The Patterns We Choose Not to See

Reflecting on how to gently shift our patterns

North Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Autumn shows up every year and knocks me on my back, a bully wielding damp air and dark skies. I should know it’s coming. It’s not a hard pattern to spot. But the heat of summer lulls me into willing amnesia, letting the big bad sneak up on me. Whack! Here we go again.

My deep love for fall—the changing trees, relief from humidity, fresh school supplies, crisp apples—compounds the problem. It’s my favorite season. I look forward to it all year. Surely, I adore autumn too much for it to hurt me, right?

Wrong.

My problem with fall isn’t the weather or the short days per se, although I do prefer the mild, sunny, longer days of September to October and November. No, it’s what the seasonal change does to my body each year that disrupts my equilibrium.

I’ve lived with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) since I was a teenager. The symptoms of RA include the kind of joint pain that we associate with osteoarthritis, the wear-and-tear kind that comes with joint use, injury, and/or aging. But RA also involves severe joint swelling and stiffness that can last hours, progressive damage to the joints, stiffness, severe fatigue, fever, brain fog, insomnia, and whole-body inflammation that can impact any organ in the body. In other words, RA is a systemic condition, not just an orthopedic problem. Given that RA is an autoimmune condition, its symptoms can fluctuate wildly from hour to hour, day to day, set off by other illness, physical or mental stress, overexertion, and yes, weather and seasonal changes.

The start of autumn is the hardest seasonal adjustment for me. This wasn’t always the case; spring used to be my nemesis. But for the last dozen years, autumn has become both my delight and my torment. While I do deal with an upswing in pain and stiffness, I find the brain fog and exhaustion to be so much more disruptive to my life. So much of my life is centered around high-paced mental sharpness. RA in the fall steals that from me. My only recourse is to get as much mental and physical rest and comfort as possible.

I was journaling about this seasonal pattern and recognized that part of why I overlook autumn’s impact on my RA every year is because it’s convenient to do so. I don’t want to anticipate feeling this way before it happens. I just want to imagine vibrant landscapes and cozy sweaters. Anticipating the pattern puts my grief over not having the health I desire front and center. My pattern comes from a self-protective part of me that wants to spare me pain.

The downside of this pattern, however, is that I’m inevitably surprised by my “sudden” health symptoms. I’m unprepared to need to slow down and temporarily adjust my way of working, my creative practices.

These are consequences I’m not content to suffer every year. I’ve added a note to my calendar for next August, when I do my planning for the fall, with a gentle reminder that I need to leave space in my fall schedule for what my body needs. My hope is that shifting my planning and modulating my expectations of how productive I can be, I’ll find it easier to get through next fall.

I haven’t had the mental space to fully reflect on this idea of willfully overlooking patterns in our lives. Maybe in the coming weeks, when my body settles into its autumn normal, I’ll be able to come to some profound insights. If I do, I’ll share them with you. In the meantime, I thought I’d share some reflection questions that I’ve been journaling about as I work through this pattern in my life. I hope they’ll be helpful to you, too!

In the meantime, I’m going to honor my body’s needs and try to appreciate as much of fall as possible. Ultimately, I’m still grateful to live in an area that has all the gorgeous scenery, apple cider, and pumpkin patches of a novel. Perhaps being more aware of my patterns will help me find more ways to enjoy that abundance next year.

---

Reflection/Journaling Questions:

• What patterns are repeating in your life that you would like to explore? What might you want to change about one of those patterns?
  

• Why are do some patterns catch you off guard? How does that serve or benefit you in some way?
  

• What has gotten in the way of changing this pattern or other similar patterns in the past? How can the person you are today do something different from or better than your old self to shift this pattern?
  

• What is one small step you can take to begin to shift this pattern? Can you divide it into even smaller steps, so that you are more likely to be able to accomplish each one?
  

• Who will support you in changing your patterns? Who will you choose not to invite into this process because they will not support you in the ways you desire?
  

• How will you know if you’re making slow progress as opposed to being stuck? How will you keep your motivation up to take the next steps?
  

• What will you do to celebrate your progress? Who will join you in this celebration?
  

---