Breaking Toxic Cycles Starts With Understanding the Need Beneath the Pattern

by Sharn Somasiri
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Most people try to break toxic cycles by changing their behaviour. They push themselves to stop people-pleasing, stop reacting, stop overthinking, stop choosing emotionally unavailable partners, stop shutting down and when it doesn’t work, they blame themselves.

But the truth is this:
you cannot break a pattern until you understand the purpose it once served.

Every toxic cycle began as a survival strategy. A child who grew up in an unpredictable or emotionally unsafe environment doesn’t develop patterns because they are flawed they develop patterns because that is how they stayed safe, accepted or emotionally protected.

When you look at behaviours through this lens, everything changes.

People-pleasing once prevented conflict.
Hypervigilance once kept you prepared for instability.
Shutting down once protected you from overwhelm.
Overachieving once earned you love or validation.
Avoidance once helped you avoid pain.
Staying in unhealthy relationships once felt safer than being alone.

These behaviours were not failures. They were solutions, outdated ones, yes, but solutions nonetheless.

Modern trauma psychology, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment theory, polyvagal theory and somatic trauma research, all point to the same conclusion:
a pattern remains in place for as long as the underlying emotional need remains unmet.
When that need is understood and healed, the behaviour loses its purpose and it naturally dissolves.

The need beneath a pattern might have been safety, belonging, protection, predictability, affection, or simply peace. When that core need goes unresolved, adults continue acting out the behaviour automatically, even when it causes pain. They’re not choosing the pattern, the pattern is choosing them.

This is why willpower doesn’t break toxic cycles. Why self-blame doesn’t fix anything. Why “just stop doing that” advice never works. The cycle isn’t a discipline problem; it’s an emotional imprint.

Trauma-informed coaching approaches this differently. Instead of attacking the behaviour, we explore the emotional architecture beneath it. We identify the inner part that created the pattern, understand what it was trying to protect you from, and use methods like Core Transformation and inner child healing to resolve the root emotional wound.

When this deeper work happens, clients often say the pattern simply… stops. Not because they forced it, but because the emotional need that kept it alive finally receives the safety and support it always needed.

Healing doesn’t remove the past.
It removes the need to keep repeating it.

And that’s how toxic cycles truly end, not through force, but through understanding, compassion and emotional repair.