You know how if you fall asleep with your face on corduroy you wake up with lines on your cheek?
Your face hasn’t fundamentally changed, but there’s an impression left by the conditions you were just in.
Now imagine a small tree that grew next to a big tree, and so reached in one direction to make sure to find the sun.
Even if the big tree falls down and isn’t there anymore, the small tree will still be reaching that direction, an artifact of the earlier conditions.
Or perhaps you’ve heard the story of the elephant and the rope?
As a baby, the elephant was tied up with a rope and couldn’t break free—so even as an adult, it still believes the rope can hold it.
We are all walking around with imprints on our psyches, responding to past conditions as if they were still happening now.
If anger wasn’t ok in your family of origin, you will still be living in the imprint of suppressing anger — unless you do some work to update the story.
There are all kinds of imprints we each carry: familial, cultural, ancestral…
They’re not bad, exactly. They were adaptive, wise, beautiful solutions to the conditions we once found ourselves in.
But they can become troublesome if we get stuck in the outdated adaptation.
Imagine if the face stayed lined even long after the nap.
If the tree kept growing that same direction even years after the sunblocker fell down.
If the elephant never realizes it’s stronger than the rope.
Our own imprints can be hard to spot at first.
It’s easy to just believe This is The Way Things Are.
This is what coaching can help with.
An outside perspective to see yourself more clearly.
The support and courage to test a new direction.
The regulation to allow the feelings you might not have felt yet about the original circumstances.
Got an inkling that your imprints might be running the show more than is serving you?
Let’s talk.
Liberatingly yours,
Rachel
PS – I If you’re sensing that old patterns are running the show—responses that made sense once but feel limiting now—I can help. I work with people who’ve outgrown the life they built, but aren’t sure how to shift. If you’re in the space between what was and what could be, DM me to set up a free consultation and see if coaching together is a fit.
