Why Old Protective Patterns Still Run Your Life (and What to Do About It)
Using present-moment truth and awareness to free you from outdated protective patterns
By Nathan Gurry - Counsellor (Present Moment Truth and Awareness Approach)
People often begin counselling seeking relief, from anxiety, stress, loss, or a pattern that feels impossible to break. In my experience, real change rarely comes from trying to manage, avoid, or suppress symptoms. It comes from understanding their causes and working with those causes rather than against them.
Sometimes distress reflects current, real-time conditions, an unsafe workplace, ongoing conflict, chronic stress, or unmet needs in the present. When the threat is current, counselling first focuses on safety and stabilisation. But many of the most persistent symptoms don’t originate in the present. They arise from the past.
A Present-Moment Truth and Awareness Approach
My counselling approach works with present-moment truth and awareness. Together, we notice what your protective system is doing, why it’s doing it, and how those patterns were once intelligent responses that helped you survive.
The aim isn’t to get rid of symptoms.
The aim is to help your system realise that the old threat is no longer here, that it’s finally safe to update.
Awareness is the First Step
The first step is simply recognising what’s happening.
We begin by noticing emotional loops, automatic thoughts, shutdowns, spikes of anxiety, people-pleasing, anger, numbness , the full range of protective reactions that can activate without warning.
Naming a pattern already changes something.
What was invisible becomes visible.
The system begins to soften.
You shift from being inside the experience to seeing the experience.
You realise:
the symptom is not you
it is not your fault
you didn’t choose it
and you are not to blame for its existence
Your responsibility is not for its arising but for how you respond to it, and over time that capacity strengthens.
For many people this moment brings relief, sometimes tears, sometimes sudden clarity. For the first time, the context behind their suffering becomes clear. It’s the beginning of freedom from the past.
Every Pattern Was Once a Solution
The protective system is always trying to keep you safe. It adapts its strategies to whatever environment you grew up in. If a pattern kept you physically or emotionally safe, it holds onto it tightly.
The problem is not the pattern.
The problem is that the context has changed, but the pattern hasn’t.
This is not failure.
It is cause and effect.
When Insight Isn’t Enough
Some people arrive already aware of their patterns. They know why they’re triggered. They understand it’s linked to childhood or past trauma. They intellectually know there’s no real threat now.
“But why doesn’t it change?”
Because the system knows the truth cognitively, not experientially.
These are two different kinds of knowing.
The protective system can’t be convinced into safety.
It must feel safe.
Counselling becomes the place where that experiential shift can occur, gently, repeatedly, at a pace the system can tolerate.
Over time the system catches up to the present and begins to update its programs.
A Case Example: Kate
Consider a fictitious client, Kate.
She arrives exhausted and frustrated.
“I’m always the one supporting everyone, but I’m the one left behind. I do everything right, but it’s not enough. I feel resentful and ashamed.”
At first she believes she’s the problem:
“Maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe I’m not enough.”
Together we notice a powerful pattern: people-pleasing as a protective strategy.
Kate begins to see the automatic guilt, anxiety, and self-doubt not as flaws but as safety signals , her system trying to prevent rejection or conflict.
Exploring her history reveals why.
She grew up with a single mother under significant pressure. Approval meant safety. Disapproval meant threat. Her nervous system learned:
“To be safe, I must keep others happy.”
and
“Love is conditional, it must be earned.”
This became the blueprint for all her adult relationships.
Her system doesn’t realise that her world is different now. It keeps firing the old program because it hasn’t yet sensed, experientially, that the threat is gone.
Through slow, gentle work, we help the system test new responses. We track sensations, thoughts, impulses, emotions, and gradually her system starts to update.
Eventually Kate realises, not intellectually but viscerally:
Love that is real does not need to be earned.
For the first time she feels a quiet, steady sense of self-worth , not derived from others, but arising naturally from within.
She discovers a new freedom: the freedom to live a life chosen, not inherited.
The Heart of the Work
Counselling is not about fixing flaws or fighting symptoms.
It is about helping your system:
experience safety
update its protective patterns
return to present-moment truth
and live from reality, not outdated programming
This is how you move toward a future that finally matches the truth of who you are.
Counselling isn’t about fixing one part of you — it’s about working with the whole of your present-moment experience. When your system feels safe enough to recognise what’s actually happening now, rather than reacting from outdated protective patterns, real change becomes possible.
If you feel ready to explore this kind of work — steady, grounded, awareness-based — I offer sessions both in-person (Brisbane North) and online.
You can book a session or reach out directly if you’re unsure what you need:
healthymindforlife@outlook.com
If you’d like to explore more, you might also enjoy:
What Is Holistic Counselling? — how whole-person, awareness-based work creates lasting change
https://www.healthymindforlife.com.au/insights-reflections-1/what-is-holistic-counselling-zs48r
Why Can’t I Meditate? — understanding distraction and protective patterns in meditation