What happens when old patterns strike - and how to manage them

I was on a date the other day, and the man - let’s call him Luke - caused quite an internal ruckus in me.

Here’s what happened:

As a foreigner, I hear two questions more than any others:

• Where are you from? I can’t quite place your accent. You’ve got a Scottish twang here and there.

• Why did you come here?

I normally answer those happily, because my story isn’t the usual “I met someone and emigrated” one.

This time, though, it turned into something that spiralled me straight into internal anger, hurt, and old wounds tearing open. By the end of this, you’ll know what happened, and you’ll also have a clearer sense of how to recognise your own triggers and patterns - and how to start working with them.

The question that opened the door

We were waiting for our order when Luke asked the “Why did you come here?” question first, followed by questions about the emigration itself.

So I told him the truth.

I told him how I did the emigration pretty much on my own. How the process started end of November 2016, and how the following (nearly) four months were spent dissolving my entire household in Germany. I was 40 at the time - which means I had accumulated a lot of stuff, a lot of history, and a lot of emotional weight.

I told him how I hired a rental van, how a dear friend drove it, while I followed in my car with my two cats, and one of my best friends. How this friend was meant to provide moral support, but instead added strain. How I drove for 18 hours with only a 20-minute break because my cats went berserk the moment I stopped. How, by the time I finally lay down in my bed in my new home, I had been awake for more than 36 hours.

The emigration took a lot out of me, even though I didn’t want to admit it back then. I lost friends. I cut ties with what remained of my family - a toxic one. I said goodbye to 40 years of life in my home country.

It took me years to accept that this was a traumatic event for my nervous system. For a long time, I told myself: “It wasn’t a big deal. It was easy. What’s the fuss?” It wasn’t. And I no longer hide that.

When ego kicks in

And then it happened.

Because I was open and vulnerable, Luke’s fear, his ego, his belief system kicked in - and he started diminishing my achievements and experience.

He said things like, “That wasn’t that difficult, you just had to drive.” This from a man who had just told me he doesn’t drive outside the UK because it’s the wrong side of the road, while I drove my German car on the - for me - wrong side.

He also said I “shouldn’t have cut ties with my family. Family means everything.”

By that point, I had already told him I come from a broken family. I hadn’t gone into the abuse or the depth of the toxicity yet, but I had been clear that my chosen family consists of my best friend. In fact, I had been raving about him - about what it means to have someone who truly sticks with you for the last 16 years.

Luke didn’t stop there. He also tried to put me down by defending the friend who had been with me in the car during the move. Luke knew nothing about me nor my friends at that point.

What actually happened on that drive

That friend - whom I still love - wasn’t driving. He never got his driver’s licence. I brought him because he loved Scotland as much as I do, and because he had muscle. He was meant to manage the music, hand me food and drinks, and keep me awake. That was the agreement. In return, he got a free trip, free food and stay.

My friend at Chatelherault Country Park, just an hour after we had arrived.

What actually happened was this: he listened only to his own music on headphones, despite us sharing a huge overlap in music taste. He brought his own food, even though we had discussed it in detail and I had shopped for him - including meat, despite being vegan myself. Most of that food went in the bin. He slept for most of the drive while I fought exhaustion. There was more, but I spare you any more detail.

On top of that came my emotional strain. I was in limbo. I had given up my flat in Germany, so there was no going back. I wasn’t yet in Scotland. I didn’t know if I’d have a bed that night - for myself or my cats. What if the flat I was renting turned out to be not usable? I didn’t know whether my cats would even be allowed through the tunnel.

And lo and behold, there were problems.

The vets couldn’t find the chip in one of my cats, Skye. For ten minutes, they scanned her again and again until they finally found it - it had migrated in her tiny body. She and her brother were only about one and a half years old.

If the vets hadn’t found that chip, everything would have ended right there. I would have been stuck at the border, with no place to go, not to speak of the financial loss by losing the channel ticket, having to pay an additional £1000 for the rental van etc.

Even now, writing this, I can still feel the faint echo of that horror. The loneliness. The strain. My friends weren’t helpful. Instead, they bombarded me with questions: “Are you sure she was chipped?”, “What if it doesn’t work?”

What I needed was a hug. Some grounding words. Not questions that amplified the fear.

Today, I can see that I was deep in masculine energy back then - hyper-focused, problem-solving, outcome-driven. My friends slipped into feminine energy and unconsciously expected me to hold them as well.

Back then, I didn’t have that language. I only knew that it was horrifying, and I felt lost, lonely, and angry too.

The first sunset from my first flat in Scotland.

Patterns repeating

Anyhow, Luke’s behaviour was judgemental and gaslighting. He couldn’t see beyond his own triggers.

I know my emigration story triggered him. He told me he never had the guts to do something like that, even though he’d dreamed of living in Australia. He’s 55.

I went through with it. I gave up 40 years of life. I did the journey. I started again in a strange country. And then I launched my own business at the beginning of Covid.

But he’s not the only one who reacted like that.

A former female best friend of ten years was triggered for the same reason. She always dreamed of emigrating and never did. To the brain, that kind of leap can register as a pure threat, and therefore, makes people speak of fear, resentment, and jealousy.

I left my comfort zone in ways that were genuinely risky. For example, when I drove I didn’t stop overnight because I wanted the cats out of their big dog transport box as quickly as possible. I drove exhausted, unsupported, carrying all responsibility alone.

Then I had to build a life here.

And it hasn’t been pretty.

Not because the Scots aren’t welcoming - they are - but because I was scammed by the people I rented from and had to move again after four months. Promises around money and work weren’t kept. One colleague later (actually a Scot) even called me a Nazi on several occasions. HR shrugged it off as “his humour”. That still makes me angry.

And my date? He even blamed me for not having family or a solid friends network here, completely ignoring the fact that my bestie exists. As if a friendship that survived an emigration, and being connected via online calls, messaging, and normal calls is not worth anything.

That was the moment I ended the evening and left.

Loss after loss

I came to Scotland empty-handed, except for that one ton of belongings in the van. Friends stayed behind in Germany. Family ties were long cut, with many family members also simply dead.

The first friends circle I built here fell apart because of one toxic person I didn’t spot early enough.

The second fell apart when my dad died. I told them. Then came eight days of silence. Eight days. Only one person checked in.

People retreat into their own fear around death instead of showing up, and leave you hanging when you need them most. The same thing happened when my mother died years earlier.

On day eight, I cut ties with all but the one who was there.

Then I changed jobs. The first three months were great. Then a new team lead arrived, and every foreigner was bullied out. I was the last to leave. At the beginning of Covid.

During Covid, I built my business. I made a friend. About three years later, that friendship imploded over broken agreements and attempted exploitation.

I’ve been in Scotland for eight and a half years now.

Given the first three years of instability, two years of Covid, and only around three years since some semblance of normality returned, I’ve done pretty well for myself.

And yet Luke framed my lack of family and long-term friendships here as a character flaw.

Strathaven park. One of the very first pictures I took all those years ago. Home.

What it really touched

What his behaviour triggered in me is:

• The fear of being erased.

• Of being invisible.

• Of being disregarded.

I come from a deeply toxic and abusive background. My achievements were never celebrated. They were minimised, criticised, or claimed by others.

A B+ at school meant being shouted at for not getting an A. For sixteen years. I grew up believing I was a terrible student, while objectively being way above average.

I’m creative and a natural solution-finder. Throughout my career, others claimed my ideas and solutions as their own. When I spoke up, I was sidelined. One boss even told me outright that my idea would be credited to someone else because she was “a bit daft” and needed the credits.

I have a strong singing voice and trained in opera. I paid for that training myself, privately, with three different teachers over roughly six years in total.

My parents claimed my voice, my skill, and my achievements as their success.

At the same time, they forbade me from pursuing a music career because it “cost too much money”. I had wanted to sing professionally since I was three years old, and had pestered them until I gave up when I was 16.

So there they were, taking credit for my voice, my discipline, my progress, my applause - while actively blocking the path early on that voice was meant to take.

Those are just a few examples.

So when Luke diminished my experience of the past ~9 years, my system went into full red alert.

The response

I stayed calm on the outside the whole time. I told him: “I feel very upset right now and tensed up, and I want to end this date now. I do not think that we are a good match. Thank you, Luke, for your time today.” and left.

At home, old programming came flooding back:

• Visibility and vulnerability leads to others taking credit

• Achievement leads to erasure and belittling

• Speaking up leads to punishment and humiliation

• Being excellent is never good enough

That was a textbook trauma response.

For me, this experience with him is very fresh and raw. It only happened last week.

The reason why I am sharing this though is because no matter how another person reacts, that reaction belongs to them. What matters is what it activates in you, and that activation is incredibly valuable information.

Acknowledging it is step one

Acknowledge boundaries: Luke was not the right fit, because of the mismatch of integrity, self-awareness, responsibility, kindness, and core values. 

Acknowledge triggers: it was an important lesson that led to more self-awareness, instead of blaming him.

👉 “What just got touched in me?”

👉 “What does this remind me of?”

Naming it is step two 

“I am good at what I do.”

“I did the best I could with the resources and awareness I had at the time.”

“The way the other person reacts is about their inner world, not my worth.”

And then comes step three

Sitting with it. Not bypassing it, nor explaining it away, nor being ‘above it’. But staying present with the sensation, the emotion, the memory, and letting the nervous system learn that this moment is not the past.

The work is to interrupt that automation. To pause and ask:

• Why did I just react like that?

• What belief or pattern got activated?

• Where did it originate?

• How has it shaped my choices so far?

• How does it shape the way I relate to others?

  
  

The moment you genuinely acknowledge a pattern, you start withdrawing its power.

It’s like switching on the big light and realising that the terrifying shadow on the wall is just a coat you forgot you hung there, because you need to mend a seam. You can mend it, tidy it up right now, and the fear has already eased away.

I hope this little part of my journey helped you gain clarity on something that might be bothering you. A pattern that pops up repeatedly, something that interrupts you and makes you feel weird or even bad.

As I said above: acknowledging it already takes some, sometimes all, of its power away.

When you hit a snag like this and get stuck on it, remember that I am always here to talk.

Judgment free and with all my compassion for you and your journey.

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