Hakomi Offers Relief from
Self-Defeating Patterns

by Meg Warden, CHT, CRS

(Copyright Meg Warden, 2006, all rights reserved)

Each of us has formed concepts of who we are and how the world works. These are our “core beliefs” that are established early in our childhoods. Based on these beliefs, we developed strategies to compensate for what was missing in our childhoods or to avoid emotional pain. These strategies may also be associated with family patterns, inherent sensitivities, physical make-up, and possibly other factors like karma or past lives.

“Character strategies” is the term Hakomi therapists use to describe these patterns of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. Our character strategies were useful for our survival in childhood, but limit our happiness in adulthood. They bias us toward maintaining what we once learned to be our reality. We continually reinforce them by looking for proof of what we already believe and overlooking what is inconsistent with our beliefs. This results in unnecessary suffering. It is unnecessary because the original reasons for the beliefs and strategies are no longer present, except by our own making.

For example, a client of mine felt very uncomfortable when people gave him attention. He noticed that he avoided attention as much as possible. As we explored this, he realized that he actually felt like he would be “in trouble” if people paid attention to him. He then remembered how his parents paid attention to him when he was “in trouble” as a child. When he was “good,” they mostly ignored him. Thereafter, he got nervous whenever his parents paid attention to him. He formed a conclusion about getting attention and he developed a strategy of avoiding attention. As a result, he received less and less attention and felt very lonely. Even as an adult, he continued to use this strategy without being aware of it. The result was unnecessary suffering.

Because our conscious thoughts require our full attention, our core beliefs and character strategies are generally unconscious. They are unconscious in the same way that rules of grammar are unconscious. We just don’t think about them. If we slow down and really attend to them, we can make them conscious again. But if our attention is on something else, they just run our lives automatically and they shape our experience according to past learning.

As adults, when we do experience familiar patterns of suffering, we can examine our beliefs, emotions, and behaviors and then open to other options. This requires some form of deep work. One way to change core beliefs is to give conscious awareness to the normally unconscious patterns of our character strategies. Through awareness of what no longer serves us, we can change. Our minds are a bit like computers. When a program on our computer no longer serves us, we reprogram, but we must delete the old program. We can’t do that unless we first identify the program that we no longer want to use.

In Hakomi Therapy, we give attention to the automatic expressions of our character strategies, often using therapeutic experiments to elicit them. We can then explore their significance. Insight is sometimes all we need for change and then better ways of functioning can replace the old. When the character strategies are associated with missing experiences in childhood, a therapist will simply provide what is needed. It might be simple acknowledgment, compassion, comfort, or appreciation. Once the missing experience is integrated, there is no longer any reason for the limiting pattern and it begins to disappear. When a character strategy is associated with an emotional wound or trauma, a therapist can support the release of the hurt along with the development of internal resources.

So, when you get tired of your problems repeating over and over, remember, it isn’t you; it is probably just your character strategies. In order to reprogram your system, it may be helpful to become familiar with the 8 basic character strategies. When you understand your strategies, you then have more compassionate awareness when they arise in your own personality. Compassionate awareness is the beginning of healing.