A man I was working with knew exactly what happened when he felt criticized by his wife.
His chest tightened, he started explaining himself, she felt less heard, and the argument escalated. He had seen the pattern many times and knew what he was supposed to do differently. So instead of asking him how he could stop being defensive, I asked, “What would happen if you didn’t defend yourself?” He got quiet, because that question pointed beneath the behavior to what the behavior was doing for him.
In the last newsletter, I asked you to notice the first moment you begin to lose access to yourself: the change in your breathing, the tightening in your body, the narrowing of attention, the urge to explain, fix, control, attack, please, withdraw, or disappear. Once you can catch that transition, the next question is not simply how to stop the reaction. It is what the reaction is trying to accomplish. Most recurring patterns have a function, even when the way they perform that function now creates problems.
For this man, explaining was the strategy. Underneath it was an attempt to protect something more important: his sense that he was a good husband, a competent man, someone who had not failed the person he loved. The moment he heard criticism, he was no longer only hearing information from his wife. Something in him was trying to prevent an experience that felt harder to hold—the possibility that he had let her down, been wrong, or was not who he wanted to believe he was.
Strategy and Function
That distinction changes how we understand a pattern. Anger may be the strategy while restoring a sense of power is the function. Control may be the strategy while reducing uncertainty is the function. Withdrawal may be the strategy while reducing overwhelm is the function. Pleasing may preserve connection; fixing may restore a sense of usefulness; overthinking may create distance from feelings that cannot be solved. The visible behavior matters, but the behavior alone does not tell you why your system keeps returning to it.
This does not make the behavior harmless, and it does not remove responsibility. A protective strategy can hurt your wife, make your children cautious around you, exhaust the people who work for you, or keep you from hearing something you genuinely need to hear.
Understanding the function is not an excuse for the cost. It gives you a more accurate place from which to change the pattern, because you are no longer fighting only what you can see.
Why the Pattern Holds On
Many of these strategies became useful because, at some point, they worked. Staying quiet may have kept conflict from getting worse. Being highly competent may have brought approval or reduced uncertainty. Reading the room and keeping other people happy may have protected connection. Not needing anyone may have made it possible to function when support was unreliable. We do not need to turn every pattern into a dramatic story about childhood to recognize a basic truth about human learning: when a response repeatedly helps us handle something difficult, we become more likely to use it again.
The complication is that a strategy can continue working long after its costs have become greater than its benefits. The ability to disconnect from feeling may help a man perform under pressure, then leave his wife unable to reach him. The control that helped an entrepreneur survive chaos may eventually make his team feel mistrusted. The sensitivity that lets a man anticipate everyone else’s needs may keep the peace while slowly disconnecting him from his own. The adaptation may still succeed at its immediate job, and that is part of why it can be so difficult to change.
Finding the Job Underneath
This week, build on the practice from the last newsletter. When you notice the first signal that your available range is narrowing, do not immediately correct yourself or force the reaction away. Stay close to the moment long enough to ask what the reaction is trying to protect, preserve, prevent, or restore. A useful question is:
“If I didn’t do this right now, what might I have to feel, face, risk, or not know?”
You may notice that defending yourself protects you from feeling wrong, that anger protects you from feeling powerless, or that withdrawal protects you from an intensity you do not yet know how to stay with. You may discover that fixing lets you avoid helplessness, or that pleasing protects you from the possibility of disappointing someone.
Do not force a theory or search for the perfect explanation. The practice is to become curious enough to see whether there is a job underneath the behavior.
That gives us a more useful way to hold the pattern.
It can make sense and still no longer serve you. You can respect what it has been trying to do without handing it control of what you do next.
Over time, the deeper question becomes whether you can develop enough capacity to stay present with the experience your old strategy has been trying to manage for you. That is different from simply learning to suppress the strategy more effectively.
There is also a consequence to seeing the pattern this way. If some part of you believes the reaction is necessary for protection, then shaming it, overpowering it, or demanding that it disappear may not create the change you expect. It may give the protective system another reason to organize more strongly.
Why fighting yourself can sometimes strengthen the very pattern you are trying to change.
Owen
For now, I would genuinely like to know what you notice. Think of one reaction that shows up reliably under pressure and ask what job it may be doing for you. What is it trying to protect, preserve, prevent, or restore? Hit reply and tell me what you find.