So, we have patterns within us that fire off in response to activating agents outside of us.

Yesterday I heard Phil Collins singing on the radio and it brought me back in an instant to 1982, where I was living, who I was with, emotions and thoughts about that time. That information is inside me, lying there dormant until triggered by something. This process is often at work and largely serves me. But there are many times when it also causes bother.

When something happens today where I feel rejected this rapidly taps into similar situations of rejection from the past and I become easily flooded with the same sort of physiological arousal and emotions associated with that earlier experience.

It's easy to see this working with music, old photos, places we visit, people we see. But it's often very subtle and simply not obvious. I may not make the connection between what I 'think' is upsetting me and the original trigger that established the pattern.

If we can just be quiet for a moment, either at the point of some pattern getting fired off, or, if not possible then, even later on when we can review it, and if we just watch inside and wait, we may often find the original source of the upset.

In finding it, recognising it and seeing it for what it is, a part of our past, we can let it be just that. Then it loses its power over us.