What Are You Repeating That You Swore You Wouldn't?

Almost every parent I sit with has said some version of this to me at some point: "I said the exact thing my mom used to say, and I hate that I said it."

It's usually a small thing. A tone. A phrase. A way of going quiet instead of talking something through. And it comes out of nowhere, mid-sentence, mid-moment, and lands with this strange double feeling: it worked, in the sense that the kid stopped whatever they were doing, and it also felt like betraying something you promised yourself a long time ago.

Here's what's interesting to me about that moment. It's not actually about the phrase.

The phrase is just the visible part, the thing you can point to and say "there it is, I did the thing." What's underneath it is usually a pattern you learned so early and so thoroughly that it doesn't feel like a choice at all. It feels like reflex. Like the only tool that was in the box when you needed one fast.

And I think that's exactly why the moment stings the way it does. It's not really guilt about the phrase. It's the realization that a pattern you thought you'd already dealt with is still fully operational, waiting for the right kind of tired or overwhelmed to bring it back out.

I don't think the answer is to catch every one of these moments before they happen, that's an impossible standard, and honestly, chasing it usually makes people more reactive, not less. What I've found more useful is something that happens after, a specific way of going back to the moment that isn't about self-blame or resolving to try harder next time.

It's a short process, a handful of questions asked in a particular order, and it does something most people don't expect the first time they go through it with someone else in the room.

I'm going to leave it there for this post. Not because it's a secret worth guarding for its own sake, but because, like most of what actually helps, it works differently when someone is asking you the questions than when you're reading them off a page and answering yourself in your head.

If you've caught yourself repeating something you swore you wouldn't, you're not failing at this. You're just running into a pattern that was installed a long time before you had any say in it. And patterns that old don't usually loosen their grip because you decided to try harder. They loosen because someone helped you actually look at them.

That's the kind of looking a first session is for.

Curious? [Book a free intro call →]