Have you ever had a brilliant “Aha!” moment about your own behavior, only to find yourself repeating the same pattern just a few days later?
In this week’s Report from the Creative Closet, I’m looking at the Insight Trap. We talk about why understanding your patterns isn’t enough to actually change them—and why your brain is often “too well-trained” to stop self-monitoring just because you noticed it. From the neural grooves that keep us stuck in performative adulthood to the fear of flying without a net during play, we explore how to rebuild trust through messy, low-stakes repetition.
It’s an invitation to stop overthinking your way to a solution and start returning to the creative spontaneity you were born with.
I’m Nancy Norbeck, and I’m your Messy Muse Mentor. I help people feel alive again through curiosity and play.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The Insight Trap: Why patterns don’t disappear just because we finally see them.
- Automatic Self-Monitoring: Why years of scanning for approval become a default “groove” in your brain.
- The Netless Flight: Why open-ended play feels terrifying to adults used to performing specific roles.
- Repetition vs. Analysis: Why small repetitions matter more than joining another chapter of Overthinkers Anonymous.
Ready to send your inner critic to summer camp for an hour?We get together once a month for a relaxed, co-working-style session where you can work on whatever you want—without any pressure to do it “right.” We send the shoulds and inner critics off to summer camp where they’re kept busy rather than getting in our way. Join the Creativity Circle.
Get in Touch
I’d love to hear your feedback, questions, and experience with these ideas! Send me a note at fycuriosity.com, or contact me on Instagram, or Bluesky.
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Why Understanding Your Patterns Isn’t Enough | Report from the Creative Closet #7
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Welcome to this week’s report from the creative closet. It is not exactly glamorous, but it works. Just a reminder that I am speaking here from my personal experience and observation as a creativity coach, working with adults over many years, not as a therapist. Creativity is not therapy, but it sure can be therapeutic.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:40]:
So last time we were talking about performative adulthood and all of the pressure and the evaluation that we find ourselves under and the constant self monitoring that that causes us to subject ourselves to Understanding it is one thing. Changing it is something else entirely. People tend to assume, and you, hey, you may have noticed this in your own life that having the insight equals making change. But if you’ve noticed this in your own life, you have no doubt discovered that patterns don’t go away just because we see them. So for instance, when you apologize automatically, when you interrupt yourself before you speak fully, when you edit yourself in the middle of your own sentences all the time, Just because you notice all of those things doesn’t mean that you automatically stop doing them. And if you’re realizing, as I’m saying this, that you thought that understanding it would fix it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And I just want you to know, I feel you because I have done this many, many, many times. That wonderful, wonderful, oh, I get it now moment.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:04]:
And then realizing days, weeks, or even months later that getting it doesn’t mean I didn’t just do it again. The thing is, it’s a habit like any other. And when you’ve had that habit of self monitoring for years or even decades, it is so automatic that it’s basically become a part of us. It is no longer a choice in the moment. We are automatically scanning everywhere around us for approval. We’re suppressing all of the emotions before we even realize that we’ve had them. That’s part of why it’s so hard to break the habit. And we are constantly wondering how we are coming across to others before we’re even noticing how we’re coming across to ourselves.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:51]:
And, you know, like I said, when you’re not even noticing that you’re doing it, it’s hard to stop doing it. And this is why play as adults can feel uncomfortably unfamiliar because anything that is open ended starts to feel really strange and like we’re flying without a net, which is a really mixed up metaphor, but I know, you know what I mean? Because we’re so used to. Constant structure that tells us what we need to do. We’re so used to performing and playing a certain role at all times that when we don’t know what role we’re supposed to play, it’s terrifying. Who am I supposed to be right in this moment? I don’t know. Uh-oh. What if I pick the wrong thing? What if I do the wrong thing? What if I am completely out of bounds? What does this mean for me? Because we are group creatures. You know, like I’m pretty sure I’ve said before, the greatest fear for most of us is being thrown out of the group because historically evolutionarily that meant almost certain death.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:08]:
We need each other to survive and we don’t know what we will do if we are tossed out of the group. So we want to make sure we get it right so that we’re not thrown out and on our own. Cause that’s terrifying. So that means that we want the structure, even though creative folks tend to hate structure, we want the structure and structure is not a bad thing. Don’t get me wrong. We, we wanna know what the outcome’s gonna be. We want all of that certainty and correctness. And even though we might bristle against it, it’s more comfortable than being out there completely exposed, totally lost and having no idea what we’re supposed to do or what’s gonna happen next, or whether we are even safe.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:53]:
Safety is huge, right? And so this is why if you tend to freeze when you don’t have any idea what the instructions are, here we are. And this is why I am developing a framework that I call restorative creativity all around returning to curiosity, experimentation, and self trust. It’s a way to become more comfortable in those moments when we feel a little bit lost and alone among other things. Now here’s what I want you to know. Patterns are completely normal and slipping back into them is normal. If you find this happening to you, or if you’re watching this and you’re thinking, oh my God, I do this all the time. There’s something terribly wrong with me. No, no, no, no, no.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:40]:
There’s not because you’ve been doing this for decades. Right. It is ingrained. There is a groove worn in your neural pathways that says, this is how we do things. It’s become the course of least resistance. It’s the thing you know how to do without thinking about it at all. That’s why you don’t notice it. And so it doesn’t mean you don’t understand.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:08]:
It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or a failure. It just means that that pattern is still the default and change requires repetition. Repetition is how you got here in the first place, and it’s the only way you’re gonna get out. Insight is great because it tells you that there’s something that you wanna change, but it ain’t gonna make the change happen for you, unfortunately. Sorry. Sorry. But it’s you’re not you’re not failing. You’re just really, really well trained.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:36]:
And there was undoubtedly a really good reason why you trained yourself to do this in the first place. So practice is the key to everything. Right? Just like when you were little and you were taking piano lessons and somebody said to you, practice makes perfect. And if you were like me, you really, really hated that, if I’m being completely honest. But that expression is a cliche for a reason, because it’s not wrong. Right. Small repetitions matter. Experimentation matters.
Nancy Norbeck [00:07:11]:
You don’t actually have to sit down like an assembly line machine and repeat everything perfectly. Every single time you can experiment and see what version of the new thing you wanna do works best for you. And low stakes reputation and exploration matters a lot because the best way to rebuild trust in yourself is by trying, not by sitting around saying, oh, look. There’s an insight, and now I’m going to analyze it because, hi, I could be leading a chapter of over thinkers anonymous, and I’m betting if you have been recognizing what I’m saying, you probably could too. And if that’s the case, you already know what I’m going to say, which is that overthinking never actually solved the problem. Right? Overthinking just means we sit around and we go like this inside our heads and we spend a whole lot of energy, but it doesn’t actually get us anywhere. You have to actually take the action. Try something.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:12]:
If it doesn’t work, try something different. Experiment with it. See what feels right feels right on top of works right until you find the thing that makes you say, oh, oh, I think this is working. I think that I like this. That’s that’s the best way, and then keep playing with that. It may change a little bit as you play with it, but that’s that’s the key because all the insight in the world is not gonna change it for you. I wish that it were because it’d be a whole lot easier, but it just doesn’t work that way. Now next time, we’re gonna talk about permission and why it often works better than discipline and what actually helps people return to themselves.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:59]:
In the meantime, If you kind of like this corner of the internet, you’re welcome in the creative closet. Anytime you can subscribe. If you’d like to stick around, I recommend it that way. You’ll always know when there’s a new video or podcast episode. I also host a free follow your curiosity, creativity circle once a month. It’s a space for experimentation, curiosity, creative expression. You are very welcome there. We get together and we work on our own projects.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:24]:
We have a little social time. We share what we’re working on. It’s very, very gentle and easy and, and laid back. And we’d love to have you. I really appreciate you spending some time in the here in the creative closet with me. I am your Messy Muse mentor, and I help people feel alive again through creativity, curiosity, and play. And I’ll see you next time. If you’re tired of thinking about answering a creative call but never actually doing it, come join me for an hour and start feeling like yourself again.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:54]:
The Follow Your Curiosity Creativity Circle is a safe, welcoming, and encouraging environment where we send the shoulds and inner critics off to summer camp where they’re kept busy rather than getting in our way. You can find it at the link in your podcast app. See you there, and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.