Tired of the Same Fight? 3 Signs You're Accidentally Rewarding the Behavior

I want to tell you about a horse.

I'm going to protect his identity...I mean their identity — and honestly, his identity isn't the point. The pattern is.

I watched this unfold over months. Slowly. The way these things always happen — not in a single dramatic moment, but in the quiet accumulation of ordinary interactions that nobody flags as significant until suddenly the shape of something becomes clear.

He wasn't being mean. He wasn't trying to cause problems. He was just doing what horses do — curious, social, looking for connection. During sessions in our arena, I watched a client working alongside their equine partner, doing the quiet, intentional work of relationship building.

And then it started.

A playful nip.

A grab at the lead rope.

A nudge that was just a little too much.

The client responded — as most of us would. They asked for space, used a cue for detachment, and the horse moved away. Good. A beat passed. The client exhaled.

Whew. That's over.

And then the horse came back.

Same behavior.

Nip.

Grab.

Nudge.

The client's frustration began to show — and something shifted. What had started as detachment — connection with distance, still present, still engaged — began to slide into something else entirely. Disconnection. A pulling away that was more than physical. The client was done. Checked out. Gone in the way that exhausted, frustrated people go somewhere inside themselves.

The horse moved away. But only for a moment.

Because here's what the horse's nervous system had quietly learned over those months: the only time real, full, engaged connection happened — the only time the client was completely present — was when the behavior showed up. The disconnection created anxiety. And the behavior that had always managed to bring a little connection back kept getting deployed to close that gap.

The nipping wasn't the point. Connection was. And what had begun as a response to playfulness had slowly, invisibly, built a relational template that said: this is how you get me.

We Build the Pathways Without Realizing It

Dr. Bruce D. Perry, founder of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) and one of the world's leading experts on trauma and brain development, has spent decades helping us understand that the brain is built through repetition. Every interaction — every response, every reaction, every moment of engagement — is laying down a neural pathway. We are literally wiring relational templates through the patterns we repeat.

This isn't a character flaw or a parenting failure. It's biology. We repeat patterns — many times unaware that the pattern is even running.

When we consistently show up — fully, reactively, with all of our energy — in response to difficult behavior, we are teaching the nervous system something. Not intentionally. Not consciously. But consistently. And the brain, in its remarkable efficiency, learns the pattern.

This behavior is how connection happens here.

It doesn't matter if the connection feels negative to us. To a nervous system wired for attachment, attention is attention. And over time, the pathway gets stronger, the template gets more deeply grooved, and the behavior that keeps getting our full presence will keep showing up to claim it.

Want to go deeper on how these patterns form — and how to begin unraveling them? Read more in Unraveling Relationship Patterns: A Journey to Healing.

3 Signs You're Caught in the Pattern

So if you are like most of us, we don't realize we've built this template until we're exhausted by it. Here are three signs that the cycle may already be running:

1. You're Always on Edge — Waiting for It

You know that feeling. You walk into the room and you're already braced. You're scanning. You're anticipating. Your nervous system has learned the pattern too, and now you're living in a low-grade state of alert, waiting for the behavior to show up.

That hypervigilance isn't weakness. It's your brain doing exactly what it's designed to do — predict, prepare, protect. But it's also a sign that the pattern has become the organizing force in the relationship. The behavior has claimed real estate in your nervous system, and it's collecting rent every single day.

2. The Behavior Is Getting More Intense

What started as a small thing has grown. The volume is higher. The meltdowns are bigger. The provocations are sharper. And you find yourself wondering — why does this keep escalating?

Here's the hard truth: intensity is information. When a behavior needs to work harder to get the same response, it will. This is reinforcement in action. The behavior is doing what all reinforced behaviors do — it's finding the level of intensity required to produce the connection it's been wired to expect. Just like our equine partner — we will engage in a familiar behavior until we get the usual response.

3. It's Happening More and More Frequently

Not only is it getting bigger — it's getting more frequent. What used to happen occasionally is now happening daily. What happened daily is now happening multiple times a day.

Frequency is the clearest signal that a pathway is being strengthened. The behavior isn't random. It's reliable. It has learned when and how to show up, and it's showing up more because it keeps working.

The Rope

If you've sat with me in a session or talked to me very long, you know this example.

Do you remember playing tug-of-war in PE or at a camp? Want to know my favorite part? Letting go of the rope and watching the other team fall backwards onto themselves.

Not from their own force. Not because you overpowered them. Because you stopped participating.

Call me twisted — but it was funny. And it did something else too. It lessened the intensity the next time we played, because they knew at any point we might just release the rope and send them on a quick trip to the ground. The struggle required our engagement to exist. The moment we withdrew it, the whole thing collapsed.

Someone in your life may be holding that rope out to you right now.

An old pattern.

A familiar provocation.

A behavior that has always known how to find you.

You get to decide whether you pick it up.

And I want to be honest with you here — you will pick it up sometimes. We all do. We're human. We're tired. We're triggered. We love these kids and these people deeply, and that love makes us reactive in ways we don't always choose.

The goal isn't perfection.

The goal is awareness.

The moment you notice you're holding the rope is the moment you can choose to set it down. Gently. Without drama. Without a big announcement. Just... release. And focus your energy toward the connection you actually want to build.

What to Do Instead

This is not about ignoring everything. Some behaviors demand a response — safety, boundaries, genuine need. In the situation with our equine partner, ignoring the behavior would put the client in an unsafe situation. Picking your battles isn't the same as abandoning the field.

It's about being intentional with your relational energy.

Ask yourself: What template am I building right now?

When does this child — this person — get my full, warm, regulated presence? Is it when things are hard? Or is it woven into the ordinary moments too?

The morning routine.

The car ride.

The quiet minute before bed.

If the only time you're fully there is when the behavior shows up, the behavior will keep showing up to bring you there.

Feed the pathways you want to strengthen. Let the others quietly starve.

A word about repair and release.

Sometimes this work leads to repair — you become more intentional, you shift the template, and the relationship grows into something healthier and more connected. That's the hope. That's what we work toward.

But sometimes, after honest reflection, you recognize that a relationship is not one you can safely invest in anymore. The pattern is too entrenched, the dynamic too unhealthy, or a genuine repair simply isn't possible. In those moments, the most loving and courageous thing you can do — for yourself and sometimes for the other person — is stop picking up the rope entirely.

Not every relationship needs a trim. Some need to be cut back all the way.

Think of it like pruning. The goal is always to use pruning shears, not a chainsaw — thoughtful, intentional, not destructive. But sometimes, a branch has to go completely so that the rest of the plant can grow. Read more about the art of knowing what to keep and what to cut in The Art of Pruning.

This Is Bigger Than Parenting

Everything I've described here — the relational templates, the reinforced pathways, the rope — isn't just about kids. It's about every relationship you inhabit.

It's the colleague who knows exactly how to pull you into a conflict. The family member whose provocations you've been responding to for decades. The dynamic at work that drains you before you even walk through the door.

The question is always the same: What am I teaching this relationship about how to get my attention?

We are not powerless in this.

You are, in fact, the one holding the template. And templates can be rebuilt — slowly, intentionally, one repeated interaction at a time.

Dr. Perry reminds us that the brain changes the same way it was built: through patterned, repetitive experience. The pathway that was wired through a hundred small moments of reactive engagement can be rewired through a hundred small moments of intentional presence.

I keep a question on my mirror at home: Am I living the kind of life that I want my kids to copy? It's a question that reorients me when I feel the pull of an old pattern. If my boys mirrored the way I handle conflict, frustration, and provocation — would I be proud of what they learned? This idea — modeling the behavior we actually want — is something I've written about before. You can read more in Do You Want Your Behavior Copied?

It takes time.

It takes patience.

It takes a willingness to let go of the rope even when every instinct tells you to hold on.

But on the other side of that decision is something worth building toward — a relational template that says connection doesn't require a storm to arrive.

It's just here.

Steady.

Available.

Waiting.

Want to Go Deeper?

This blog is part of an ongoing conversation about relationships, regulation, and the patterns that shape us. We are developing free online courses that will walk you through these concepts in more depth — practical tools grounded in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics that you can apply in your home, your classroom, and your relationships.

Check our Resources page to find out when free courses become available →