Discovering the Patterns That Create Our Catastrophes

I stumbled across a Mark Twain quote on YouTube recently that stopped me in my tracks: "I've suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened."

The truth hit me like a lightning bolt. Most of the really difficult times in my life were made by none other than yours truly. The catastrophes weren't external events - they were the result of my own thinking and, more importantly, my emotional baggage.

Here's what I've discovered: emotional baggage has a way of generating itself. The more you have, the more you create. It becomes a vicious spiral, spinning out of control until those imagined catastrophes become very real relationship disasters, professional failures, and personal struggles.

But recently, something remarkable happened. My dreams started talking to me.

When Dreams Become Teachers

Three weeks ago, I had a dream about a student I taught years ago - an elementary school girl who had transferred from an international school to a Japanese school. She could speak English beautifully, but when I asked her to describe school activities, she got stuck on Japanese words that had no English equivalent.

Instead of letting it go, dream-me wouldn't give up. I kept pushing her to stretch her English, to find ways to describe the situation even without the perfect word. She grew frustrated and impatient with me, but I persisted. I was demanding more than she felt capable of giving.

When I woke up, the message was crystal clear. This wasn't just about that student - this was about me. About a pattern I'd been carrying for years without fully recognizing it.

I am overly demanding.

Not in an obvious, harsh way. It's subtle, implied, never overt. But it creates frustration in people I work with, students I teach, even friends and family. It creates what I call "antipathetic situations" - unless the other person is exceptionally patient and can think, "Oh well, that's just Les. He's just like that."

The Paradox of Past Catastrophes

Looking back, I can see how this demanding pattern contributed to many of my self-created catastrophes. But here's the strange part - I also created catastrophes from the opposite extreme.

There was a time when I was a terrible teacher because I couldn't draw a line in the sand and keep it. I couldn't make rules for children and then stick to my own rules. I was so desperate for acceptance and approval that I became wishy-washy, bending every boundary I tried to set.

Two sides of the same coin: sometimes too demanding, sometimes too accommodating. Both rooted in that deep need for other people's approval. Both patterns buried in my emotional baggage, creating havoc in my relationships and work.

The difference now? I have tools to deal with it.

The Scanning Breath: Emotional Archaeology

For years, I've been practicing something I call the scanning breath. It's like emotional archaeology - carefully excavating buried patterns and dissolving them before they can create more catastrophes.

Here's how it works: When I identify a feeling or pattern (like my demanding nature), I use the scanning breath to find where it lives in my body. I revisit all the situations I can remember where this pattern showed up, feeling it fully while maintaining the breath.

With my demanding pattern, the feeling crystallized in my lower left abdomen - not a physical knot, but what I can only describe as an energy knot. As I worked with it through multiple memories and situations, it became clearer and more focused.

Then something magical happens. The feeling starts to flicker. It gets thinner and thinner until it simply evaporates. It's not there anymore.

The Ongoing Journey

The scanning breath is helping me continually - this isn't past tense, it's present continuous. As I work more and more with my need for approval, I am becoming less and less obsequious. I don't need people's approval or kind thinking toward me the way I used to.

This gives me a certain independence, a distance between others and myself that they seem to respect. I think they sense it as internal strength. But I'll be honest - I'm not as "cute" as I used to be. There's a cost to emotional growth.

The demanding teacher side is brand new territory for me. I only started working on it after that dream, so I can't tell you how it will develop. But I'm totally confident it will be for the better.

If I had been able to feel these emotional patterns in my body years ago and dissolve them with the scanning breath, I think I would have avoided a lot of grief and many catastrophes in my life.

A Practical Starting Point

If you recognize demanding patterns or boundary issues in yourself, here's where to start: Go back to those difficult situations and try to relive them as much as you can while doing scanning breath work.

But here's the crucial part - the scanning breath is absolutely essential. If you simply relive those situations without the breath work, you're just regurgitating them, making them stronger. The breath work is what dissipates them.

Be patient. Sometimes the feelings seem to intensify for 15 minutes, sometimes even 30 minutes. But then, within about 10 minutes, they suddenly evaporate. Patience and never giving up are vital for this work.

Don't expect to notice these patterns in your dreams right away. I've only started receiving these dream messages in the last three weeks, after years of scanning breath practice. But when it happens, the clarity is remarkable. You wake up knowing with absolute certainty what the pattern is and that you can deal with it.

The Real Catastrophes

Mark Twain was right - most of our catastrophes never actually happen. They exist in our minds, generated by emotional baggage we've been carrying for years. But the real catastrophe would be continuing to carry these patterns without recognizing them.

Our dreams, it turns out, can be powerful allies in this recognition. They hold up mirrors to show us exactly what we need to see, when we're ready to see it.

The catastrophes that seemed so overwhelming? They become workable problems. The emotional baggage that felt insurmountable? It dissolves, one breath at a time.

Most importantly, the new catastrophes we might create tomorrow? They become avoidable, because we finally have the tools to recognize and release the patterns before they spiral out of control.

After all, the best way to deal with a catastrophe is to prevent it from happening in the first place.