Tuesday, 11:47 PM. My client Sarah sat across from me on a video call, mascara smudged, phone face-down on the table.
"I did it again," she said. "I knew what I was doing. I couldn't stop."
She'd sent the triple text. The voice note. The "just checking in" that wasn't checking in. Sarah had done 4 years of therapy. She could name her attachment style with clinical precision. She'd read Attached, Polysecure, every book on the shelf. None of it stopped the reflex.
That night, I opened a blank document. I wrote the first version of what would become Pattern Break. Not more insight. Not more understanding. Something that could meet the reflex in real time… in the 3 seconds between trigger and collapse.
I've spent a decade working with emotionally intelligent women who understand their patterns perfectly and repeat them anyway. Pattern Break is the interruption tool therapy never provided.