The Dreamer or Leaving Pattern: finding refuge far from physical reality
The Leaving pattern is one of five personality patterns described in Brennan Healing Science. It is characterised by a tendency to withdraw from the body and physical reality when life feels overwhelming, often finding refuge in the mind, imagination or spiritual realms.
How often does your mind drift away? Do you have a tendency to "space out" especially when stressed? Do you often find refuge in your mind or in a fantasy world? Does the world seem overly crowded, loud, intense to you? Are you full of ideas and creativity yet not really taking action on any of these beautiful projects?
While most people could resonate with some of these statements, those who run the Dreamer, or Leaving pattern will experience them the most vividly. The Leaving pattern is one of the five personality patterns I introduced in this previous article. As a reminder, personality patterns describe the usual way someone experiences their body, energy, emotions and psychology. They are more vividly activated in stressful situations but may also impact many aspects of one’s life by shaping their unconscious beliefs and the ways they perceive reality.
The Leaving pattern (also called Dreamer or Schizoid) is the one that formed the earliest in life, and reading about it can touch very tender places in you. If you relate strongly to this pattern and find this article triggering in any way, I invite you to read about resourcing to help you ground and replenish.
And for now, let's set our intention to discover this pattern in a way that serves you best.
Where does the Leaving pattern come from?
As with all personality patterns in Brennan Healing Science, the Leaving pattern originated as a strategy to avoid the pain of an overwhelming event (the wound). In this case, the wound typically occurred before or around the time of birth. It may have involved a difficult birth, a crisis in the family during or shortly after the pregnancy, a womb that contained some levels of toxicity, a parent not willing or unsure about having a child, or more globally an environment that was perceived as hostile by the baby. Whatever the event, it led the baby to feel like they were not safe and not welcomed in this world. Because this event happened before the child had any capacity to process emotions, it created an enormous overwhelm in their system with only one available response to cope: energetically leaving. The child's consciousness fragmented: pieces pulled away from the body and from full incarnation in an attempt to escape. This is what we call "Soul Loss" in shamanism.
Fragmenting is always an intense stress response but doing so as a baby, before having developed a sense of Core, means that recovery is very difficult, slow and often incomplete. Indeed, gathering the self again would normally necessitate having an inner anchor to come back to. Without it, most people who experienced such early trauma still have parts of them that never really got back in their body. For this reason, their connection to the physical world and to their own body is often weak.
What are the unconscious beliefs associated with the Leaving pattern?
Some unconscious beliefs frequently held by people running this pattern are:
It's not safe to be here. People are not safe.
If I come fully alive, I will die. (double bind)
How does the Leaving pattern show up in daily life?
People running the Leaving pattern often recognise themselves in some of the following:
✨ Chronic fear and anxiety.
Fear is the predominant emotion for people who strongly run this pattern. This reflects their difficulty to ground and find safety in their body and life.
✨ A tendency to check out when a conversation or a situation becomes too charged.
There is a wide spectrum to this: it could be by becoming very rational (checking out from one's emotions), dissociating (leaving the body/ physical world behind: think glazed eyes and absent-mindedness), leaving the room or the conversation altogether, or in intense cases going to a full preverbal regression and losing the ability to talk at all (it may feel like one's brain went blank or is "bugging").
✨ A hypersensitivity to any form of rejection
Of course everyone may feel hurt when rejected, but for people who have this wound, it may touch the deep existential hurt of not knowing that they are welcome in their life, that they have a right to exist, or that they belong. Rejection may feel very threatening of their very right to exist, in a way that may not seem proportionate to others.
✨ The tendency to live a cautious life in order to avoid any overwhelm
People running primarily this pattern typically have a very sensitive system, with little sense of boundaries, core and grounding, leaving them vulnerable to stress and external stimuli as a result. As we saw previously, overwhelm can cause them to fragment which is difficult to recover from - they may therefore develop a fear of fear and choose to live a life with lower amounts of stimulation.
✨ A rich, often very developed inner and imaginative life, sometimes more vivid or comfortable than "real life" itself. This is also one of the gifts of this pattern.
✨ A strong connection to spirituality which often feels safer than physical reality
Some pieces of their consciousness are often still hanging "up there", in the spiritual world. It is therefore usually easy for them to connect with these realms and altered states of consciousness.
✨ Real discomfort with relationships, closeness or being fully seen, even by people they love.
Contact and intimacy may often register as a threat rather than comfort for people with this Pattern. That is because of their individual wound, the unconscious beliefs formed around it as well as the fact that emotional intensity can overwhelm their sensitive system.
✨ A pull toward the abstract or the intellectual — partly as genuine gifts, partly as ways to stay one step removed from feeling and reality.
✨ A difficulty engaging with the physical reality, making things happen, sometimes even contempt for the material world (the spiritual or the intellectual may be seen as "superior"). And feeling like they don't have their life together, often as a result.
What does the Leaving pattern look like in the body and energy field?
Typically, according to Brennan Healing Science and Core Energetics, people with a strong Leaving pattern have a thin, elongated body, with imbalances between the right and left parts of their body. They often have low vitality and difficulty sensing their body altogether.
From an energetic point of view, their field is usually rather undercharged to start with, with little capacity to metabolize and hold energy. Their root chakra may be damaged, and there may be leaks of energy, especially around the legs. Common imbalances include the denser aspects of their field being less charged than the levels of higher frequencies - reflecting the fact that their consciousness tends to orient towards the transcendental rather than the personal. Often there is also an imbalance between the top and bottom of their aura, with much more energy around the head compared to the feet and legs.
On the structural levels, the outer edge of their field is often porous, offering weak boundaries and resulting in an acute sensitivity to everything and everyone around them -- often without being able to differentiate what is theirs and what isn't in terms of feelings, thoughts, etc.
What are the gifts of the Leaving pattern?
Every pattern carries gifts alongside its wound, and the Leaving pattern is no exception. Among others some frequent gifts are creativity, inspiration, connection to the spiritual, sensitivity, clarity, and wisdom. Many brillant mystics, artists, and healers carry this pattern. When a scientific mind is able to tap into the inspired side of this pattern, we can also expect great discoveries, think of Albert Einstein or Nikola Tesla.
How can you work with the Leaving pattern?
I see each pattern as carrying a direction for growth, healing and transformation. In my opinion, they are not something to be fixed, but rather an indication of a certain path of development chosen by your soul. This particular wound is often pre-verbal and rooted in the body's earliest experience of being alive. In my practice, I noticed that for the Leaving pattern, real changes come with slow, gradual work, supporting my client's energetic field, and allowing more and more for a sense of safety and welcoming.
In the framework of BHS, this tends to involve:
Strengthening the field and its outer boundary — tending to any leaks on the structural levels of the field, charging the fluid levels, and reinforcing the 7th level of the field (the egg shape providing boundaries). This helps to be able to hold more energy, feel more alive and feel what's around without absorbing it.
Supporting the root chakra — and any other chakras which are closed or damaged. This helps metabolize more energy and enables the person to increase their capacity for grounding, helping them experience safety as well as perceive their body more.
Relational healing — practising safe contact through the therapeutic relationship as well as the healings, at a rhythm that suits the clients. Potentially working on the energetic cords that link them to their relatives to clear relational issues in the field.
Shamanic work and practices to heal the wound of arrival — calling the soul fully into the body (soul retrievals), working in particular with the direction of the East (faith, illumination) and building healing imprints of welcoming addressing the root of the pattern rather than only its symptoms.
These are of course just examples as the work we do always follows each individual's needs. Working with something as deep and impactful as personality patterns takes time - and as always - I follow the rythm and wisdom of your System. Over time, the pattern softens. You develop new skills and discover (or re-discover) states of being that allow for more presence, aliveness and freedom.
If this is you
Please feel free to share in the comments how that article resonated with you.
This is simply an introduction. If you would like to explore and better integrate your Leaving pattern, you are very welcome to check ways of working together.
I am also writing a playbook with further explanations, practices and self reflection prompts to help grow your awareness of this pattern. To be the first to know when it is ready, you are welcome to subscribe to my newsletter.
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