Letter 20: When Patterns Collide - The Invisible Filters in Every Conversation

“We are what we repeatedly do.”

—Aristotle

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Dear Future Human,

We live in patterns. We are formed inside patterns of interaction, expectation, and response; our brain is literally shaped to anticipate and reflect only the patterns already familiar to us. In this sense, the brain becomes a kind of false mirror, a holographic lens, projecting our own predictions onto what we perceive, and limiting what we can perceive.^¹

This is the universal human condition. We all carry forward patterns from our earliest relationships into how we communicate as adults. The tone of voice we were met with, the ways we were heard or misunderstood as children, become our neurological template for connection, wiring our brains to anticipate and respond to familiar patterns of interaction. Most of our communication happens on autopilot because these neural pathways, carved deep during our most vulnerable years, now operate unconsciously. We think we are responding to what is happening, but in reality, we are often reacting to the echoes—the ghosts of past conversations that our nervous system still remembers.²

So the real question becomes: What are we failing to see? And more importantly—what does it cost us?

The danger of patterns is that patterns perpetuate. They proliferate. They spread. From a pattern of learned perception comes the pattern of adaptive behavior; from a pattern of learned behavior come cycles of interpersonal interaction, a relational pattern that can disrupt and decay our most intimate connections. As our patterns spread, so do their costs: from the individual to the relational to the familial to the cultural and global.

Communication becomes this fascinating puzzle where we are all trying to connect across the gaps created by our different early experiences of what it means to be heard, valued, or safe in a relationship. We are essentially trying to build bridges between the private internal worlds that were shaped within us before we had words, often by people who were themselves operating from their own unexamined patterns.

To see how this lives in the everyday, consider Lucia and Mateo.

Lucia is in her mid-forties and has been married to Mateo for fifteen years. Lucia was raised by a strictly domineering father and a mother who tried unsuccessfully to appease him.

As a child, Lucia didn’t understand why her father was so frequently angry or how to stop him. It wasn’t uncommon for him to explode over the smallest perceived infraction: a toy left in the living room, a smudge of chocolate on the couch. In order to avoid the headwinds of her father’s punishments, which could be harsh and uncompromising, Lucia learned to adapt by scanning constantly for even the most minor signs of disapproval or disappointment.

To protect herself, Lucia numbed the pain in her body, distancing herself from the feelings that overwhelmed her. As an adaptive defense, she tried to preempt her father’s frequent criticism by holding herself to an exacting standard (becoming both perfectionistic and extremely self-critical). Her Fraudulent Adult came to be detached and critical, judging the world through the same uncompromising and unnuanced lens through which she had learned to judge herself. Now, she takes pride in being a successful, attractive, Type A personality who always seems to have it all together.

But this façade of extreme competence is founded on fear. Lucia’s neural patterning, since childhood, has associated imperfection with danger—this association is not only psychological but neurological, written into the very structure of her brain. As a young girl, she couldn’t help but take her father’s rejections personally; she hadn’t yet developed the cognitive complexity to attribute his frequent punishing silences or criticisms to his own insecurities and need to control.³

As a result, in spite of her success, Lucia is deeply sensitive to criticism. She perceives it as a direct threat to her very well-being. In a way, it is. Criticism attacks the self-image Lucia has cultivated as psychic defense against her Flailing Child (the chaotic and terrified part of herself) still living somewhere inside her. Thus, when criticized, Lucia will counter-attack with fury, or detach into a punishing silence strikingly similar to her father’s cold rages.

Her husband, Mateo, on the other hand, grew up in a family structured around the frequent hospitalizations of his older brother, who ultimately died when Mateo was four. Mateo, a naturally good-natured child, absorbed early on that he should not be the source of additional distress to his parents, particularly his mother, who served as his brother’s primary caretaker and was nearly undone by grief. In fact, after Mateo became an only child, Mateo’s mother developed a paralyzing fear of losing her young son, too, and clung tightly to him for reassurance and support.

Mateo loved his mother but grew up feeling trapped and smothered, unable to express his independent wishes without provoking some hysterical display on her part. Deep inside, Mateo remains paralyzed with fear, trapped in the untenable position of needing to perpetually comfort and take care of his own comforter.

Like Lucia, Mateo dissociated from that confused and terrorized portion of himself. He adapted by becoming the family entertainer, the jokester, outwardly devoted to his mom and serving her every need. Mateo sees himself as easy-going and deeply loving. What he doesn’t recognize is that he retains a deep terror of—and even resentment toward—his mother, and by extension, toward women in intimate relationships. Mateo’s childhood experiences wired him to equate intimacy with smothering, leaving him both longing for closeness and in terror of what it brings.

Lucia and Mateo operate on different “frequencies”: Lucia is tuned to detect criticism; Mateo to detect domination. Our adult selves are constructed in response to our deepest experiences of helplessness and terror as children. Both are patterned to filter reality through their limited childhood understanding. These two examples illustrate how we all carry these invisible templates from our most vulnerable years, each of us scanning for the particular dangers that once threatened our developing sense of safety and belonging.

We unconsciously scan for the same danger cues that once signaled threat in childhood.⁴ Once perceived, these cues trigger the same overwhelming childhood fear. By now, however, Mateo and Lucia’s fears are buffered from conscious awareness by the liminal space of numbness and layers of reactive defenses designed to keep that primal terror out of reach.

Lucia’s defenses are centered around control and perfectionism. Her Fraudulent Adult seems to have it all together: six-figure job, perfect hair, a home that must be just-so. From the outside, she appears confident. But her outward strength is a reaction to juvenile terror. Lucia must be perfect, never do anything wrong, or she will be left floundering like the vulnerable child in the face of her father’s disproportionate anger.

To be Lucia, is to be exhausted.

Mateo’s defenses are built around affability and appeasement. As with Lucia, on the surface, he appears to be easygoing—charming, agreeable, emotionally attuned. But beneath that polished exterior is a man in hiding. Mateo cannot take a stand, draw firm boundaries, or provoke anyone’s displeasure. He subtly aligns his mood, opinions, and behavior with those around him—especially his wife—not out of genuine agreement, but out of fear. Fear of disapproval. Fear of abandonment. Fear that standing up for himself would leave him orphaned and unloved. He will not say “no.” He cannot disappoint. To do so would risk the primal terror of being left orphaned, all alone in the world, like a child without a mother.

To be Mateo, is to be suppressed.

Both are servants to their own wiring, conditioned reactions evolved in response to childhood experiences. Neither can safely be in touch with their true emotions. Lucia doesn’t know she is near despair compulsively cycling from task to task, performance to performance. Mateo, too, performs constantly without realizing it—and without recognizing the mounting repressed rage and desperate desire to be free.

Deep down, all of us want liberation from the patterns that control us. Until we can identify them, the impulse toward freedom—toward something radically new—will be distorted and converted into recreating the pattern in relationships.

Let’s take a look at what happens when Mateo and Lucia engage around a seemingly simple issue: how the dishwasher has been loaded. The following dialogue is based on my work with them. In this particular exchange, both Mateo and Lucia are feeling slightly on edge—though for very different reasons. Mateo has just finished yet another two-hour phone call with his mother, who, as usual, has been using him as a sounding board to vent about her unhappy marriage. Meanwhile, Lucia is still reeling from a less-than-stellar performance review at work, which has left her feeling underappreciated, defensive, and a little persecuted by her boss.

Lucia walks through the door, keys jangling as she sets them on the counter. Her jaw is tight from the stress of the day. She walks to the kitchen, glances at the sink, then over at Mateo, who’s standing at the open dishwasher, brow furrowed, shoulders hunched.

Mateo:
“Are these dishes clean, or dirty?”
(His tone is neutral, but there’s tension in his voice, his throat a little tight from the long phone call with his mother.)

Lucia hears: Criticism — “You forgot again, didn’t you?”
(Her stomach clenches. A hot flush of defensiveness rises in her chest.)

Lucia (defensive):
“How should I know? I’ve been working all day.”
(She crosses her arms tightly. Her voice sharpens before she even knows why.)

Mateo hears: Domination — “Unlike you, I have a real job.”
(A familiar wave of heat blooms under his skin. His neck stiffens. He forces a sarcastic smile.)

Mateo (defensive):
“Too bad they don’t teach you how to load dishwashers in business school.”
(He shifts his weight and avoids her eyes, his chest tight with a familiar mix of shame and resentment.)

Lucia hears: Criticism — “No matter your job, you’ll never be enough.”
(Her throat closes. She feels the sting behind her eyes and doubles down.)

Lucia (defensive):
“If you’re so concerned, did it occur to you to run them again?”
(Her tone drips with contempt. She turns away, lips pressed into a thin line.)

Mateo hears: Domination — “You’re incompetent. I don’t respect you.”
(His jaw clenches. A flash of helpless rage stabs through his gut.)

Mateo (defensive):
“Wow. Brilliant idea. I guess that really makes your college debt worth it.”

By now, Lucia’s hands are clenched into fists. Mateo’s arms are folded tight across his chest. Their conversation spirals into a familiar argument about finances and household contributions.

Now, let’s strip away the FILTERS:

No childhood wounds, no unconscious scanning for danger cues. Just two adults.

Mateo:
“Are these dishes clean, or dirty?”
(He’s curious, not triggered.)

Lucia hears: “Are these dishes clean, or dirty?”
(No subtext. Just a question.)

Lucia:
“Hmmm. I can’t remember. Maybe run them again?”

Mateo:
“Okay.”

Their bodies remain relaxed. Their breath stays steady. The moment passes.

This may strike you as a mundane example. But in fact, that’s the point. Without intervention, our distorted patterns still trigger behaviors that erode relationships and compromise connection.⁵ Ironically, this brings us into contact with the central fear we try to avoid: that we are all alone.

This is the Noise: the global human pattern that starts with “I am all alone,” looping each of us through fear, pain, and defense, back to fear. Each person’s Noise has a slightly different tone, yet Noise itself is not individual; it is evolutionary. It is human. The Noise might whisper “you’re not enough” or “they’ll leave you” or “you must be perfect”—different words, same fundamental terror. It is where we are in our shared history, as we all try to connect across the gaps created by our differing early experiences of safety, love, and belonging.

Yet there is a profound hope in this recognition. Awareness of our patterns is the first doorway to presence. Understanding that we all operate from these inherited templates—that this is the shared human condition rather than an individual failing allows us to begin to soften. Compassion becomes possible. And from compassion, new neural pathways can grow.

Before we can explore what lies beyond this door, we need to look more deeply at how these patterns shape our lives, not just personally, but collectively. These patterns are not isolated. They ripple outward like fractals, repeating across every scale of human experience, from our private inner dialogues to global systems of behavior. To truly understand what transformation requires, we must first illuminate how these unconscious adaptations have become the blueprint for how we relate, organize, create, and respond as a species.

Love,

Ronit

1. Anil Ananthaswamy, “To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions,” Quanta Magazine, November 2021.

2. Dylan G. Gee & Emily M. Cohodes, “Caregiving Influences on Development: A Sensitive Period for Biological Embedding of Predictability and Safety Cues,” National Library of Medicine, August 2021.

3. Kirsten Weir, “The Pain of Social Rejection.” American Psychological Association, April 2012.

4. N.Tottenham & L.J. Gabard-Durnam, “The Developing Amygdala: A Student of the World,” Science Direct, October 2018.

5. Randi Gunther, “How Triggered Immaturity Destroys Intimacy,” Psychology Today, December 2024.

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