Even with the best of intentions, and even if we activate full grind and grit mode, sometimes we just can’t make the changes we want… This is because everything we do in our relationship and our life is actually driven by underlying programming. We can force this all we want, but ultimately the changes don’t stick if the driving patterns are not also changed. So, let’s focus on deprogramming these presets. We are talking about unconscious and subconscious patterns…
~ Where the unconscious patterns are more visceral, emotional, wiring, and structural of our embodied nervous system… A mind-body connection. Not directly accessible. ~ And where the subconscious patterns are more of a mental and feeling nature, a product of the mind. It includes fears, limiting beliefs, meaning systems, personal narratives, and the like. These can be accessed when we tune in with deepened awareness.
Our job is to identify what’s not working in our life and address it from a deprogramming perspective, not just a behavioral and action taking one.
The more superficial level depends on sheer willpower and discipline, which we know ebbs and flows depending what’s going on in our life and our priorities.
But a deeper approach is more systemic. Once we deprogram, change the preset, everything automatically flows from there with no additional effort or input from us. Ahh…
This is how we truly level up and create the relationship and life we love- not through effort but by resetting the system underneath it all. You with me?
Deprogramming the Layers
When our programs don’t get a proper upgrade, they keep running outdated scripts. Those scripts trigger defenses that reinforce the very patterns we are trying to change. That’s how we get stuck even when we’re doing all the work
The most common dynamic we see in couples is the pursuer-distancer, maximizer-minimizer, relational overfunctioner-underfunctioner, or simply the codependence pattern…
The names vary, but the flavor is the same of how couples keep cycling through conflict and disconnection in their relationship.
This is the new codependence, not necessarily tied to recovery like it was at its inception… This pattern is driven by a low sense of self and programs of insecurities, unworthiness, fear of abandonment, or feeling not good enough, shame, controlled or suffocated. All developed due to less-than-perfect-caregiving growing up…
The Codependence Pattern in Action
The Pursuer – They need reassurance and connection to feel safe or their abandonment and unworthiness wounds get triggered (Usually core female energy partner, core need is connection)
~~ They – Nag, complain, over explain, are very emotive, chase, control, are manipulative
The Distancer – They need acknowledgment and appreciation to feel confident and strong or their not-good enough and shame wounds get triggered (Usually core male energy partner, core need is freedom)
~~ They – Dismiss, hold it in, not very verbal, shut down, distance, gaslight, are passive aggressive
Note: We all have both sets of energies so this is not so black-and-white and both apply to us to some extent…
The Unconscious Deprogramming
The Pursuer – Heal abandonment and worthiness wounds by not abandoning themselves… Taking care of themselves, their needs, self-soothing and self-regulating, nurturing and pampering themselves.
~~ Reparenting in Action – Mothering with nurturing and pampering, Fathering with protection and security
The Distancer – Heal not-good-enoughness and shame wounds by acknowledging themselves… Taking note and being proud of their strengths, uniqueness, accomplishments and achievements.
~~ Reparenting in Action – Mothering with compliments and praise, Fathering with structure and discipline
The Subconscious Deprogramming
The Pursuer – Deconditioning fears, beliefs and stories about being left, not being wanted, being alone, having to take care of everything, not being able to count on others, distrust, being unlovable, being too much, being too needy
The Distancer – Deconditioning fears, believes and stories about being controlled, suffocated, trapped, not good enough, not measuring up, feeling behind in life, being unsuccessful, being used or taken advantage of, not being appreciated or valued
~~ Updating Meaning Systems – Do reality checks being mindful of confirmation bias, look for the exemptions, focus on and cultivate what does work or meets your needs, check for secondary gains- what do you get out of something not working…
Upleveling the Relationship
The Pursuer – Make requests to help you meet the needs for togetherness and connection without being controlling and triggering your partner’s wounds of feeling trapped, without throwing them in a cage
The Distancer – Make requests to help you meet the needs for separateness and freedom without being evasive and aloof or distant and triggering your partner’s wound of feeling abandoned, without throwing them off a precipice
This addresses a couple’s main theme and pattern. Of course, each couple and partners are unique– so apply this to your situation as you see best.
~ The aligning on values and setting boundaries ~ The improving communication skills and tools ~ The intentionally meeting your own and each other’s needs ~ The building connection and intimacy ~ The implementing systems for a smooth collaboration and strong partnership
If we want to level up our life and our relationship, we have to change the preset that’s maintaining the status quo.
No matter how much effort we put in to changing our behavior, habits and circumstances, if we don’t change the underlying programming, all our work will eventually revert back to the established preset…
Identify which part of the dynamics you usually land in and commit to addressing the driving programming to change your preset. This is how you’ll create sustainable and lasting change. Here is to your upleveled relationship!
Happy Deprogramming…
With Much Love & Light!
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Copyright (c) 2025 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Let’s face it, there are a lot of reasons to be in a long-term loving romantic relationship. One of which is my absolute favorite- that of utilizing the relationship as a vehicle for evolving ourselves, and as the partnership in our Journey for having our best Human Experience and for creating our Best Life. A tall order, I know… But I love this reason because it places everything that happens in our relationship and in the time we share into a more meaningful context… And, no matter what happens we are in it together for our highest good… Then you can never go wrong! Your relationship can even help you bypass your current ego (your egoic defensive patterns)…
We’ve been doing a lot of work in reprogramming ourselves from all kinds of angles…
What if we take this whole thing to a new level? What if we find a hack to do all this so much easier? What if we transcend our usual experience with a simple shift…?
Now, I’ve touched on this before when I covered doing Identity work… This is that and more…
Creating an Alter Ego…
Our usual ego keeps us stuck and small… It sabotages us… And it takes what feels like a herculean effort to reprogram it and dismantle it… But what if there is a hack in the meantime to help create what we desire?
The hack is creating an Alter Ego… An Alter Ego just completely bypasses our usual patterns! The key is to properly design and intentionally engage our Alter Ego…
ENVISION – Have a vision of a new version of you. A version of you that you want to be, become more… What part of you is usually forgotten, goes unnoticed, can’t be easily tapped into, or you even believe you don’t have, that you’d like to have in your life. What kind of person do you want to be? What dimension would you like to add to yourself?
IDENTIFY – Given the new persona you want to become or add to yourself, what beliefs would that version of you have? What kind of worldview world they have? What kind of feelings would they feel? What kind of preferences would they have about things that are important to you? What personality characteristics would they have and what strengths? How would they approach your partner, relationship, and life differently?
EMBODY – Then, start showing up as this new version of yourself… Embrace this Alter Ego for them to be the new main character of your story, you might even want to give them a name… Show up as them in certain circumstances if that’s where you need them, or as much as possible if they are you 2.0… Tweak your habits and your appearance to match this new persona. You might even want to use a totem of sorts to channel your new you… Wearing non-prescription glasses, a specific piece of jewelry, a scarf or collar, a hat, and the like…
Integrating the New You
As you flesh out this new persona and start embracing it, think about what kind of standards they have, what are their musts and deal breakers, what are their expectations, how do they want to be treated, what kind of boundaries do they have, what values do they have and how do they live by them, how do they treat others, and so on…
Here we want to make sure that the Alter Ego is in alignment with our values and the core of who we are… We are just helping a great part of you come out to play… We are not creating something that doesn’t make sense nor support you and your life… This is an enhanced version of you that normally gets covered up with the muck of your egoic patterns…
We are bypassing our egoic patterns- we are coming out through the back door!
Remember, we are doing this to support you in Becoming the Best You. The you that’s in there and has challenges coming out to play… And, that this version is much more alluring, it’s magnetic, it gets what it wants, it easily manifests your Best Life with its magnificence.
In this version you are the King or Queen of your castle… Treat your partner like the Royal you are, and you’ll get the royal treatment back!
Your relationship is where you get to role play, have a dress rehearsal, and put on the show. Here is where you get to explore, practice, tweak and continue to Become…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always
With Much Love & Light!
PS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2023 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
When we focus on ReParenting ourselves as a reprogramming and healing tool, most often the work is not broken down my Mothering and Fathering… But it is super helpful to identify what we need and give that to ourselves more specifically… With the Mothering comes the Nurturing, with the Fathering comes the Disciplining… If you are feeling alone, neglected and abandoned- you need Mothering… If you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, unmotivated- you need Fathering… But let’s go deeper today with the stories and limiting beleives playing out in your life that are holding you back from what you desire…
It’s amazing that what we believe informs and creates what we experience… That’s how powerful our thoughts are…
I’m sure you are familiar with thoughts and believes that go something like this: We are not good enough, that we can’t make a difference, that no matter how hard we try we still can’t get what we want, that we’ll always be disappointed, that we have to work hard to make things happen, that we have to do things ourselves if we want them done well, and so on… These come from the Lack, Expectation and Control Ego Patterns…
But there is nothing a little Fathering can’t do to reprogram this thinking and related habits that hold us back from creating the relationship and life we desire…
Give Yourself a Little Fathering
As Fathering has to do with safety, security, stability, structure, routine, and discipline, we can connect these to specific Ego Patterns to better understand what kind of fathering we need to give ourselves…
Safety & Security are related to the Expectation Ego Pattern. Here is where you feel let down, disappointment, and resentment, like you can’t count on others and like they won’t be there for you. Not knowing the status of the relationship, when you’ll connect next, plans, who will take care of what and the like create too much uncertainty. This doesn’t feel safe and so you might become demanding, owning, confrontational and such.
You might want to explore your scripts and believes around safety and security. About being able to count on people, about being able to be vulnerable.
You can reprogram this pattern by adding habits and tactics in your daily routine that provide consistency, reassurance, and connection to create that emotional safety and security…
Stability & Structure are related to the Control Ego Pattern. Here is where you feel overwhelm, stress, and anxiety, and like you have to take care of everything and be the one to make things happen. Not knowing if others will follow through, keep their word, do a good job, or properly show up is just too stressful. This is when you micromanage, are overly involved, become controlling and such.
You might want to explore your scripts and believes around stability and dependability. About being able to let go, about being able to trust.
You can reprogram this pattern by adding habits and tactics in your daily routine that provide sharing, updating and debriefing to create that stability and dependability…
Routine & Discipline are related to the Lack Ego Pattern. Here is where you feel alone, sad, and depressed, and like there is something wrong with you and like things are not good enough. Not knowing how to measure up, how to fix things, and how to get your needs met creates hopelessness. This is when you self-numb, become judgmental, make others wrong, and such.
You might want to explore your scripts and believes around worthiness and personal power. About self-love, about being lovable.
You can reprogram this pattern by adding habits and tactics in your daily routine that are part of a self-love practice, partner-love practice, and gratitude practice to create abundance and personal accountability.
The Actual Reprogramming
Once you explore and clean up your limiting believes and debumk your scripts accordingly, the next piece is to add the habits and tactics into your daily routine, and other cadences, for the actionable part of creating change…
Note, as soon as you implement a new habit, you are automatically targeting your ego pattern… You undermine your ego, dismantle the pattern, with the new behavior…
Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what the habits and tactics can be implemented to address the patterns… But this doesn’t have to be complicated. You can have your own back here by embracing a 30-Day Challenge that aligns with what you are trying to reprogram…
Personal Development, Relationship Enrichment, creating the relationship we want, creating the life we want, don’t have to require so much effort. We can actually have fun addressing things that might get in the way!
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2023 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Continuing with the reparenting and reprogramming theme for personal development and relationship enrichment… In May we focus on Mothering, nurturing, caring, meeting needs and emotional reprogramming. In June we focus on Fathering, structuring, stabilizing, shifting mindsets and mental reprogramming.
We do this for our own healing and growth, and to enrich and enhance our relationship. We do our side of the work utilizing our relationship as a playground. And as we go we have the added benefit of creating our strong, radiant and successful relationship… Not too shabby.
But all this can sound too serious and difficult if we let it. We do not need to “work” at these things. We just need to invest our focus and be intentional about Becoming our Best Self, who we really are anyway at the end of the day… And, about nurturing and enriching our relationship… We make this super easy with our online couple therapy.
Reprogramming for Dummies
You don’t necessarily need to do this with a couple therapist or relationship coach. This is highly recommended if you are struggling though. But know that you can effortlessly invest in your relationship by:
~ being intentional
~ taking the high road
~ bringing gratitude, compassion, and grace to your interactions
Integrating targeted tactics, habits, and behaviors into your interactions with your partner, your daily routine (ideal day), and your lifestyle is a way to automate consistently investing in your relationship.
We want to make upgrading ourselves and our relationship as easily and effortlessly as possible. Life is complicated enough without us adding more complexity into the mix.
Embrace Love Practices
To kick off this month, let’s focus on implementing or expanding our Self-Love Practice and our Partner-Love Practice. Let’s continue our emotional reprogramming by nurturing ourselves, our partner and our relationship… This soothing and self- and co-regulation will support the mental reprogramming we’ll be embracing in the coming weeks.
Most importantly, we are learning how to give and receive love… Believe or not this is actually challenging for partners… Because of our upbringing and our wounding, we have developed a myriad of ways of protecting ourselves from our pain and from further pain. Our defense mechanisms shut in our vulnerability, unique brilliance, wholeness, and radiance… We move about as a conglomerate of protective layers…
In our meeting our needs and stretching to meet our partner’s needs, with our Self-Love and Partner-Love Practices, we start shedding these layers and accessing other parts of ourselves. We start becoming more who we really are by allowing our internal radiant Essence to shine through.
The practices help us cultivate giving and receiving love, become more loving, strengthen our connection in love, Be our loving selves- expand our Love Consciousness… Also known as Unity Consciousness, Oneness, and the like. Which is really what we are aspiring for at the end of the day…
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2023 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Upgrading our programs and reprogramming ourselves has been all the rage… And it makes sense as we are waking up to the fact that we create our own reality… We want to create what we want after all, not something driven by our outdated and misguided programming…
Our programming constitutes of emotional and mental defenses meant to protect us. The problem is that they end up sabotaging our attempts at creating the relationship and life we desire… There are simple ways to change your programming…
Our programming simply developed as we grew up through interactions with our caregivers and the world. We learned what’s acceptable, how to be, how to think, how to look at the world, how to experience love, how to deal with disappointment and so much more through these interactions with our loved ones and by adapting to social norms…
These created patterns in our way of being and how we do our life… They inform everything about us. What we make of our ethnicity, our religion, our gender, and the like including our beliefs, our habits, and all the rest of it. But these are all constructions, We are a construction… This is not who we are…
All the patterns and habits that make up who we are as we usually know ourselves, are all but layers of muck covering the true Essence of who we are. Covering our innocence, our radiance, our joy… This is our true self, our authentic self.
Everything else can be deconstructed and reconstructed… We can reprogram everything…
What to Reprogram
And this is the good news! Because if we feel stuck, if we can’t make the changes we want, if we keep having the same old issues, if we can’t get to the next level and so on, it’s because we have a program that is keeping things just as they are presumably for our own safety…
This means that we can get unstuck and create what we desire by changing our programming…
When it comes to our relationship, we might have all kinds of programs going on about love, affection, intimacy, trust, support, worthiness, and so on… We have belief systems and expectations about these that are deeply ingrained.
There are also programs around who we believe we are, who others are, who our partner is, why we are together, how we should be in relationship, and so on…
And all this impacts how we look at ourselves, at our partner and our interactions- what kind of relationship, and life, we are able to create at the end of the day.
There are a multitude of ways in which we can reprogram ourselves, but I’d like to focus here on one that utilizes our relationship and that helps the relationship in turn. This has to do with Stretching…
We Stretch the spectrum of our characteristics, abilities, strengths, and such to be more inclusive and exhaustive… In other words, we reprogram ourselves for Becoming more whole…
How to Reprogram
We all know that opposites attract. That’s why partners always seem so opposite… One is neat, the other is messy. One likes to save, the other likes to spend. One is outgoing, the other is shy. And so on…
The oppositeness in couples doesn’t just stop at personal characteristics. It also impacts needs and coping and defense mechanisms…
Which in the surface might seem like a formula for disaster, and it can be- ask the many couples that didn’t create their successful relationship. But this is also a blessing, a way for partners to support each other’s evolution…
When partner’s get stuck in their power struggle trying to get their own needs met, and having a challenge also meeting their partner’s seemingly opposing needs, they have to stretch to get there…
It is in that stretching that we have to own other characteristics and strengths, that we might not have known we had, or that we have to develop. It is in that stretching that that we draw from our internal resources. It is in that stretching that we transcend the having to be right for being more compassionate, the micro for the macro, the minutiae for the connection, and such.
When we Stretch in our relationship to meet our partner’s needs, we are actually also growing and evolving ourselves… It’s a Win-Win.
This is the beauty of being in relationship. Our partner is our Life Partner, our Journey Partner. Them and the relationship are a Gift…
Hanging on to how this makes our relationship beautiful as part of our relationship mindset makes all the trials and tribulations actually exciting. Anytime you hit a bump it’s an opportunity for further growth. It’s an opportunity for evolving and becoming more our true Essence… And isn’t this what life is all about? If that’s not a Blessing, I don’t know what is.
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2023 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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