As I was playing my Arknights mini game puzzle, I suddenly had a thought around pattern recognition which had me thinking about my past experiences and why it’s so necessary for me to have had many experiences in order to develop pattern recognition.
So back when I was raiding, oddly enough, I kind of struggled when my raid groups were good and relatively smooth. Meaning, everyone was fairly competent and we’d just fly through the fights so quickly that I couldn’t get enough practice for pattern recognition to develop properly. I’d need to help others out, play with others, in order to gain that pattern recognition. Omg… I remember one time I was long done with the raid tier and a friend had invited me to help out. I could NOT remember any of the mechanics at all and was performing so poorly. It was so embarrassing. That had me think about what I actually knew about the fights or if I was just lucky to have been in good groups that flew through everything. I realized that it was actually in my poorly performing raid groups where I was able to build that pattern recognition the strongest because we’d keep failing at the same things and after having seen those mechanics enough times, it’d become super obvious to me how to resolve the mechanics.
Clearly, when we’ve done something enough times that’s when patterns start to emerge. Sometimes just reading and learning about something is not enough. Sure, I can learn about patterns from strategy guides and how to spot them. But it’s when I’m in the playing field, actively engaging with situations that produce those pain points, where I start creating patterns that I can recognize and internalize.
This idea then led me to think about all of those friendships and relationships I had that ended poorly over the years and question why did they happen? Was I just unlucky? Did I constantly encounter people who knew exactly how to take advantage of me? What’s the common denominator? What was I doing and who was I being in those relationships that attracted them to me over and over again? This thinking finally led me to find the pattern underneath them all and eventually towards healing my own codependency. If I didn’t go through all of those experiences to have enough data points and information for me to recognize what the patterns were, and to find the time to analyze them, then I would never have caught my own codependency. Sure I could’ve talked to my friends or just gone to therapy and someone else could’ve spotted it. But I guess I’m someone who usually jumps into things and learn through first hand experience rather than just being told. I need that data to truly understand and integrate from.
Regarding the patterns that I noticed about these failed relationships, it was how I constantly shoved aside my own needs, went along with other people’s plans even if I weren’t that interested, felt like I was being strung along as well, gave others benefit of the doubt even when red flags were firing off, basically had a complete lack of boundaries, constantly making myself small so that others can feel good and get what they want, giving up the things that I wanted for others because they wanted it, and just never really asking myself what it is that I wanted. After working through my codependency and realizing that I was constantly people pleasing in order to feel safe and needed, I had to shift all of that.
I got clear on what my values were, which then helped me gauge who in my life actually fit those values. I now require balance in the relationship. I wanted a fair give and take where it wasn’t constantly me giving up what it is that I wanted for others’ plans. I finally had some boundaries. I finally started asking myself what it is that I want and also believing that I deserved those good things. I think that was the hardest part — thinking that I deserve to be taken care of as well, to be given as much as I gave. Before that, it was always, “well they had it worse so I should give up what I have for them.” Now that type of thinking has been reframed to, “Yeah they had it rough, which sucks.” End of story. I don’t have to self sacrifice so that others can “feel better” by getting what they want at my expense.
What this ended up doing was freeing up a ton of time and capital for me to invest back into myself and my own things. Now that I’m no longer constantly self sacrificing for others, I can actually learn and do the things that I’ve been wanting to do. I have more capital to invest back into the things that matter to me. I’m finally doing the things that I’ve wanted to do but felt were not important because tending to others is more important.
Looping back a bit — sometimes I reflect back on those past relationships that felt like failures. I guess with this thought in mind about pattern recognition, then those “failures” were really just data points. Almost like I *had* to go through them to gather enough data and volume for my own internal analysis. With too little data, I might be too quick to jump to conclusions. But with enough of a dataset, then I can allow those patterns to emerge and have more confidence in my own analysis. On good days, I can reflect back neutrally. On bad days, where self care isn’t on point, I do fret a bit about the past a bit. But hopefully this new reframe can help me stay more afloat during the bad days. So far so good though… the good days definitely out number the bad ones, which I feel incredibly grateful for.
Anyway, interesting chain of thoughts!