Why Insight Doesn’t Save Relationships

By: Emma Beale, MA, LAC, Owner of Superbloom Therapy Services I hear it in my office often: “we understand ourselves, we’ve been doing the work, but we’re still stuck in hurtful patterns in our relationship.”

This is a painful spot that many couples find themselves in today - many of us speak the therapy language of attachment styles, codependency, communication patterns, etc., but the translation of this understanding into a relationship we actually want to be in can be elusive.

Understanding is crucial - you can’t change something you don’t see - but it’s not enough.

Putting the picture into practice looks like learning to regulate yourself and each other, practicing new patterns instead of naming old ones, and deepening emotional closeness through vulnerability.

How does this happen? If I understand the issue, why am I not changing my behavior? The answer is at least in part in the brain function. Understanding is all prefrontal cortex work. That’s where we reason, logic, interpret, and make meaning. But it’s not where behavior is automatically derived. When we’re emotionally regulated, we’re more likely to be able to act based on what our prefrontal cortex has decided because there is some space between emotion and action. When we’re dysregulated, as couples in distress so often are, the brain skips right over any prefrontal cortex action and goes straight into the limbic system. That’s why we can have a deep and nuanced understanding of our patterns, think we will respond differently in the future, and then get pulled right back into old patterns, only to realize it and name it after the fact once the damage is done.

Lots of outside factors also contribute. Folks navigating mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma, and others may have even more sensitivity to emotional distress because their system is already taxed at baseline.
Lifelong patterns play a big role here too. We learn how to attach to others from our caregivers as children and, unconsciously, those patterns become encoded in our nervous system. Just because we see the patterns, doesn’t automatically mean they’ll shift because they’re happening at the limbic system level. That might look like going into fight/flight/freeze during times of stress. In a relationship, that can look like yelling, shutting down, looking for reassurance, or lashing out. More than not automatically leading to change, simply understanding patterns without doing the nervous system work to shift them can actually be a kind of emotional avoidance. If I can explain how I felt and why I felt that way, I don’t actually have to do the work of feeling, which to a dysregulated system, feels so much scarier.

So how do we make a meaningful shift?

Change takes sustained action, much more so than understanding. It will be messy, imperfect, halting, and frustrating at times. But that’s because you’re shifting something that’s been deeply present for years. It’s kind of like learning to ride a bike as an adult - absolutely doable, but a bit harder than doing so as a kid because you’ve already learned that life is safer on two feet. Here are a few things you can start to try in order to make those shifts:

Start to regulate your nervous system at baseline:
- Regular exercise
- Meditation
- Eating a balanced diet
- Starting to notice the feeling of an emotion in your body, naming it and sitting with it

Learn to regulate in moments with your partner:
- Slow down when you feel emotions ramping up
- Focus on understanding your partner instead of making sure they understand you
- Think about how to repair rather than how to win
- Be vulnerable with your emotions instead of intellectualizing

Know when to get help:
- When other mental health conditions or stressors are consistently getting in the way
- When you’ve tried to regulate on your own, but something still isn’t working
- When you’ve made good progress on your own, but want to go deeper and can’t figure out how

Final thoughts
Relationships are hard - perhaps the hardest thing we do in our lives. Understanding yourself and learning how to regulate your emotions independently is a challenge in itself, but doing that in close partnership with another person gets messy. Therapy, medication, and self-care can all be valuable tools in navigating these challenges. Reach out for support when you need it!

The content of this blog is for education purposes only and is not therapy or advice. Reach out to a licensed professional for specific support or call 911 if you’re having a mental health crisis or are experiencing abuse in your relationship.