There is a strange thing about self-awareness. We can understand ourselves incredibly well and still find ourselves doing the very thing we said we wanted to change.
Take conflict, for example.
You know you tend to avoid difficult conversations. You understand that keeping the peace may have become more important to you than expressing what you really feel.
And then the conversation happens.
Your body tightens. Your breathing changes. You feel the urge to leave, shut down or say nothing.
So you go quiet.
Later, when everything has settled, you think, “I knew I was going to do that.”
This is one of the questions I find important in my work with Samskara Rewiring: how do Samskaras affect relationships when we are already aware of our patterns?
Because understanding a pattern and changing the response are not the same thing.
If you are someone who has learnt to withdraw whenever conflict feels threatening, you may know that disagreement does not necessarily mean rejection. You may understand where this response comes from. You could even decide, “Next time, I will stay and have the conversation.”
But when the moment arrives, the body can respond before the conscious mind has caught up.
The chest tightens. The breath becomes shallow. The urge to escape appears.
And suddenly, leaving the conversation feels easier than staying with it.
This is where I find the connection between Samskaras and relationships particularly meaningful. A pattern is not always something we consciously choose. Sometimes, it has become so familiar that the body begins responding before we have consciously decided how we want to respond.
Research on implementation intentions offers an interesting perspective on this gap between intention and action. In a 2006 meta-analysis, Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran examined 94 independent tests involving 8,461 participants and found that forming specific “if–then” plans had a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment (d = 0.65).
The research is about goal-directed behaviour, not Samskaras. But I find the distinction useful.
Knowing how you want to respond does not automatically make that response available when the moment arrives.
For someone who withdraws during conflict, it is useful to look beyond the story in the mind and notice what is happening in the body.
The tightening in the chest. The change in breathing. The impulse to shut down.
Instead of immediately asking, “Why am I like this?”, we can begin by noticing:
“What is happening in me right now?”
This is where somatic work becomes crucial in Samskara Rewiring and the re-patterning of behavioural imprints. The pattern is not approached only through thought. We also pay attention to what happens in the body when the pattern is activated.
You may notice the breath becoming shallow. You may feel the impulse to move away or become very still. Simply recognising these sensations can help us see that the pattern has been activated before we automatically follow it.
For me, this is an important part of learning to rewire emotional patterns.
Not by judging ourselves for having learnt a particular response.
Not by forcing the response to disappear.
But by becoming curious about the experience as it is happening.
This is how we use the RISE Methodology in Samskara Rewiring: recognising an emotional pattern can begin with becoming aware of how it is experienced across the body, mind and spirit.