Friday Check-In: Notice Emotional Patterns and Habits

Marina
Jul 25
2 min read

🎶 Said it's Friday night… Oh, it's goin' down again… 🎶

How are you doing, really?

Feeling recharged and ready to mingle? Or already melting into the couch with Netflix? Maybe you’re just longing for silence and sleep.

After two packed weeks of work, an intense three-day S3 Practitioner course, and swirling personal matters, I can honestly say I’m grateful for the weekend. My body and mind are asking for one thing: space to decompress.

This week, I caught myself falling into a familiar pattern: craving sweets when stretched thin. Not because I’m hungry, but because sugar soothes and comforts me. Hello, dopamine spike! 🤩 That made me pause. What are these emotional patterns and habits that keep showing up, and why?

Emotional Patterns And Habits - What’s Going On in Our Brains?

Let’s get nerdy for a second. This is so worth knowing.

Habits are behaviors you repeat until they run on autopilot, stored in the basal ganglia of our brain and reinforced by dopamine. Think brushing your teeth, locking the door, or checking your phone. Familiar, efficient, automatic.

Patterns go deeper. They’re emotional or relational loops like people-pleasing, overworking, procrastination, doomscrolling, or emotional eating. They’re often tied to deeper needs like safety, control, or connection, and involve your amygdala (fear), hippocampus (memory), and prefrontal cortex (decision-making).

In short:

➡️ Habits are what you do repeatedly

➡️ Patterns are what you fall into emotionally, often without realizing it

So Why Do We Repeat Emotional Patterns That Drain Us?

Because they work, at least temporarily. They soothe, distract, and protect. Until they don’t.

These reactions often form early on. Even if the situation has changed, your nervous system still runs the old program, like outdated software in the background.