Today’s short article is about the patterns that people are ‘’dragging’’ with themselves throughout their lives no matter where they go.
When you arrive to another country you have to deal with a new situation: a new environment, a different culture, new people, co-workers, etc. You are faced with a ‘’new’’ life. All these things bring a specific dynamic to your life, which might be felt as something nice, welcoming and interesting. However, some of these refreshing novelties sooner or later start to lose their colourfulness and appeal because there is something ‘’old’’ that is preventing you from incorporating them into your life and psyche. Your new circumstances are not strong enough to prevent your “old” patterns from influencing your ‘’new’’ life. Yet, you do not really know what the reason for that is.
We form our patterns (positive and negative) in our early relationships, childhood and later life experiences of different kinds and different significance. These patterns form unconscious ‘’templates’’ in our psyche, which have an enduring effect on the way we behave and function in everyday life. And exactly these patterns might also prevent us from fully retaining the colourfulness of the novelties that came with our ‘’new’’ expat life. Tracing these patterns back to their origins, examining them from different perspectives to see how they have developed and changed helps us to cope better with the realities that we are facing here and now.