Why We Keep Repeating the Same Patterns

Dr. Nicole Dolan sits down with Dr. Andrew Hahn, creator of Life-Centered Therapy, for a conversation that gets stranger the deeper it goes. Andy’s starting point is simple: when something triggers us, there is often a sensation in the body that we immediately assume is us. Anxiety becomes “I’m anxious.” Pain becomes “my pain.” Fear becomes “I’m afraid.” LCT asks a different question: what if the sensation is something you can listen to rather than something you are? Nicole tries the process with Andy in real time, beginning with a simple tightness in her throat. Within minutes, the conversation moves from an intellectual explanation of therapy into an actual experience of it. From there, Andy starts pulling on the bigger questions. What exactly do we mean by “self”? Is consciousness more fundamental than matter? Why do we keep recreating the same patterns? And if a sensation can carry a story, who is actually having the experience? Nicole also shares the personal experience that first made her want to learn LCT, including a past-life experience she says was connected to a pattern she had been struggling with. Then Andy tells the stories behind the work itself: a poem he wrote at nine years old that he later understood differently decades later, his early experiences with intuition, a dream involving a three-story lion that taught him to become what he feared, and an encounter he describes as discovering the “seat of the healer.” The conversation eventually lands on one of Andy’s strangest and most useful ideas: sometimes the thing we spend our lives trying to escape may be the very thing we need to become willing to experience. Whether you take his ideas literally, metaphorically, spiritually, or simply as an experiment in how we understand our own experience, this episode asks some unusually large questions about healing. And Nicole keeps doing what makes this conversation work: asking, “Okay, but what does that actually mean for a human being sitting here?” CHAPTERS 00:00:00 - A New Way to Face Suffering 00:00:28 - The Root Cause of Suffering 00:01:03 - Why the Sensation Is Not the Self 00:01:52 - Introducing Dr. Andrew Hahn and Life Centered Therapy 00:03:07 - The Self, Soul, and Life as a Hologram 00:06:08 - A Guided Exercise for Becoming the Sensation 00:08:42 - Nicole Explores Tightness in Throat 00:16:05 - How Identification Creates Repeating Patterns 00:19:57 - Healing by Finding Who Has the Problem 00:22:06 - Why Consciousness, Not Matter, Is Foundational 00:23:22 - Healing a Panic Attack Through Witnessing 00:26:21 - Connecting the Method to Parts Work 00:29:42 - Expanded Awareness as the Essential Resource 00:31:30 - Remembering the Awareness That Is Always Present 00:32:41 - Nicole’s Healing Through a Past-Life Experience 00:37:35 - Trauma, Protection, and the Foundations of LCT 00:43:25 - How Life-Centered Therapy First Revealed Itself 00:43:33 - A Childhood Poem Foretelling the Work 00:44:28 - Remembering Can Heal an Entire Lineage 00:47:09 - Early Signs of a Life Between Worlds 00:48:31 - The Lion Dream and Becoming Fear 00:51:36 - Discovering the Seat of the Healer 00:54:40 - Falling into Grace and Facing Nothingness 00:58:06 - Discovering Universal Patterns Beneath Symptoms 01:00:53 - Tracing Trauma to a Deeper Story 01:02:43 - Making Amends for a Past-Life Betrayal 01:05:09 - How One Story Shapes Lifelong Patterns 01:06:33 - Using Unusual Experiences as Healing Metaphors 01:07:20 - Closing Reflections and Invitation ABOUT THE PURPLE COUCH The Purple Couch is hosted by Dr. Nicole Dolan, a depth psychologist, alongside co-host Melinda Kincaid, LMFT, CPAT. Two therapists making attachment, the nervous system and the unconscious make sense in plain language, including when it’s about them. Instagram: instagram.com/drnicoledolan Tags: consciousness, therapy, somatic therapy, depth psychology, parts work, healing patterns, body awareness, past life experience, spiritual psychology