A story about patterns, impact, and why it doesn’t mean anyone is dysfunctional
There’s a moment in life when you walk into a room full of people doing exactly what they’ve always done…drinking, laughing too loud, circling the same stories, avoiding the same feelings…and your body reacts before your mind catches up. Something in you whispers, Oh. I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s disorienting at first. Like suddenly realizing you’re the only sober one at a drunk party and everyone else is speaking a language you used to know.
Your first instinct might be to label the room.
They’re dysfunctional.
They’re unhealthy.
They’re avoiding themselves.
But if you slow down and actually feel into the moment, you may sense that those thoughts aren’t true. You didn’t step out of the pattern because you became superior or spiritually awakened. You stepped out because your system changed. What used to feel fine began to feel off. What used to help you belong began to cost you something.
Your body started telling the truth long before your mind had the words. And this part matters, because it’s so easy to attach a story to your growth — a story you may not have chosen.
We inherit these stories long before we ever examine them. Not just from the internet (though it’s definitely loud), but from family dynamics, culture, therapists, religion, wellness trends, trauma language, friend groups, and all the places that quietly teach you how to make meaning of yourself.
Which is how a very human shift — “This doesn’t work for me anymore” — can get mistaken for something moral, elevated, or comparative. And once that story sneaks in, we stop seeing the moment clearly. We stop seeing ourselves clearly. We stop seeing other people clearly.
This is where the lens begins.
Not because you chose it, but because it was handed to you, piece by piece, through every place you learned how to belong, survive, protect yourself, or make sense of things.
The Lens You Don’t Realize You’re Holding
Every time you outgrow a pattern — drinking, gossiping, shutting down, numbing — you don’t just change the behavior. You pick up a new lens.
Some lenses feel like growth.
Some feel like protection.
Some feel like clarity.
Some feel like “everyone else is the problem.”
The tricky part is that the lens determines the meaning long before the moment even happens. Through a judgment lens, everything looks dysfunctional. Through a superiority lens, people seem emotionally immature. Through a wound lens, difference feels threatening. Through a trauma lens, disagreement becomes danger. Through a self-protective lens, everything turns into blame.
But through a clear lens, you simply see what’s here. No heroes, no villains, no silent hierarchy. Just humans doing what works in their nervous system, and you doing what works in yours.
This is where things soften. Because when the lens is clean, you stop turning your growth into a quiet weapon. You stop needing to diagnose the people you love. You stop performing your healing like it has to mean something about who’s “ahead” and who’s “behind.”
You simply see.
Where Did the Lens Come From?
(And why it’s not your fault)
Here’s the part most people don’t slow down enough to realize:
You didn’t consciously choose your lens.
Almost none of us do.
Your lens was shaped by:
the family you grew up in
the culture that taught you what “good” means
the religion or belief system that shaped your morality
the friendships where you learned how to belong
the partners who showed you what love required
the teachers who rewarded certain behaviors and shut down others
therapists, wellness trends, and self-help ideas that told you what “healthy” should look like
your trauma history and the strategies you developed to survive it
And then, on top of all of that, comes the loudest, fastest lens-maker of all: the internet.
Social media doesn’t invent the lens.
It amplifies it.
Distorts it.
Turns up the volume until you can’t hear your own experience anymore.
This is what makes the next part so uncomfortable and so true:
What if social media is the narcissist?
What if the thing gaslighting you isn’t the people in your life, but the feed that profits from your vigilance?
What if the constant “you’re not safe” disguised as insight is shaping your worldview more than your lived experience ever did?
What if the loudest voice in the room is the algorithm telling you who’s dangerous, who’s toxic, who’s emotionally immature — without ever meeting them?
As Gabor Maté explores in The Myth of Normal, our culture conditions the way we interpret everything long before we’re conscious of it. Online, that conditioning is relentless.
Maybe your family isn’t more dangerous now.
Maybe nothing about them has changed at all.
Maybe the only thing that shifted is the way you read the room because your lens is different now.
And before you decide this means something is wrong with them, there’s one more truth worth noticing.
When you step out of a pattern — especially one you lived inside for a long time — you start noticing things you never had the capacity to see or feel before. The pattern didn’t change. You did.
And that’s where the misunderstanding often begins.
Because if something doesn’t make them feel bad, it isn’t their problem.
If someone can drink without spiraling the next day, drinking isn’t their issue.
If sarcasm feels like connection to them, it isn’t their wound.
If avoidance keeps them steady, avoidance isn’t the dysfunction.
You’re the one who feels the impact.
You’re the one with the new awareness.
You’re the one who’s changing.
And with that awareness comes agency, not blame. It gives you the ability to choose for yourself, not to judge others.
Vignette 1: The Family Gathering
You’re sitting at a family dinner and the conversation slips into the familiar rhythm — teasing, venting, little pockets of tension that everyone else seems completely comfortable in. You used to move inside this effortlessly. Now your whole body feels out of sync.
The thought comes fast: They’re so unhealthy. I can’t believe this used to feel normal.
But if you look again…
they’re laughing.
They feel close.
This dynamic works for them.
Their systems regulate here.
You’re the one who changed.
Not because you’re better or wiser, but because something in your system shifted. What once felt like belonging now feels like contraction. And the ache you feel isn’t proof that they’re the problem. It’s proof that you stepped out of a pattern that once made sense.
Vignette 2: The Friend Group That Still Gossips
You meet up with friends you’ve had for years — the ones who bonded through shared opinions, sharp humor, and talking about people who weren’t in the room. It always felt lively. Familiar. Easy.
Tonight, it hits differently.
Your body recoils. You feel quieter. You don’t know how to jump in.
And for a moment, the superiority lens snaps into place: I’ve outgrown this.
But then you notice something else…
they’re still connecting.
They’re laughing.
They’re close.
This pattern works for them.
You’re the one who can’t land there anymore. You’re the one who fell out of sync.
Your discomfort isn’t a sign of their stuckness. It’s a sign of your shift.
Patterns aren’t wrong.
They’re just… patterns.
And they only become problems when they stop working for the person in them.
And what hurts isn’t judgment.
It’s grief.
The Grief No One Talks About
Every pattern you outgrow comes with a grief.
You stop drinking and feel the ache of no longer belonging to the ritual.
You stop gossiping and feel the emptiness of losing the “easy” way you once bonded.
You show up with emotional honesty and suddenly feel like too much in a room full of people who aren’t ready to go there yet.
This grief isn’t proof you made the wrong choice.
It’s proof you have a living, breathing nervous system that recognizes connection — even when the form of that connection no longer fits.
As Tara Brach writes in Radical Acceptance, healing doesn’t erase pain. It simply lets you meet your experience with compassion instead of self-attack.
Seeing Patterns Without Turning People Into Problems
This is where the lens clears.
Where your body finally exhales.
Where you stand in your own life without needing anyone else to join you.
People don’t behave in dysfunctional ways.
People behave in patterned ways.
And patterns are only problems when they stop working for the person in them.
Your pattern stopped working for you.
That’s all.
As Marshall Rosenberg teaches in Nonviolent Communication, when we start seeing behavior through the lens of needs instead of flaws, relationships soften, and clarity becomes possible.
You don’t have to make anyone wrong to honor what’s true for you.
You don’t have to justify your choices.
You don’t have to moralize your healing or weaponize your awareness.
You can simply choose what’s true for you now.
And let that be enough.
Choosing Your Lens On Purpose
The hopeful part is that you’re not stuck with the lens you inherited or the one social media handed you.
You get to choose:
voices that calm your system
ideas that widen your compassion
teachers who deepen your clarity
books that remind you of your inherent goodness
language that helps you feel grounded, not guarded
As Thich Nhat Hanh writes in Peace Is Every Step, awareness isn’t about finding fault — it’s about returning to presence.
Through a clear lens, the world doesn’t become perfect.
It becomes truer.
And in that truth, you feel yourself again — not the sober one at the drunk party, not the judge, not the one floating above it all or stuck below it all.
Just a human being, standing in your own life, responding honestly to what’s here.
A Final Word
Healing doesn’t lift you above the life you’ve lived.
It doesn’t place you on higher ground or make you untouchable.
It doesn’t scrub away the patterns or erase the history that shaped you.
It simply gives you a clearer way of seeing — one that doesn’t require anyone to be the villain, including you.
Real growth isn’t the moment you rise above your old patterns.
It’s the moment you can look at them without flinching.
It’s realizing you can let people be exactly who they are without twisting yourself into the version that used to keep the peace.
It’s knowing your pain is true without needing anyone else to name it, match it, or understand it for it to matter.
It’s choosing the lens that aligns with what your body knows now, even if no one else sees what you see.
You’re not here to transcend your humanity.
You’re here to live inside it.
To inhabit the quiet truth that was always there beneath the noise.
To feel your way into a life that fits you, even if it no longer fits the rooms you once belonged to.
It was never about them.
It was always about you finding your way back to yourself.
If you’re noticing that your lens has changed, or that the one you’ve been handed no longer fits, here is a list of books that are companions for that shift. They don’t tell you who’s right or wrong. They help your system settle enough to see patterns without turning people into problems, and to choose clarity without needing superiority.
Starter Reading: Gentle, Warm, and Digestible
(Books your system can metabolize with ease)
- Anchored — Deb Dana A practical and accessible guide to understanding your nervous system through the lens of Polyvagal Theory, helping you find a sense of safety and connection within yourself.
- Peace Is Every Step — Thich Nhat Hanh Simple, profound mindfulness practices that transform everyday activities into moments of peace and presence, without requiring any belief system.
- When Things Fall Apart — Pema Chödrön Compassionate and wise counsel for navigating life’s most difficult moments, teaching you how to stay open to pain and meet uncertainty with courage.
- Consolations — David Whyte Short, poetic essays that redefine everyday words like “pain,” “joy,” and “vulnerability,” revealing their deeper meanings and offering a more compassionate way of seeing.
- Anam Cara — John O’Donohue A poetic and mystical exploration of friendship, solitude, and love that feels less like philosophy and more like a conversation with a wise friend.
- Kitchen Table Wisdom — Rachel Naomi Remen Stories from a physician’s life that illuminate the universal truths of suffering, healing, and connection with warmth and humility.
- Devotions — Mary Oliver A curated collection of poems that gently pull you out of abstraction and back into the natural world, the body, and lived experience.
- Real Love — Sharon Salzberg A clear, grounded look at love as a daily practice of presence, care, and connection, written in accessible, non-dogmatic language.
- Loving What Is — Byron Katie Introduces a simple inquiry process for questioning stressful thoughts, helping loosen rigid interpretations and soften judgment.
- In the Shelter — Pádraig Ó Tuama Lyrical, story-based reflections on what it means to be truly seen, holding conflict and complexity with grace and deep humanity.
Reading to Go Deeper: Nuance, Systems, and Hope
(Books that widen your field of view and provide a sturdy, intellectual basis for hope)
- Humankind: A Hopeful History — Rutger Bregman A sweeping, evidence-based argument that humans are fundamentally cooperative and kind, offering a powerful counter-narrative to cynicism.
- A Paradise Built in Hell — Rebecca Solnit An exploration of how people respond to disaster with generosity and mutual aid, revealing our instinct toward connection rather than collapse.
- The Myth of Normal — Gabor Maté A rigorous examination of how culture shapes suffering, moving the lens away from individual blame and toward systemic understanding.
- Radical Acceptance — Tara Brach A foundational work on compassion-based psychology and healing, offering practical ways to loosen shame and meet life as it is.
- Nonviolent Communication — Marshall Rosenberg A complete framework for understanding human behavior through needs rather than faults, transforming how conflict and connection are understood.
- Becoming Wise — Krista Tippett Drawn from years of conversations with scientists, poets, and thinkers, this book models how to hold complexity, nuance, and humility together.
- All About Love — bell hooks A cultural and personal reimagining of love as a practice of care, responsibility, and knowledge rather than sentiment.
- A Hidden Wholeness — Parker J. Palmer
- Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart — Mark Epstein Integrates contemplative insight with modern psychotherapy, offering a grounded way to stay whole during inner change without spiritualizing pain.
- The Wild Edge of Sorrow — Francis Weller A profound exploration of grief, ritual, and community that reframes sorrow as a natural and necessary part of being human.
Embracing Shadows, Illuminating Hope,
Chelsey Fjeldheim, LCSW
Empowering Souls on the Path of Healing
Copyright © 2025 Chelsey Fjeldheim, Courage Speaks Counseling
