Congruence With What You Want : Newsletter December 2022

The topic of congruence is relevant for anyone wishing to change themselves and their life circumstances but seem to be repeating the same old thing. My hope in you reading this is that you will gain more understanding as to why getting stuck happens and how to create moments in your life that you actually want to be in.

Congruence with outdated patterns is the number one cause of unhappiness, ill health and failure to reach personal, professional and spiritual goals.

What is Congruence?

Congruence literally means 'agreement or harmony; compatibility' whereas incongruence means, 'the state of not being suitable or not fitting well with something else.'

In order to become the person you say you want to be, you must be congruent enough with being that. Enough parts of you must be working together in order to tip the scale towards making what you want happen. The same can be true for attaining most any outcome.

Where You Might Get Stuck:

Humans are inherently driven to maintain congruence with their past patterns so much so that it's not uncommon to jeopardize one’s own health or well-being in order to do so. Losing loving relationships, compromising health, spending too much or losing money, squelching happiness, all become what “seems to happen”out of our control, but the system is simply following its mechanics and perpetuating congruence with its past.

This drive to maintain congruence, regardless of whether the patterns support or deter from your desired outcome, is an effort to preserve the past and to ensure your psychological and physical well-being. This may seem contradictory, “Why would I jeopardize my own health and happiness in order to preserve my past?” If the present situation has any dynamic semblance or interface with your past, the brain and psyche have a pre-made response, ready to go. If a person wants to recover from an illness, the state of being healthy may contradict what they already believe about themselves. Congruence is why a diabetic may eat foods they know will jeopardize their health, why someone withholds love from their partner and why people who want more money don't have it. It's why some spiritual seekers feel a wondering as to why their seeking and devotion isn't revealing the Light. If your congruence has too many patterns counter to what you want, then you won't have what you want.

The Problem: Using outdated strategies for a current-time need.

The Solution: Find out what your habitual responses to your goals are and replace them with new response patterns.

If this solution seems easier said than done, it is. This is where Functional Symmetry comes in. Triya can help with the reprogramming, so your system isn’t as “attached” to responding in the habitual way.

If changing for the better feels like uphill work, it’s because it is. The “hill” you’re climbing is yourself. This type of change, being different than who you were before, literally is a “going against yourself” endeavor. YOU are not your strategy. YOU are not your behavior. YOU are not your emotion. YOU are not locked into the way you’ve always been. You may not be able to change the way other people see you, which is oftentimes hardest to endure especially with family, but you can change the way you see you.

When What Worked Doesn’t Work:

Let's look at an example of how the brain can confuse what's happening in front of you with what happened in the past. I’ll use the name, “Harold” in place of a client, although I’m sure most of us can relate. Harold’s psychology which is reinforced by his old brain, has a program that says, "Hiding from the scary tiger worked. Now every time I'm scared of something potentially threatening and bigger than me, I'll hide." Hiding will manifest in many complicated and subtle ways. Harold will use any version of hiding (even from himself) in response to something his psyche and brain deem as a threat, regardless of if it is.

The basal ganglia is the part of your brain responsible for automatic self-preserving patterns of behavior and which help you identify familiar and unfamiliar things, i.e. threatening and non-threatening stimuli. It basically tells you what and when to be scared.

Let’s say Harold’s wife raises her voice at him in frustration. She tries desperately to make a point so that Harold understands her. The harder she tries, the more uncomfortable, leery and trapped Harold feels. He knows she’s not a tiger, so why is he responding as if he is under threat? He isn’t consciously confusing her with a tiger, but his brain is using the strategy it used to survive tigers in the present circumstance with his wife. She represents something, “loud, intense and potentially threatening.” The dynamic is close enough to a tiger, so for Harold, it’s better to be on the safe side and hide.

Human psychology or what Functional Symmetry refers to as 'human software' is a complex system of internal filters and perceptual algorithms which were designed, over time and repetition, to help you decipher and compute meaning as to whether or not the "big thing" to hide from is actually a tiger, your partner, a project at work or a formidable challenge. We often can't immediately tell the difference between a tiger and a moody partner, because our brain has already ‘made up its mind’ based on interpretations and careful consideration of it resembling the past. If the current dynamic has similar enough qualities to a past dynamic, our software translates reality into part fantasy and has us responding accordingly.

If Harold decides to respond differently to his wife, with more presence and calm understanding, he may at first feel like he’s doing something terribly wrong (after all, tigers can bite.) This is EXACTLY why changing for the better can be difficult. No one likes going against their well-established response mechanisms. Most of us will defend our outdated coping strategies and response patterns, despite their ineffectiveness, just so we're not wrong, even if we have evidence that we'll survive and thrive by doing it differently. "If I don't hide from my partner during this uncomfortable conversation, then it means that I was wrong about how I lived my life all these years. It means my past isn’t what I thought it was. Gulp.”

You’re congruent and familiar with how you’ve always viewed yourself. The new is foreign and potentially threatening. I encourage you to practice, practice, practice the new strategy until your brain and software become congruent with it.

Working to change yourself for the better always has gifts. Always. Once you get through the anxiety of changing the way you normally respond and how you see yourself (you’re not your past, remember?) you'll be more relaxed about the effort and have more options in the long run.

Here are some examples of how Harold could be different:

- Explores the courage it takes to be present and non-reactive during the conversation, even if he's scared or angry. Being present means listening and not blaming.

- Tries out the clunky and methodical tactic of engaging in a difficult conversation with his partner SLOWLY while using clear, kind and honest communication

- Brings attentiveness and care towards his partner, ESPECIALLY if she said something he deemed as hurtful

- Most importantly: Desires to move the relationship towards a healthier outcome.

New options become available ONLY AFTER he's exhausted the pattern of hiding, after he sees its destructiveness and is ready to "risk" trying something new and ready to embrace being wrong about the effectiveness of his hiding.

Bio-Chemistry:

The brain tricks us sometimes: "I have the biochemistry of feeling scared, so something scary must be happening." If Harold tries to to respond differently while the chemistry is activated, i.e. being calm and attentive with his wife when he would rather hide, his brain or software may say, "Don't be CALM. Be scared!" But this is the best time for retraining his brain, right in the middle of his biochemistry of fear. Practice being different while you’re feeling the same.

If you make the effort at implementing a new response while mid-stream in the biochemistry of an old response pattern, congratulations. You've just done something that most people wouldn’t even consider. If the new way of responding is better than the old strategy, you'll need to practice it over and over until your brain believes you, until it generates the biochemistry to prove that you're right about it and that it's survivable.

The brain has an order of operations: Emotional reaction first, logic and rationality second. You have an internal map of automated meaning and responses which makes up a complex called, “I.” Change the response pattern, and we change the “I.”

A Note on How to be With Someone Who is Triggered:

If your partner is acting intense, angry, scared or desperate, it's best to relate with the emotional part of their brain first. Be loving, listen to their irrational response without disagreeing or trying to get them to see things differently, be understanding and don't rationalize. Just be caring and present. This will calm their old brain mechanisms down and likely result in, at least eventually, seeing you as a friend, not a tiger. The first goal is to help them feel safe with you.

• written by Triya Smith, Functional Symmetry Practitioner