14/08/2026
Why do I keep doing things I don't actually want to do?
You know you don't want to say yes.
You know you want to have that conversation.
You know you need to leave.
You know that scrolling for another hour isn't going to make you feel better.
You know that this isn't the relationship you want.
And yet, when the moment comes, you do it again.
Sometimes we even understand very well what we are doing.
We recognize the people-pleasing, the avoidance, the controlling, the procrastination, the shutting down.
We might even understand where these patterns come from.
And still, we find ourselves repeating them.
Instead of asking:
“Why am I doing this?”
I find it much more useful to ask:
“Why did I need to behave in this way?”
And:
“What was the positive intention behind it?”
Because even behaviours that are painful and limiting can have developed in an attempt to meet a need.
People-pleasing might have been a way of preserving connection.
Avoidance might have helped us escape an experience that felt unbearable.
Controlling might have given us a sense of safety when we didn't have much influence over what was happening around us.
Suppressing our needs might have helped us remain connected when expressing them threatened connection.
The strategy can be problematic and still make sense.
Once we understand the intention behind the behaviour, we can ask:
What did I need in this moment and didn't receive?
This question leads us to the unmet need and the wound it created.
We don't have to fight the part of us that keeps reproducing the behaviour.
We can take responsibility for the need underneath it and start meeting it differently.
As we do this, the old strategy becomes less necessary.
And a different response emerges without having to be forced through will or conscious effort.
This is part of what I mean by a regenerative approach to healing.
We are not trying to remove or manage what we don't want.
We are working from a different paradigm:
What kind of nourishment is needed for growth to happen?
When the need is actually tended to, the new response doesn't feel like a decision we have to impose on ourselves.
It feels more like something that becomes natural.
My clients often tell me they find themselves responding differently, sometimes with a little gleeful surprise, because they hadn't consciously decided to respond differently.
This is what embodied change feels like.
No monitoring.
No second-guessing.
No rehearsing.
No awkwardness.
It's the difference between performing a new behaviour and having something genuinely reorganize inside you.
Want to dive deeper into your patterns?
In Pearl Diving, we explore the positive intentions and unmet needs underneath the patterns that keep repeating, and learn to tend to them differently.
So that change doesn't have to be forced.
Discover the Pearl Diving Program on my website: https://www.momoko-healing.com/welcome/offers/
