Maladaptive Relational Patterns

Aren’t you just dying to read this post?

It’s a bad title, I know, but it is such a useful concept!!

That concept being

ways we fit with other people that aren’t good for us.

These fits are “patterns” because they’re common and familiar and recognizable and happen automatically. They’re “relational” because they manifest in our relationships. And they’re “maladaptive” because, while they worked when we were kids, we’re now adults, and they don’t work anymore (especially not with people who are not family members, those co-creators of our relational patterns).

Yet maladaptive relational patterns show up in every classroom every day!! Think on that

glorious fact!!

They show up

• when you can’t keep yourself from interrupting in discussions

• when you collapse in the face of a student’s (or parent’s or colleague’s) emotion

• when you’re a control freak

• when you lose it on a rebellious student

• when you do a co-teacher’s work for him

That last one is the subject of my latest podcast episode, Rachel. By the way. Check it out. It’s great. And subscribe!

Recognizing your own maladaptive relational patterns is like discovering diamonds. Because, if you know where you tend to go when bad things happen to you, you can stop yourself from going there. You can pause, breathe, and do some emotion work. And come up with a plan of action, an experiment you can try that will, over time, change your relational patterns

from maladaptive to adaptive.

To resilient and flexible. To elastic and healthy. To responsive and constructive. To sparkly, beautiful, invaluable, and

strong.

I mean it. Listen to how Rachel did it.