Page 7 - GOODONE

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Which brings us now to the consideration of behaviour patterns. A

behaviour pattern is a set of habitual activities performed by individuals
who, for one reason or another, haven't developed the ability to

distinguish what's going on in the here-and-now from past events in their
personal history. Instead of responding to present reality, they continue

to act out their childhood scripts. People who limit themselves in this
way can only audition for a very few basic roles in the theatre we call life
- they become, in the words of the poet T.S. Eliot, “nothing but a set of

obsolete responses”. Their personality structures were laid down a long
time ago and have since set rock hard. Even though at first sight they

seem to have positive qualities such as reliability and dependability, it
soon becomes apparent that these are entirely dependent on the false

assumption that life will always continue to go on in exactly the same
way as it did in the past. There is a tendency in human nature, as we've

seen, to get stuck into habitual attitudes and ways of behaving, because
these represent familiar roles that become learned by heart. The trouble
is, that they've long since ceased to be relevant to the present. They

represent fixed attitudes - rigid patterns of behaviour that can be looked
on as safety curtains, rather than role costumes, which are run down

early in life to protect the developing individual from an adult world that
he or she wasn't yet ready to face. They become set responses, habitual

ways of dealing with problematic situations: and this works fine, of
course, but only if nothing in life ever changes. If you set out to express

the totality of the unique human being you really are, you'll need to re-
examine your typical ways of responding to people and situations. You
will need to learn to develop new, more flexible scripts - even ad lib a

little now and then - so that you can cope creatively with the process of
change in your present experiences. You'll find that the more you

understand the people you work or live with, the more you recognise
their processes as being similar to your own, then the easier it will be for

you to accept them just the way they are, with calm empathy and a
compassionate response.