You said you wouldn’t do it again. Then someone asks for a favour, you hear yourself saying yes, and there goes the afternoon you’d promised yourself. Later, you’re exhausted and annoyed. You knew you didn’t have the time. So why did you agree? Repeating patterns can be frustrating precisely because we can often see them. We know we overgive, hold back, or keep trying to prove ourselves. Yet in the moment, the familiar response comes out before we’ve really considered another option. What sits underneath the yes? Sometimes a yes carries more than a willingness to help. There might be an old belief underneath it: I’m valued when I’m useful. If I disappoint someone, they might pull away. My needs can wait. If that sounds familiar, you may have learned it through experiences where being helpful, easygoing or undemanding brought approval or kept things calmer. Over time, that way of responding can become so familiar that it feels like who you are. You might call yourself “the reliable one” without noticing how little room that identity leaves for your own needs. The operating system you rarely notice I find it useful to think of these beliefs as part of an internal operating system. They can influence what we notice, what we expect from people and the meaning we give to what happens. Someone seems disappointed. You read it as evidence that you’ve let them down. You do more to make it right. For a while, the discomfort settles, but your own needs are still waiting. That’s one way a loop can keep running. Understanding it matters, but practising a different response can still feel uncomfortable. You may be going against a rule you’ve lived by for years. Other people’s behaviour and the circumstances you’re in matter too. Looking at your part in a pattern doesn’t make their choices your responsibility. A place to begin Next time you notice yourself agreeing when you want to pause, get curious about what saying no would mean to you. Would it make you selfish? Difficult? Less lovable? If I didn’t have to earn my worth here, what would I choose? You don’t have to force an answer. You might simply give yourself time before responding. That small pause can be a beginning of authorship: making room to choose how you want to think, feel and act, even while the old response is familiar. In Breaking the Loops: I’m Not Enough, I explore the beliefs beneath these patterns and the deeper work of changing how we live from them. If you recognise yourself here, the book offers a place to keep exploring.
