Why We Return to Old Patterns: The Energy Dimension of Deep Change
When understanding has not yet changed the response
A person may understand very well why they respond in a familiar way in certain circumstances. They recognise the connection between past experiences and present decisions, understand what they want to change, and may already have tried several times to make that change.
Even so, they may find themselves again in circumstances in which the old response appears.
They may once again take on responsibility that is not theirs. They may step away from what they had recognised as right for them when facing an important decision. They may return to a relationship in which they gradually lose a sense of their own boundaries.
Such a moment does not necessarily mean that the earlier insight was untrue or that the effort made so far was in vain. It shows that understanding and change are not always the same process. A person can recognise something clearly at the level of conscious understanding without their way of responding changing at the same time in circumstances that are particularly demanding for them.
Research on the maintenance of behaviour change indicates that longer-term change is influenced not only by motivation, but also by the capacity to regulate one’s own behaviour, established habits, time, support and other opportunities available for implementing change, as well as social and life circumstances.¹ An initial decision, although important, therefore does not operate independently of the broader way a person lives.
At IFDET, we understand these findings as an important professional context. Our central inquiry continues at another methodological level: how do energy patterns form and persist, what do they reveal, and how can we support their deep transformation?
An old pattern is not always a conscious choice
When we speak about a recurring pattern, we do not necessarily mean a single thought or decision. It is often a way of responding that has become established over time and so familiar that it appears before a person consciously considers other possibilities.
Research on habits shows that repeating a particular behaviour in similar everyday circumstances can gradually contribute to its automaticity. If a person regularly repeats a behaviour at a similar time, in a similar environment or after a similar event, the association between the circumstance and the response may become stronger. How quickly and to what extent such automaticity develops is not the same for every person or every type of behaviour.²
Such findings help us understand part of human behaviour. They do not explain all deeper personal, relational or energy patterns.
In everyday life, repetition may become visible in moments when a person can see another possibility but still responds in the established way in familiar circumstances. They may consciously understand that a particular response no longer serves them, yet that understanding alone does not mean that another response is equally accessible to them in every moment.
When exploring such repetition, it is therefore important not only to ask how a particular response became established. We also examine the circumstances in which it formed, what contributed to its development and what maintains it today.
Causes may be varied and interconnected. A particular way of responding may arise from personal experiences, learned beliefs, relationships, the family environment, prolonged strain, or adaptation to circumstances in which a person once did not have the same possibilities they have today.
Within IFDET’s broader methodological inquiry, questions also arise concerning deeper energy connections, intergenerational influences and other dimensions of human existence. We do not treat such possible connections as facts established in advance or as a universal explanation of an individual’s life. We explore them within IFDET’s philosophical and energy framework while distinguishing between personal experience, intuitive energy insight and information that can also be verified in other ways.
For some patterns, the connection between a past experience and a present response is relatively clear. For others, the origin is more difficult to discern. A pattern may have formed gradually through several different experiences, or its background may be more complex than any single life circumstance can explain.
It is therefore not always possible to identify one single cause. Nor is it useful to explain every recurring response through an explanation selected in advance.
It is also important to distinguish between the origin of a pattern and the factors that maintain it. A response may have formed in particular past circumstances while continuing today because of different internal or external factors.
At IFDET, exploring the cause is therefore not about finding an answer at any cost. We are interested in the origin, but also in the pattern’s present functioning, its consequences and the direction of change that opens through its exploration.
If a pattern continues to recur despite being recognised, we do not understand the recurrence only as the continuation of something we want to change. It can show us which part of the pattern remains active, in which circumstances it is maintained, and what in its background may not yet have been recognised or transformed. Recurrence can therefore become a starting point for more precise exploration of the cause, deeper connections and the further direction of transformation.
What the energy dimension of a pattern means at IFDET
The methodology of deep energy transformation begins from the premise that a person’s inner functioning should not be understood exclusively as a sequence of thoughts, emotions and visible behaviour. Alongside these dimensions, it also explores the energy dimension of human existence and inner organisation.
When we speak about an energy pattern at IFDET, we are not referring to a laboratory-measured physical structure, nor are we making a medical diagnosis. It is a concept within our own methodological framework through which we explore energy connections, the quality and direction of inner functioning, and possibilities for their transformation.
We do not equate an energy pattern with a person’s current feeling. A person may be aware of tension, inner resistance or a loss of a sense of support. They may notice that much of their effort is directed towards preventing conflict, maintaining control or meeting other people’s expectations.
However, the energy dimension is not necessarily accessible to conscious perception. A person cannot always name what they are experiencing and may not always be able to connect their response with its origin. Nor does the energy process we explore necessarily involve a strong or recognisable sensation.
We therefore do not limit energy inquiry to what a person directly feels or can consciously recognise.
Some connections emerge through conversation, exploration of life history and observation of recurring responses. Others become clearer when experiences that the person had not previously understood as connected begin to come together during the process.
The inquiry may also include the practitioner’s intuitive energy perception. Through it, information or a connection may emerge that directs attention towards a deeper or broader background of the pattern. Such insight is not guaranteed in advance and is not a mandatory part of every process.
How we work with intuitively obtained information is also important.
The client’s experience or the practitioner’s intuitive energy perception may meaningfully guide further inquiry. Where such information can be connected with the client’s experiences, other information or verifiable circumstances, we explore it at those levels as well. Where this is not possible, it remains part of the energy inquiry and is not presented as an objectively confirmed or definitive explanation of the pattern’s origin.
This distinction does not diminish the importance of intuitive energy insight. It allows us to use it as one source of information within the IFDET methodology without determining the meaning of the client’s experience in advance or imposing an explanation on them.
Alongside inquiry, the process may also include intentionally directed energy work. This is not the same as intuitive perception. Intuitive insight is primarily concerned with perceiving information or connections; intentionally directed energy work involves active energy support directed towards clarification or towards the process of transformation itself.
A pattern does not exist in isolation. It may be connected with how a person experiences themselves, forms relationships, sets boundaries, makes decisions, uses their inner strength or responds to uncertainty. We are therefore interested not only in explaining the pattern, but above all in the possibility of deeper transformation.
Understanding the origin can be very important. It can help a person recognise how a particular way of functioning formed and why it persisted. Yet insight into the cause is not transformation. A person may understand very clearly where a response comes from and still continue to repeat it.
The reverse is also true: the process of transformation may begin before the origin of the pattern has been fully clarified.
Exploring the cause, the client’s recognition, the practitioner’s intuitive energy perception and intentionally directed energy work are therefore not stages that must always occur in the same order. During an individual process, they may overlap and guide one another.
The energy dimension is not an addition to the methodology of deep energy transformation, but one of its foundational premises. IFDET does not equate it with thoughts, emotions, behaviour or bodily responses, while at the same time not treating these dimensions as necessarily disconnected. Change may be expressed at different levels of human functioning, and individual levels may influence one another.
We explore the energy dimension as our own methodological aspect of this broader process without presenting it as a scientifically confirmed mechanism where such confirmation does not exist.
From recognition to transformation
Recognising a pattern means noticing that a particular way of experiencing, responding or functioning is recurring. Transforming it means something more.
We are interested not only in the question of where the pattern comes from, but also in what it reveals to us.
A destructive pattern can reveal an area in which a person functions in a way that limits or depletes them, or moves them away from a more aligned relationship with themselves and others. By recognising what functions destructively, the direction of needed change can also become clearer.
A person who persistently seeks their value in the approval of others may gradually recognise the need to develop greater inner support. Someone who continually subordinates their own needs to those of others may recognise that they need to understand their responsibility differently and develop the capacity to establish and maintain boundaries.
For a person who tries to reduce uncertainty primarily through control, two related directions of change may open. The first is developing greater inner stability and the capacity to remain present even when not all circumstances can be predicted or controlled. The second is the gradual reduction of inner uncertainty itself: by developing greater support within themselves, clearer judgement and trust in their own capacity to respond, the need to create safety primarily by controlling external circumstances may also diminish.
Exploring a pattern is therefore not directed only backwards, towards its origin. It is also directed towards the question of what the pattern is showing the person and in which direction its transformation is leading them.
We can understand this as the developmental dimension of the pattern. It is not a predetermined ‘lesson’ that can be assigned to every person from the outside. It is an individual exploration of what a person needs to recognise, develop, release or change so that they no longer maintain a destructive way of functioning.
Within IFDET’s broader philosophical framework, this also opens the question of a person’s task towards themselves and towards others. Recognising that a particular way of functioning has destructive consequences also creates the possibility of taking responsibility for changing it. Change is therefore not directed only towards reducing personal discomfort, but also towards how a person affects relationships and the environment of which they are part through their actions.
Complete knowledge of a pattern’s origin is not always necessary in order to recognise this direction. A person may not yet know why a particular pattern formed, but may already clearly recognise its consequences and the area in which change is needed.
Energy work can also be directed towards transformation even when the full causal background has not yet been mentally clarified.
Presence is an important part of the process. It enables a person to recognise their response clearly enough that the old pattern no longer always leads them automatically into the same behaviour.
If fear appears, presence does not mean that fear should not be there. It means developing the possibility of noticing fear, understanding it as part of what is happening in the moment, and still retaining more space for one’s decision.
Presence is therefore not a requirement for constant self-observation or self-control. It is the development of an inner availability in which the automatic response gradually loses its position as the only possible path.
Deep change is therefore not limited to replacing one behaviour with another. It includes exploring and transforming the deeper mode of functioning from which individual responses repeatedly arise.
The role of individual energy support
Deep energy transformation at IFDET is not limited to a person independently observing their own patterns. The individual process also includes energy support from the practitioner.
We understand energy support more broadly than the use of an individual technique. Within the IFDET methodological framework, the individual process itself has an energy dimension: the way it is guided, the quality of presence, communication, the relationship between practitioner and client, and the space created through collaboration for inquiry and change.
From this perspective, energy support is not something that begins only when a particular method is used. It may be present throughout the entire process and expressed in different ways.
Within this broader process, we specifically distinguish intentionally directed energy work. Here the practitioner consciously directs energy support towards a particular purpose: clarification, exploration of origin, work with a particular energy pattern, or support for its transformation.
Such work is not limited to one technique or a predetermined procedure. The way of working is shaped individually according to the person, the characteristics of their process, what emerges during the collaboration, and the practitioner’s judgement of what is meaningful to support at a given moment.
Attentive observation of the process, methodological judgement and intuitive energy perception all play an important role. Intuitive insight may arise and meaningfully guide further work, but the practitioner does not treat it as a mandatory task that must be performed with every client.
This preserves the essential individuality of the process. The practitioner does not need to ‘find’ a hidden cause for every pattern, and the client does not need to know the entire causal background before transformational work can begin.
When the cause is unclear, energy work may be directed towards supporting its clarification. A new connection or piece of information may emerge through the process. If it does not, the work can remain directed towards the pattern, the problem or its recognised consequences.
Intentionally directed energy work is intended to support and initiate the process of energy transformation. In IFDET’s methodological language, this means that the practitioner directs energy work towards transforming a destructive energy organisation or pattern in a more constructive direction.
Such a process is not the same for every person. In one case, change may open quickly and its effect may be recognised relatively directly. Elsewhere, transformation develops gradually, through several layers or over a longer period of integration.
The intention of energy work is therefore not the same as a guaranteed outcome. The practitioner can intentionally direct and energetically support the process, but cannot determine in advance the exact timing, manner or extent of transformation.
Individual energy support is therefore an active part of the IFDET methodology, but it does not remove the client’s role. The practitioner does not make decisions on the client’s behalf and does not take responsibility for their life. The practitioner’s work and the client’s participation are different but connected parts of the same process.
Individuality therefore means more than choosing different approaches. It also means respecting a person’s pace, their boundaries, and the fact that deep change develops differently for different people.
IFDET treats energy support and intentionally directed energy work as part of its own methodological framework. Their premises and perceived effects are not presented as already empirically confirmed energy mechanisms or as a substitute for healthcare or other regulated professional treatment.
A destructive pattern and its function
Destructive patterns do not arise without a background. They may form in circumstances in which a person is seeking a way to preserve a relationship, a sense of safety, acceptance, predictability or a certain external equilibrium.
A person may learn to keep the peace by neglecting their own needs. They may connect their sense of worth with achievement. They may learn that remaining silent is safer than expressing disagreement, or begin to seek a sense of safety primarily through control.
Such ways of functioning may appear effective externally for a long time. A person maintains relationships, meets expectations, prevents conflict or achieves results.
But external effectiveness does not mean that the pattern was internally constructive for the person.
Its cost may have existed from the beginning, even if the person did not yet recognise it or the consequences had not yet become sufficiently visible. Peace may have been achieved at the expense of personal boundaries. Success at the expense of constant inner pressure. Acceptance at the expense of abandoning one’s own needs.
Over time, the destructive nature of such functioning may intensify or become more visible. Maintaining the same external equilibrium requires increasing inner effort, while the consequences begin to appear more clearly in one or more areas of life.
Understanding why such a pattern formed and why it was maintained therefore does not mean declaring it healthy or beneficial. It means trying to understand its function and background without overlooking the destructiveness it may have carried from the beginning.
This is precisely where the question of its deeper meaning also becomes important.
If a pattern repeatedly leads a person to abandon their own boundaries, it may point to an area in which they need to develop a different relationship with themselves and their own responsibility. If they subordinate their decisions to the expectations of others, the pattern may reveal a need for greater inner autonomy.
A pattern is therefore not only a consequence of something that happened. It may also indicate an area in which transformation is needed.
At IFDET, we do not treat a destructive pattern as evidence of a person’s deficiency or lesser worth. A person is not identical to the patterns they carry. Their worth does not depend on the origin or weight of those patterns, or on how quickly they are able to change them.
Responsibility begins elsewhere: with the possibility that a person begins to explore and change what they recognise as destructive.
Energy undergoing transformation
In IFDET’s methodological language, transformation does not mean creating new energy. It means transforming energy patterns, including their quality and direction.
It is important here to distinguish between redirection and transformation.
A person can change their external behaviour without the deeper pattern necessarily changing. They may make a different decision in one situation while the same inner dynamic continues to seek another form of expression.
The aim is therefore not simply to redirect existing destructive energy elsewhere.
Within IFDET, we explore and support the possibility that its quality also changes: that energy embedded in a limiting or destructive way of functioning is transformed through the process in a direction that enables more constructive functioning, greater inner coherence and freer use of one’s own possibilities.
We use the terms destructive and constructive as methodological descriptors of the quality and direction of functioning, not as laboratory-measured categories of energy.
Transformation and changes in a person’s behaviour can support one another.
Changed behaviour can create different experiences, relationships and decisions, thereby supporting a deeper process of change. Intentionally directed energy work operates from another direction: it is directly focused on the energy dimension of the pattern and on initiating or supporting the process of its transformation.
These two paths are not opposed and do not necessarily occur in sequence. They can unfold simultaneously and reinforce one another.
If a person’s functioning has long been based on a sense of powerlessness, for example, change is not only about taking more actions. A deeper direction may involve transforming the inner relationship to one’s own power and capacity to act, so that new actions gradually arise from a different inner foundation.
Such transformation is not necessarily dramatic and does not follow a uniform timeline. Sometimes a person recognises change quickly. At other times it develops gradually and becomes visible only through how they begin to live, decide and enter relationships.
Transformation and life circumstances
Recurring patterns influence decisions, relationships and the way a person uses their possibilities. Their transformation can therefore also change the course of a person’s life.
A change in how a person chooses partnerships, makes professional decisions, handles money, sets boundaries or responds to risk may over time lead to different consequences and different life circumstances.
In this sense, the relationship between inner and outer life is not insignificant. Through their actions, a person co-creates some of the circumstances in which they live, while at the same time being affected by many factors that are not under their direct control.
Within its philosophical and methodological framework, IFDET also explores the deeper question of whether and how a person’s energy patterns are connected with their relationships, health and broader life events.
Here it is necessary to distinguish between exploring a possible connection and claiming that we know the cause of a specific event.
If we explore a possible connection between a particular energy pattern and life events in an individual process, this does not mean that we can reliably determine, retrospectively from an illness, loss, accident or other event, which energy pattern caused it. Nor does it mean that every event has a single cause.
Illness may involve known biological and environmental factors, and often a combination of several different influences. The death of another person is also connected with their own life, health and circumstances over which the client has no control. Other life events are likewise affected by the decisions of other people, social conditions, natural events and many other factors. A particular event therefore cannot automatically be explained as the consequence of the energy pattern of the person who experienced it or was affected by it.
This does not close the question of deeper energy connections. It means that IFDET explores such connections without turning them, without an adequate basis, into definitive causal explanations.
It is equally important to distinguish between guilt and responsibility.
We do not assign a person guilt for all the destructive patterns they carry or for all the difficult events they experience. Some patterns may have formed at a time when the person did not have the knowledge, possibilities or power they have today. Many external events are not under their direct control.
When a person recognises a particular pattern, however, the question of their present responsibility opens.
If they see that their way of functioning harms themselves or others, what they do with that recognition becomes important. Responsibility at IFDET therefore does not mean guilt for the past or a demand for perfection. It means a willingness to take one’s part of responsibility for changing what can be recognised and changed.
This responsibility extends beyond personal benefit.
How a person relates to their patterns also affects relationships. A parent may carry certain patterns into the relationship with a child. One partner’s way of functioning affects the other partner. The way a person uses power, sets boundaries, deals with fear or expresses anger affects the environment of which they are part.
In this sense, we can speak of a movement from the individual towards the wider whole: inner change may be expressed in relationships, family and other environments in which a person participates.
This is also an important part of the responsibility that IFDET associates with deep transformation: recognising and changing what is destructive matters not only because of how a person lives with themselves, but also because of how their functioning enters the lives of others.
At the same time, IFDET does not claim that an individual can control the future or determine events in other people’s lives through energy work.
Energy work is also not a substitute for healthcare when healthcare is needed. Exploring the energy dimension of illness or another life circumstance does not mean abandoning medical, legal, social or other appropriate professional care.
Deep transformation can change a person’s inner functioning, their decisions and the way they enter life. In doing so, it can open different possibilities and influence the further development of some circumstances. It does not guarantee control over all external outcomes.
When change becomes visible in life
Integration is an important part of deep work.
Energy transformation may open in different ways during an individual process. A person may feel something distinctly, experience relief or sudden clarity. In other cases, they may barely notice change during the energy work itself.
The intensity of the immediate experience is therefore not, by itself, a measure by which the depth or durability of transformation can be assessed.
What happens later, when a person returns to their ordinary life, is also important.
What happens when they again find themselves in circumstances in which the old pattern used to appear? Does the response arise with the same intensity? Do they recognise it earlier? Does a possibility open that they could not see before? Are they able to act differently?
For one person, change may appear as the ability to make a decision without prolonged searching for approval. For another, as less inner pressure in a relationship that previously burdened them greatly. For a third, as the ability to recognise in time that they are taking on responsibility that is not theirs.
Integration means that change gradually finds a place in the way a person actually lives.
This does not mean that the old response must disappear completely after a single process. Deep change can be a process in which the old pattern gradually loses its power while the person develops greater inner freedom in how they respond.
Nor does a person necessarily need to be able to explain every energy change mentally. Sometimes its meaning becomes clearer only over time and through changes in behaviour, relationships or inner stability.
Energy support, intentionally directed energy work and the client’s responsible participation are therefore connected parts of the process. Energy work can directly support transformation, while integration allows the change gradually to become embedded in the person’s life and become part of their actual way of functioning.
Deep change as an expansion of inner possibilities
Returning to an old pattern is not necessarily proof that nothing has changed.
It may show that a particular part of the pattern remains active, that transformation is still unfolding, or that a deeper layer has opened that the person had not previously recognised.
The methodology of deep energy transformation therefore does not stop at asking why a person responds as they do. It explores the origin, meaning and energy dimension of the pattern and supports its transformation.
Not everything has to be explained or mentally understood in advance. Some connections may become clear through the client’s own inquiry, others through intuitive energy perception, while some remain open. Even when the origin has not been fully explained, the process of change can still be supported.
The aim is not a perfect person without tension, doubt or unpleasant experiences.
The aim is a deeper possibility of changing what limits a person or functions destructively, together with the development of a more constructive relationship with themselves, others and their own life.
The central question is therefore not only what a person understands about themselves.
What matters is what, through that understanding, energy transformation and integration, they gradually become capable of living differently.
If you recognise in your own life the difference between understanding recurring patterns and the possibility of their actual transformation, an introductory conversation is intended to assess whether an individual process of deep energy transformation is an appropriate form of collaboration for you.
Continue exploring
If you would like to deepen your understanding of deep energy transformation, the IFDET methodology and the Institute’s way of working, you can continue on the following pages:
· Glossary
Notes and sources
¹ Kwasnicka, Dominika, Stephan U. Dombrowski, Martin White, and Falko F. Sniehotta. “Theoretical Explanations for Maintenance of Behaviour Change: A Systematic Review of Behaviour Theories.” Health Psychology Review 10, no. 3 (2016): 277–296.
² Lally, Phillippa, Cornelia H. M. van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts, and Jane Wardle. “How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World.” European Journal of Social Psychology 40, no. 6 (2010): 998–1009.
Methodological note: The description of the energy dimension, intuitive energy insight, individual energy support and intentionally directed energy work represents IFDET’s own methodological and research framework. The cited scientific studies support the discussion of maintenance of behaviour change and habit automaticity; they do not constitute empirical validation of energy patterns, energy transformation, the effectiveness of energy support or the IFDET methodology. This article does not provide healthcare guidance or promise any particular outcome.
© 2026 Maja Škvarč – Institute for Deep Energy Transformation.
This article is an original work and forms part of the methodology of deep energy transformation. Reproduction or use without prior written consent is prohibited.
Comments