re cognition. It’s not the first time you’ve been exposed to something if you recognise it. You have a pattern match to it because it’s familiar. So in a sense, we can only see what we’re already familiar with.

In this particular image, it’s just using the idea of associative thinking to try and the message across. But the subject is actually a lot more rich than just associative thinking. You may have heard me talk about, well, it’s also the way we get meaning when we have a pattern match. That’s what gives us that sense of knowing that sense of meaning.

I had an amazing coincidence happened, a synchronicity this week. You may have, well, I have told stories from Nasrudin, Nasrudin stories. This is a book of stories and “The subtleties of the inimitable mulla Nasrudin”. And it’s so it’s the mirror image. There’s no way I can get it right, but also “The exploits of the incomparable Mulla Nasrudin”. It’s two books in one. And just to make it fun, one is written upside down inside, and one’s written the right way up. It’s a good book, lots of short, funny stories. Some of them really funny, some of them just a bit more quizzical. And anyway, this book is a book that I was introduced to when I first started my training as a psychotherapist, and it’s a rich source of ideas. And, and some of them, I would say are very funny. We’d lent our copy to someone. And I can’t remember who we lent it to, and it never came back and it was gone and I kind of missed it and Bindi missed it. So we ordered another copy and we ordered it from Abe books, the secondhand book specialists. And it arrived. Was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday. And when we opened it this piece of paper fell out and I’m not going to open this piece of paper because it’s private, but it’s a letter. And it’s a letter from someone. It looks like it’s a letter that was sent with the book as a gift to a friend, maybe a colleague. I think it might’ve been when somebody left a place of employment and they maybe sent this book as a gift to someone they worked with. And I looked at the letter, sometimes you get pieces of paper in secondhand books.

That’s not so unusual, but I recognised the address. And it turns out it’s a letter from somebody that I know is interested in the writings of Idries Shah and in these stories. Obviously he had this book and he’d sent it to a friend and the friend either hadn’t seen the letter or didn’t take the letter out. But anyway, when we bought it as a second hand…. Yeah. And I thought, how amazing is that? And of course I have this sense of meaning, Oh, I’m meant to contact this guy. Or maybe this, I haven’t spoken to him for maybe 10 years. And so there’s a pattern match, familiarity. It’s like, I know that address. And then of course, there’s this sort of sense of spooky meaning. Now you can take this too far. But I just wanted to use that astonishing synchronicity to illustrate how pattern matching gives us this sense of knowing, the sense of meaning. And I will now give the guy a call and find out what he’s up to because I’ve been prompted by the universe in that peculiar way.

Anyway, pattern matching at its… when you introduce it to people who are working counselors and therapists, it’s most often to do with negative responses, negative reactions. So the typical situation where you feel like you’ve got your buttons pressed. If you’re thinking, if you’re going through the day, feeling happy and carefree, and then something happens and it makes you scared, or it makes you angry. You would quite often describe that in terms of polyvagal theory, as being prompted into fight and flight response, where you now have to take action to deal with whatever has happened. But it’s always a pattern match that triggers that response, your unconscious, neuroception, your sense of danger of safety. Your unconscious sensory measuring of your environment tells you that there’s something that needs attention in there. And you go into action state. So you go from the ventral vagal state into the sympathetic activity state, where you tend to get busy. You try to anticipate the future and you try to resolve the issue. You might get angry. You might run, or flee if it’s very dangerous or you might fight. If you feel threatened, if that seems appropriate.

And if the button press is very severe, you might actually withdraw. So if you’ve ever seen anyone go, I’m not talking to you anymore. I’ve I’ve had it. And just not, if they turn away, that’s going into the, the dorsal vagal state, that’s at the bottom of the ladder. That’s about as far as you can get from the natural, social, friendly, carefree day that you were having before.

And it’s pattern matching that triggers these, these changes of state on our polyvagal states. So we have at the top we are sociable, we’re free, we have that at-home feeling where it might be busy, we might be relaxed. We might be eating. We might be sociable. We might be telling a joke. We might be resting. And in the middle of a busy, busy, busy, and we’re trying to control everything. We’re trying to keep ourselves safe and to influence the world, influence everything that we can. And then at the bottom of the ladder, we’ve given up and we’ve withdrawn and we tend to go, that’s the state that eventually can lead to depression.

So in terms of psychotherapy, pattern matching are the triggers. So, you know, if you’ve had a bad experience with a spider in the past, and you see a spider, then you might have a pattern match to spider, anything like a spider, Oh, it gets you immediately into that emotional state of, ah, I’ve got to run away. I’ve got a comment here.

So I’m going to divert as I often do. I will read it to myself first. Oh no, I’ll read it out allright? So this is an interesting comment and I’m sure CG, I’m sure it’s from CG and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me sharing it. So good afternoon. It took me a long time to realise that certain smells, sounds and certain touches were negative patterns for me, initially, my response was a physical one, but eventually changed to cognitive realisation. Very interesting. Yes. Yes. Thank you for that CG. I appreciate it. Tell me before I talk about your comment, which I would like to comment on it. And if you have any question about it, let me, let me know what the question would be, but this is interesting. So CG explains how her, and incidentally, I know it’s CG because it has these two icons at the start with the guitar and a skateboard and the skateboard doesn’t come out, but I’ve seen this before. I have a pattern for this and I’m making an assumption. I haven’t checked it CG, but I’m pretty confident. Thank you CG. So initially the bit I think is interesting about CG’s comment here is that initially my response was a physical one, but eventually changed a cognitive realisation. Now that’s so interesting because what that tells us and CG has firsthand experience of this, is that once we can observe our pattern matches, once we can access our observing self.

So let’s just go back to the, the screen here and pick up the observing self. This one, this is another of our innate resources. Once we can access that in relation to a pattern, we have the opportunity to diffuse that pattern and to say, Hey, I’m just reacting automatically and unconsciously to a trigger, to a pattern, something that’s happened in my life.

And that’s interesting, isn’t it? And maybe I’m having a physical response to it, but maybe I don’t need to, now that I can see what’s going on. And I think that this is the key about pattern matching is that when we really can identify our own patterns, our own unconscious limiting beliefs, our own triggers, our own button presses, the things that people can say to us, that are guaranteed to get an automatic reaction, rather than a more considered response, then we’re evolving. We’re growing. We’re becoming more human. We’re becoming more responsible. And we’re generally having a better life as well because it’s the people it’s, it’s when it’s not people, it’s us. When we are responding automatically and unconsciously, we have no choice. You know, when somebody treats me with disrespect, I always shout at them. I have no choice. That’s just what I have to do. It’s the right thing to do. No, actually, sometimes it’s appropriate and sometimes it isn’t appropriate, but I cannot make that decision unless I’m aware that it’s one of my patterns. That’s why pattern matching is so incredibly important. And thank you so much CG for really having a brilliant example to illustrate my point. Because if it’s all from me, people might not believe me, but if it’s from other people too, then that helps.

So pattern matching is the thing that can take us into traumatic reliving. And this isn’t the place to discuss trauma. You might need specialist interventions. If you’re suffering from severe emotional reactions to pattern matches, I’m been working with someone recently who gets a severe anxiety attack if he tries to drive through a tunnel in the car. And it’s because of something that happened in the past, when he had a panic attack, it’s a clear pattern match. And there are specific techniques that we can use to resolve those kinds of negative patterns. The technique that I’m trained in is the rewind technique. It’s also known as the fast phobia cure. It’s derived from the NLP neuro-linguistic programming technique. That’s called the Visual Kinesthetic Disassociation technique. But rewind is a little bit easier to say. It’s the same idea. I think human givens refined the VKD technique and made it slightly more effective. That’s my belief anyway. So this isn’t a place that we can deal with trauma, but we can certainly deal with the everyday occurrences of having our buttons pressed by merely standing back, observing them and seeing them for what they are.

Pattern matching is how our brain works. That’s the message I want to get across. When we get a little bit deeper and I don’t know how, how much depth I should go in on a talk like this today. It’s a pack. It’s a subject that absolutely fascinates me because I would personally say that realising the significance of pattern matching in my own life was, was a massive step forward for me. It didn’t happen overnight. It happened with a number of experiences and a number of reflections over a period of maybe a couple of years, more than a couple, maybe five years. But when I started to realise how important pattern matching is in our everyday life, it’s not just something that’s related to trauma. It’s the way we think. It really started to open doors. And I started to feel like I’d evolved into almost like a new human being, because really pattern matching is, is at the heart of how we perceive things.

And again, I don’t want to go too deep and too esoteric on this, but if you think a word: snow, it’s snowing today here, not very heavily, but outside the window, I can see snow falling gently. Snow is a word, but it carries such experiences doesn’t it? It carries so many associations. What does snow mean to you? If I said to you, Hey, is it snowing where, where you are? You will immediately think of a whole range of things you might think cold. You might think Christmas, you might think, Oh, sledging, you might think skiing, if you’ve been lucky enough to do skiing in your life. You might think a whole range of experiences from your past that are associated with, in other words, map, pattern matched to the word, snow. It’s just one word, but it carries so much meaning for us. So I think the pattern-matching goes far deeper than just this kind of mechanism that’s helps us understand trauma.

It’s actually the way that we perceive anything that we label in the world. So, you know, when you label a tree as a tree, Hey, I can see a tree. In order to do that, you have to objectify it. You have to say that thing with the trunk and the branches and the leaves twigs, and the leaves that I can perceive with my visual capacity is separate from what is not tree.

And it sounds a bit weird, but bear with me. I’ve kind of put an imaginary line around it to call it a tree. Once I’ve done that, I can talk about the tree. Hey Bindi did you see the tree? We might give it a different, you know, it might say it’s an Ash tree or an Oak tree or an Elm tree, but essentially we give it a label. And yet there isn’t a single other tree in the entire universe that’s the same. But we give it the same label. Why? Because it’s convenient. It’s a pattern because of repetition. Patterns involve repetition and there are many trees. So when we see something like that over and over again, and we want to refer to it and we say, Oh, let’s give it a label. We’ll call it a tree. The reality is that whatever we think is the tree is usually not very close to what the tree actually is. Trees are really complicated. You know, the wood that I walk through on a regular basis has trees, which are interconnected through, under the ground by layers of fungus and mycelium and a level of complexity that is beyond my comprehension. It’s now known that trees communicate with each other chemically. They share resources, and sometimes they fight for resources. A lot of it happens under the ground. You know, what we see as a tree is only a tiny part of the story. And yet we think we understand it because we’ve given it the label tree. And, Oh, I know what a tree is. I’ve seen one of them before. Actually, have you seen this tree? This tree might be different. You know, we say Apple tree as if all Apple trees are the same, it’s pattern matching that’s going on. I won’t go on because I know it can get a little bit esoteric and a little bit removed from everyday life.

You know, what we want to know is how do we use this card? You know, we’ve got this card, pattern matching card. How do you use it? Well, lets, lets try and address that question. First of all, if somebody is struggling, you can just say, has this got any relevance to this situation? And they’d go, wow. Why would that have any relevance? And then you might say, well, I don’t know. It’s tried, this image is trying to convey a concept. Let’s just explore what that might be. And then by going through the picture slowly, step by step with someone asking them what they see, what does that mean to you? What’s going on here? What’s this woman doing? And they might say it was a jigsaw. Okay, well what’s it a jigsaw of? Well, I dunno, it looks like, it looks like a horse. It’s difficult to get the camera angle right here. Okay. So we’ve got a jigsaw of a horse. What’s that got to do with anything? Well, I don’t know. So you take your time, you don’t have to have the answers and you don’t have to feed the answers.

So you feed you, you go, you just explore the image and you say, well, what does this mean to you? And could this be relevant? And they might say, well, I suppose there’s a horse here and there’s a horse here. Oh gosh, you can’t even point in mirror, rocking. So why might that be? And then you explore the arrow’s and then gradually tease it out of someone that’s actually our brains do this associative thinking thing. And once you get into that sense or that understanding, you can share stories like have you ever seen a dog that’s been beaten by a stick, earlier in its life? You will know if you’re a dog lover or a dog owner, if you hold up a stick. I’m holding up my glasses case, it’s not a stick. But if you hold a stick to a dog that’s been beaten, it will cower. Doesn’t really have a lot of choice in the matter. It’s an automatic, unconscious emotional response. The dog shows fear. When you get those three things, it’s automatic, it’s emotional and it’s unconscious. You can bet your life there’s pattern matching going on. The dog has seen a raised stick before. It knows what it feels like to be beaten. It doesn’t like being beaten.

So now you’ve got this opportunity to explain how, when something happens in our life like CG’s example, she didn’t give specific things. She said that certain smells certain sounds, certain touches had physical responses to begin with. And then eventually she changed it to cognitive realisation. Then you can help someone because they can see what this is going on and they can see why they’re reacting so strongly. So they can see why they’re going maybe into black and white thinking all or nothing thinking because strong emotions get us into that state. And that’s the card number 26.

So you can use this card to stimulate a discussion about what pattern matching means and how it works and how it affects people. And I have seen time and time again that when people understand what’s going on for them, they become able, if they wish, to stand back from it, to observe it and possibly to change it. And that’s why it’s important. That’s why understanding pattern matching can really change your life and can really improve things.

So one of the reasons I’m so passionate about it. When we look at that original definition, the knowing it through metaphorical metaphorical pattern matching this actually opens the door to a wider understanding of pattern matching, which includes story and narrative. And that’s why in a way I started with this book, these are stories, they’re stories that have meaning that help us understand things. And the metaphorical bit that means it’s like something else. So it’s a sort of, it’s restating the same idea. But when we look at stories, we can start to understand that something like the story of Cinderella, for instance, which is known in various forms in about 400 different languages or all across the world, in all cultures, there is something like the story of Cinderella that is similar. And that’s because it’s a universal feeling of, you know, having a life where people are abusing us, the ugly sisters are treating us badly and then meeting our Prince and then everything turning out right? And there’s so many ways of interpreting that as a, as a story of optimism, that that’s one of the reasons it persists and stories really are patterns.

So when I say pattern match, I don’t just mean having your button pressed. I mean, what’s your story? Because whatever you think your story is, will shape your life. What’s the trunk of your tree in your narrative? You know, is your story “I’m a victim of circumstances. I’ve always had it hard”. Is your story “I had it hard to start with, but I forged through and I fought for a life and I’m a survivor” Is your story. “I have quietly been learning my entire life”. You know, when we start to look at pattern matching through the perspective of narrative, then it gets really interesting because as you will have heard me say before, if you’ve watched any of my videos, I do believe that now is all we have. Now is the present and the past and the future are stories. And they might be very convincing stories. I’m not knocking it, but because they’re not with us right now, the only way we access them is through telling what happened. And that means telling the story.

So pattern matching opens the door to why stories are so important. And as you know, I generally tend to tell a story with each of these live broadcasts that I do. So it’s probably time to get onto that story, I think. But I just check comments first and I can see another one here. Snow, snow, right? And say, this is, this is, I’m not sure if it’s the same person.

Let me just go to Facebook and have a quick look, refresh that page. Don’t allow myself to get annoyed by Facebook. There’s no need of pattern for technology that doesn’t do what I would like it to do. So it is CG. Yeah. So snow, thoughts on snow. Icy roads, difficult car journeys, car out of control, dog playing in snow, cold, birds feet marks. Yes. That’s a lovely one isn’t it? And snowballs. Yes. I notice that snowballs have come back into fashion. When I was at school, they were banned because people would lose an eye or have injuries through them. But yes, thank you for that CG. I appreciate that.

So storytime, I think. So let’s look at what we’ve got now. This is really, sometimes I look for a story and sometimes I find one that’s really appropriate to the subject that I’m talking about. And sometimes I don’t really, but this story just popped into my life this morning in a, in a meaningful way, let’s just say. And I think it is relevant to this topic because pattern matching was probably the single concept that helped me understand myself and my own behavior and my own irrational, you know, my quirks and all the rest of it. More than anything else. Once I started to really think about pattern matching it opened doors for me, it helped me get closer to the truth. I think that’s how I’d put it.

And so this story is calling is called “The Land of Truth”.

So are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

A certain man believed that the ordinary waking life, as people know it could not possibly be complete. He sought the real teacher of the age. He read many books and joined many debates and he heard the words and witnessed the deeds of one master after another. He carried out the commands and spiritual exercises, which seemed to him to be the most attractive. He became elated with some of his experiences. At other times he was confused and had no idea at all of what his stage was or where and when his search might end. This man was reviewing his behaviour one day when suddenly he found himself near the house of a certain sage of high repute. In the garden of that house, he encountered Khidr, the secret guide who shows the way to the truth.

Khidr took him to a place where he saw people in great distress and woe, and he asked who they were. We are those who did not follow real teachings, who were not true to our undertakings and who revered self appointed teachers, they said. Then the man was taken by Khidr to a place where everyone was attractive and full of joy. He asked who they were. We are those who did not follow the real signs of the way, they said. But if you’ve ignored the signs, how can you be happy? asked the traveler. Because we chose happiness instead of truth, said the people. Just as those who chose the self appointed, chose also misery. But is not happiness the ideal of man? the man asked. The goal of man is truth. Truth is more than happiness. The man who has truth can have whatever mood he wishes or none, they told him. We have pretended that truth is happiness. And that happiness is truth. And people have believed us. Therefore you too have until now imagined that happiness must be the same as truth. But happiness makes you its prisoner as does woe.

Then the man found himself back in the garden with Khidr beside him. I’ll grant you one desire, said Khidr. I wish to know why I have failed in my search and how I can succeed in it, said the man. Well you’ve all but wasted your life, said Khidr, because you’ve been a liar. Your lie has been in seeking personal gratification where you could have been seeking truth. And yet I came to the point where I found you, said the man. And that is something that happens to hardly anyone at all. And you met me said Khidr, because you had sufficient sincerity to desire truth for its own sake, just for an instant. And it was that sincerity in that single instant that made me answer your call.

Now the man felt an overwhelming desire to find truth, even if he lost himself. Khidr however, was starting to walk away and the man began to run after him. You may not follow me said Khidr because I am returning to the ordinary world. The world of lies. For that is where I have to be if I’m to do my work. And when the man looked around him again, he realised that he was no longer in the garden of the sage, but standing in the land of truth.

So, that’s my story for today. I hope you enjoyed it. I sorry about the light, the sunshine in here. Let me know what you think and let me know what you think about pattern matching. Let me know if pattern matching opens any doors towards truth for you and the way that it did for me. It’s such an interesting idea. So simple, essentially, and yet, so rich when you really start to and explore it. I won’t say any more on it now because it’s gone half past two. I would just thank you for taking part for joining me here. If you do have a question and that you haven’t had time to type it in now and you put it in the comments below, even if you’re watching this on replay, I will address it. I absolutely promise because I love to get conversations going about pattern matching, or about any of these aspects, any of these ways of helping people to live a life relatively free from stress and anxiety. That’s what we’re all about here.

And so we use these tools to try and shed light on different aspects of human behavior, different ways of thinking, different ways of understanding the world. And if that’s interesting to you, then join me again next Tuesday for another Tuesday Two o’clock Topic where we’ll be talking about pattern matching again, and I’ll be introducing the worksheet and helping you work through that next time, because we do two weeks on each topic. So last two weeks was attention. This is the first week of pattern matching. Next Tuesday we’ll do pattern matching again. So you have time to watch the video to reflect on it, to ask any questions. And I would love for you to join me again in a week’s time.

So thank you for watching. Thank you, CG for your clapping and the book and your thanks and other people who are watching. I can see there’s more than CG, but I can’t see who. Thank you for joining me and I’ll see you next Tuesday. Until then, whatever you’re doing, don’t forget to keep breathing.

Please let me know what you think by commenting below!
Thanks, Alec