E116 - How To Stop Cycling In Unhealthy Relationship Patterns & Feel Peace in 2026

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[00:00:00] In this episode, you are going to understand how you can finally stop cycling in unhealthy relationship patterns so that you can feel peace in 2026.

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Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.

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Hello and welcome back to the podcast. If you have looked at your relationship history and you're like, oh my God, what is happening? Even after years of therapy and self-reflection and personal growth, you are not alone. I know it is so frustrating, but so many people assume that once they understand those patterns, that those patterns are gonna automatically change.

But insight alone doesn't always break the cycle.

Often, what is really driving these unhealthy [00:01:00] relationship dynamics is not a conscious choice. It is something that your body and your nervous system is holding onto from a long time ago about what feels safe or familiar or necessary in order to stay connected.

And when we try to show up differently in our adult life by setting boundaries or speaking our needs, or choosing healthier partners,

our body can actually react with anxiety and panic and shut down, pulling us back into those patterns that we are trying to leave. So I wanna dive into this today and I'm hopeful from this episode that you will better understand why unhealthy relationship patterns repeat, even if you're self-aware.

How your early emotional experiences actually shape what feels familiar in relationships and what's missing when you can understand your patterns, but you're still feeling stuck.

That is what we're gonna cover today. And remember to stick around to the end of the episode where I will pull an Oracle card that will give you a message that you can use to stay conscious in your [00:02:00] healing this week.

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Okay, so here's what I've been thinking about recently because so many of my clients are having these ahas around looking at their, their patterns, how they showed up in their family system when they were young, and, and being able to see the parallel to how they're continuing to show up in their adult relationships.

Now, and you've probably heard this right, that we have to deal with our childhood if we wanna have a healthy adulthood, and that's so true. But I want to like give you an example that you can hold onto. I don't know. Sometimes we read stuff and it's like, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. But I hope that this example will help you, like understand it in your, in your self, in your bones, in a different way.

So let me give you the example for me, people pleasing has been, uh, something that I have been working on for my whole life. I'm, I'm in recovery from people pleasing. And so how this originated for me. Was that I lived in a house where I had a [00:03:00] loved one who had really big emotions.

They had a really big personality. They were really loud. They, they were pushing limits. They were exploring, they were getting into things and they took up a lot of space. So that was the, that was the stimulus. The response from that stimulus was that I, as the person in the house, saw overwhelm in my parents.

I saw a lot of friction a lot of the time between them and my other loved one. And a lot of discomfort with these big emotions, with this loudness, with this energy, with this taking up of space.

Because I saw that over and over again. The belief that instilled in me was that taking up space is bad. It causes people overwhelm or dysregulation. So I am going to take up less space. I am going to be small, small, small, quiet in the background, trying to not add to what's happening in the house, us.

I actually created that [00:04:00] understanding that the way that I can help my parents is by being small, by being quiet, by being amenable, by being the one who follows the rules, by being the most perfect version of myself that I could be. So that was the role that I adopted in attempt to make the environment less chaotic, less overwhelming, and attempt to help my parents. So for me, this was really like a, we call it a maladaptive behavior because now it's not serving me.

But then it was an adaptive behavior because I was trying to mitigate the tension in the environment to maintain that closeness with my parents. As a kid, if you sense that your primary caregiver is overwhelmed or stressed it can give you a threat of this, oh no, mom and dad aren't okay, which could mean that maybe I'm not gonna be okay, maybe they're not gonna be able to tend to me.

Now, this was not reality. I was being taken care of, but that part of [00:05:00] me was very afraid that that overwhelm was actually a threat to me. So I took on the role, I took on the adaptive behavior at that time in my life to try to help bring down the tension in the house by being small as possible.

Okay, so that was the stimulus, the response, and the belief.

The more that this stimulus and this response happened, the deeper rooted this belief became, and it scientifically, what is happening in the brain is neurons that fire together, wire together. They create a specific pathway, and the more that that pathway is used, the more myelinated that pathway becomes.

Which is a fancy way of saying it's a very engraved belief, right? Your brain knows that when I sense this in the environment that equals this. For me it was taking up space, causes distress and relationships. I need to be small.

That was the equation in my brain that wasn't true, like with a capital T. True. That was just true for me based on the experience that I had. [00:06:00] Beliefs aren't what are true. They are what is true for us because of an emotionally charged experience we had over and over again as a child. It wired as my truth. So how did that affect me growing up? Well, spoiler alert, it led me into several narcissistic relationships, one in which was so massive and life changing for me that it led me into this work.

But in more detailed terms, what happened as I was growing up was that I was attracted to men who took up a lot of space.

That was familiar to me because of this loved one in my life, right? I know how to play the role of the person who doesn't take up space. I supported them. I was in the backseat like socially, but I was always sort of supporting financially, putting more emotional energy into the relationship, really like supporting from afar.

I had a really hard time speaking my needs, and the thought of having to speak my needs would cause panic, like literal panic in my body [00:07:00] because A, I didn't understand what needs were for a long time, and once I did understand what they were, I was so afraid to take up the space because I was so afraid of disrupting the system and causing more panic that I shut down.

It took me days of rehearsing what I wanted to say in order to be able to say it.

I had really bad anxiety and I was always replaying conversations and interactions where I did take up space. Where I did get the courage to say something I left and I would just ruminate over what I said and how I said it, and if I upset somebody.

Fearing that they would not want to interact with me anymore or not wanna be my friend, or it would cause some sort of rift in the relationship.

And lastly, well, maybe not fully lastly, but lastly in this list of ways that this affected me is that I really, I defaulted to doing what other people wanted. It was really familiar to me, again, to sort of support and chameleon into the person in order to just be there with them and not have to [00:08:00] take up the space and the relationship.

What happens though when you do that for years of your life is that you start feeling resentment and maybe it's not an outward resentment, but it's this internal little like frustration and it really can like balloon into this big resentment of feeling like you do so much for other people and nobody sees you, nobody. Nobody takes care of you in the same way. So I was living with the anxiety, the panic, the, the rumination, the frustration, the internal resentment that people weren't loving me the same way, weren't giving me the same amount of love that I was giving them,

but because this was my belief system. Even though it was causing me frustration outwardly in my relationships, it felt familiar. It was the dance that I knew how to dance.

And being in that dance, there was no way, no way that I could be in a healthy relationship with that belief system. Because healthy [00:09:00] relationships require you to take up space. They require you to believe that your needs are as equal to whoever you're in the relationship with, and they require that you are able to communicate those needs.

So I had to do a lot of work and continue to do work around that origin of belief of taking up space causes distress, which means I will just shrink in relationships. Okay.

What I do in my program becoming is help women move through a similar process in understanding the belief and shifting it and learning the skills like I still use to be able to tend to that part of me that comes up when something triggers from the past. I believe that healing is not a matter of.

Getting rid of that, those parts of you that have these beliefs, it's a matter of recognizing when they're present, being able to tend to that in a constructive way

so that you can lead your life from that self-energy part and not from the wounded part that is holding these really, really emotionally charged beliefs [00:10:00] because oftentimes those beliefs feel like life or death. You can feel like you're living in this really like intensely chaotic lifestyle when we're letting a part of us that has that belief run the show. That's why I'm teaching clients and that's what I still practice daily. I have a one year-old little girl, and. Daily. I am being confronted with triggers and with mirrors and with opportunities to reflect of like, wow, I am not feeling like my adult self right now.

Something is being touched on. Something is being triggered. How do I sit with that part of me? How do I make it safe to know that it's okay to do, in this case, take up space, speak my needs, ask for help, and be an equal person in a relationship. And coming into that place so that I can actually choose a different path.

The goal is to create the new belief. It is to start to shift away from the very myelinated neural pathway into a new pathway. And this takes a lot of energy, [00:11:00] a lot of effort. If you think about that, that pathway as being like a sledding hill, you've gone down the sledding hill umpteen times and it's very grooved.

You can go down, you can walk back up because the path walking back up is very packed down. It doesn't take a lot of energy. You know the, you know the route. It's pretty easy, right? To go down that pathway when you start a new pathway, you have to pick up the sled and move over and go into the three foot deep snow tread your way up to the top of the hill, go down the hill, do it again, do it again.

Do it again until you start to create that same pact groove

And if that feels hard, it's because it is hard. It's because your actual body is fighting against you here because it wants to take the most energy efficient route. Our bodies, our bodies are wired to be efficient. So that neural pathway that's been sledded down a million times is the one that we're gonna default to, especially if you're overstressed, especially if you're [00:12:00] overtaxed.

When, when your body is sensing that you are already in danger that way, like your nervous system is not in a regulated place or maybe hasn't come down from cortisol in a long time. It's like we don't have the energy to create a new neural pathway. We need to go to the one to reserve our resources.

So in order to shift these beliefs most effectively and as easefully as possible, for something that's very hard, you have to signal to your system that it's okay to spend energy in this new way, creating this new belief system, this new neural pathway.

We can do that a lot of ways. We can do that with deep breathing. We can do that with box breathing. Where you inhale for four, you hold for four, you exhale for four, you hold at the bottom for four. We can do this with tapping with EFT Tapping, which is the modality that I love and use on myself and my clients.

We can do this with exercise. We can do this with putting cold water on our face. [00:13:00] We can do this with standing and jumping. We can do this with just standing and lifting and lowering our heels to like feel the gravity. We can do this with meditation. There's a lot of ways that we can tap into that parasympathetic nervous system.

The nervous system that signals to your body we're safe, it's okay to rest and digest. It's okay to create new neural pathways. We are resourced enough to do these things.

Really without this nervous system piece, you're gonna stay in the I understand. I understand. I understand. Like, I know what my belief is, but I can't shift it because when you go to try to shift it, you'll feel the anxiety, you'll feel the panic. You'll feel the shutdown, you'll feel the flight, fight, freeze, whatever your response is.

And unless you know how to be in that activated, um, place in your nervous system and signal safety. You're gonna take the the other way out, you're gonna take the way out of that feeling that you've known. That's worked, that's grooved path.

So bringing in the nervous system piece [00:14:00] is, it's so tremendously helpful and will help you shift so much faster so that you'll, you feel like the therapy and the self work and the introspection and the journaling and all these things. Are working because I know you're putting a lot of time and energy into these things,

so I want you to have the outcome that you're looking for.

I want you to feel the shift. I want you to be able to recognize that that old part of you, that old belief that comes forward that's like, Ugh, we can't take up space in relationships.

This isn't save back away, freeze and disappear, and then tend to that part, remind that part that we are no longer stuck in the the childhood experience that we were in. Give that part what they need. Regulate the nervous system to a place where you can come back into the self-energy, or we sometimes call it the adult energy and, and show up in your relationship from that place.

That is the healthy place to come forward with your [00:15:00] partner to try to explain what you're feeling. To try to ask for something, you need to try to request something, to try to set a boundary. We have to come into that regulated place.

And the good news is, it's possible I'm walking proof. And again, it's, it's something that I work with all of the time, right? I have become much more skilled at, at being with the part of me that has that belief. So that part of me doesn't sort of take over my life as much as it used to.

I can see her now, I can tend to her now in a different way instead of her just running the show, but it's still a part that pops up. So I just want like to reduce any sort of. Perfectionistic, uh, thought maybe here that , by changing our beliefs, it's that you never think that thing again or you never get triggered again.

You will, you will think it, you will get triggered. It's just, it will have less emotional charge and you'll be able to shift away from that feeling more easily. So keep going, keep [00:16:00] going in your work because it's important. Add in the nervous system piece because that will really, really help you see the benefits that you're looking for.

Okay, so before we pull a card, I wanna just recap some takeaways because I felt like that was a lot of information and I hope you're tracking here. So what you've learned so far in this episode is why unhealthy relationship patterns?

Repeat, even if you're self aware of them. You have learned how the early emotional experiences really quietly shape what is safe in adult relationships and how that runs the show underneath the surface.

And you know what's missing now when you can understand something, but it's not shifting. It's the nervous system piece.

Now at the end of the show here we are at time to pull a card. This card is gonna offer you a message that you can just sit on and noodle and see what comes up for you with, with what it has to say. If it resonates, awesome. If it doesn't leave it behind. We got amoeba, so I'm going to just find [00:17:00] Amoeba in the book and I'll read you what it says.

Amoeba, the simple survivor has everything she needs. This visitor and her simplicity brings a message of independence, individuality, and longevity. Since the beginning of time, she has existed undefined by shape, able to stretch and flow in her own way. Amoeba brings a message of autonomy and freedom. You won't be trapped or boxed in.

You have skillfully maneuvered out of confining rigid situations before, and this time is no different. Trust. Your history and natural ability to shapeshift amoeba reminds you of the flexibility of your very nature. Slippery at times and able to move fluidly through any situation you have all that you need.

Enjoy the self-sufficiency you embody if perhaps you have forgotten your autonomy and stick like a parasite to things that don't serve you. Amoeba is a gentle but flexible reminder to be creative and let go. Being too strict goes against your natural essence for yourself and simplify. Yes, [00:18:00] yes, yes, yes.

Freedom is available to you too. Until I see you in the next episode, please, please, please be gentle, be kind, be compassionate to yourself, and remember that you are not alone.