How does one square a circle at the best of times? Psychology, spirituality, emotions can so easily conspire to make us go round in circles when trying to analyse ourselves, let alone help us break an inhibiting and constraining emotional pattern. When mathematicians have argued from their standpoint on how it might be done and fallen out over it, it can be no surprise that to square a vicious circle of emotional behaviour can challenge a psychologist or counsellor even more. Yet I believe in large measure it can be achieved.

We are each a bearer of our own behavioural patterning, much of it established unwittingly or ignorantly in our childhood and if uncorrected, it is then borne by us into and onwards through our adult lives. Evidence of it, when it resurfaces, can even puzzle or shock the bearer when he or she experiences it.

Any ten things can leave any one of us unmoved, untroubled, undisturbed. Yet an eleventh can trigger in us unaccountable hurt, anger, fear, depression or a multitude of other emotional responses. Try this exercise in a group and in the unlikely event that two participants apparently will experience a similar response to a stimulus, analysis will soon show that the detail of each person’s response is actually fundamentally different.

Questioning any person experiencing the unusual response can often seem to set in train an increasing circle of a stimulus leading to an unaccountably disturbed reaction to it, then to more emotional contemplation of the stimulus, which in turn heightens the disturbed reaction still more, which further accentuates the effect of the stimulus and so on, round and round.

Sometimes if you try to break the circle and ask the person experiencing the response if they can recall any link back to its origin, they can. But very often they cannot. It can reside in the dimmest part of our childhood only to be identified after detailed personal reflection or professional help. Without that, such emotional patterns remain circular and unresolved, perpetually crippling our self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of self-worth. More weird, is that we are often ignorant of their presence within us. » Read more: Squaring Circles: Psychologically Speaking