A message from Maria Coutant Skinner, LCSW, President & CEO
July 31, 2026
Dear friends;
Dr. Bruce Perry once wrote, “All of us tend to gravitate to the familiar, even when the familiar is unhealthy or destructive. We are drawn to what we were raised with.”
When we are children, we create stories to make sense of the world and then we work, often without realizing it, to make those stories true. We adapt in whatever ways keep us safe and connected to the people we depend on. These coping mechanisms serve a vital purpose at the time they’re formed. A child who learns to stay quiet, to anticipate a parent’s mood, or to take care of everyone else before themselves isn’t doing anything wrong. They’re doing exactly what the moment required to protect themselves.
So when we notice ourselves repeating a pattern later in life whether in a relationship, at work, in how we respond to conflict or closeness; the more useful question isn’t “what’s wrong with me? It’s what was right about this strategy when I first built it?”
Psychodynamic theory offers another layer here. It suggests that many of our patterns are not just habits we fall back into, but expressions of deeper, often unconscious beliefs about who we are and what we deserve. If a child absorbs the belief that they are difficult to love, or responsible for a parent’s pain, they may grow into an adult who, without consciously choosing to, arranges their life to confirm it. This is sometimes called repetition compulsion: we unconsciously recreate old dynamics, even painful ones, because they feel like home, and because some parts of us are still trying to find resolution. It can look self-destructive from the outside. From the inside, it often feels like fate.
Naming this pattern is powerful, because it loosens its grip. Once we can see that a belief was formed, not fated, we can start to question it. We can ask what still serves us, and what we’re ready to let go of.
This is often harder than it sounds, because the nervous system doesn’t always know the difference between what’s familiar and what’s healthy. Left on its own, it will choose familiar chaos over unfamiliar peace, every time. That’s not because chaos feels good, but because it feels known. Healing means teaching our nervous system, and our deeper beliefs, a new lesson: that discomfort does not mean danger, and that we deserve more peace than we’ve allowed ourselves.
The nervous system that learned chaos can also learn peace; this is not sentiment, it’s neuroplasticity. Every time we notice an old pattern and choose differently, even in some small way, we are laying down new pathways alongside the old ones.
So I want you to know, dear friends, that this peace is possible and accessible to each of us…and you are well worth it.
My very best to you always,
Maria Coutant Skinner, LCSW
President and CEO
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