By Oreva Godwin
What Is a Negative Pattern?
A negative pattern is a recurring, unproductive habit of thinking, feeling, or behavior that limits personal growth, well-being, and relationships. These patterns often stem from past experiences, learned behaviors, or unconscious beliefs. Without awareness and intentional change, they can become difficult to break.
Types of Negative Patterns
Behavioral Patterns – These involve recurring actions like avoidance, procrastination, poor decision-making, or unhealthy interactions with others. Often, we repeat them unknowingly influenced by our upbringing or environment.
Family Patterns – These are recurring negative experiences or behaviors that affect multiple generations, such as cycles of poverty, early pregnancy, domestic abuse, or divorce. In many African communities, these patterns are often labeled as spiritual attacks, family curses, evil covenants, or demonic strongholds.
But today, I want to challenge that belief. Let’s be clear: not all negative patterns whether behavioral or generational are spiritual. Some are natural consequences of poor choices, lack of knowledge, or unhealthy environments we unknowingly nurture. I understand some of my readers may be skeptical. You’re probably already thinking of examples to disagree with me. But hear me out.
Research shows that millions of women are raped globally every year, some reported, many unreported. Imagine a woman who was raped as a teenager and carried that trauma in silence. Years later, her daughter is raped too. Then, her granddaughter suffers the same fate.
It becomes a negative pattern. But does that automatically mean it’s a spiritual curse? No. The girl child is an endangered species. Rape can happen to anyone.
But what if the first victim had spoken up and taught her daughter about the dangers and realities women face? If she had shared her trauma honestly and helped her navigated the world with awareness?
That simple act of communication could have equipped the daughter with caution and strength and possibly prevented the recurrence.
A teenage girl gets pregnant at 16. Years later, she becomes overly strict with her daughter locking her in, monitoring her every move, all in fear of her repeating the same mistake. The daughter eventually finds freedom in the university, eager to explore what she was denied and gets pregnant too.
If you ask me, I would say the mother created the very pattern she feared. Overprotection isn’t the solution. What if she had simply sat her daughter down, shared her own experience, and taught her about sex, consequences, and self-worth? That knowledge could have guided her daughter toward making better decisions.
A woman gets divorced. Years later, her daughter brings a man home. The mother sees red flags but keeps silent, perhaps out of fear of interfering or societal pressure to “let her settle down.” The marriage fails, just like hers.
Who is responsible? Silence. Fear. Denial. Not spirits. We often blame our parents or call things “not ordinary” when really, the answer is simple: we just never addressed the issue. We enabled it through silence, fear, procrastination, or lack of knowledge.
Most behavioral patterns are learned. You grew up seeing them, absorbed them, and now live by them not because of a curse, but because of conditioning.
Ruth got married at 20. By 30, she was miserable. Her husband cheated, procrastinated, and took no responsibility. At 35, she left the marriage.
Years later, she pushed her daughters to marry early, the same way she did. So they can start bearing kids on time. Her first daughter brought a man with questionable character, but Ruth ignored the signs. Her second daughter followed shortly after, bringing a man with questionable source of income. Both marriages failed.
Ruth turned to prayer, fighting a “spiritual battle.” But the truth is, she ignored practical wisdom. She became a victim of a cycle she could have stopped, not by fasting, but by asking hard questions and offering honest guidance.
Blessing got pregnant at 15. Her daughter, Candy, grew up in fear overprotected, restricted, and monitored. Her home became a prison. When Candy finally got into university, she explored freedom recklessly and got pregnant at 18.
No one gave her sex education. No one shared real-life wisdom. She repeated her mother’s story not because of a curse, but because of silence.
Jack had a traumatic experience. He escaped a fatal accident and ever since, he started having negative thoughts. Constant voices in his head told him that he could die any moment. His mind was a battle field. As a strong believer, he felt it’s a demonic attack and kept on binding and casting the devil. But no change. It continued till it started giving him suicidal thoughts.
He went to a church program and the preacher spoke about negative pattern and he connected to the preaching because his sister committed suicide because of a heartbreak. Now Jack has a serious prayer point cut out for him. Praying against evil patterns was the prayer point. But nothing worked. Fasting and prayers never worked.
In the end, Jack committed suicide. A problem that therapy/counselling could have solved to clear his mind and helped him heal from the trauma. But he mistook it to be a spiritual negative pattern.
Desmond procrastinated his whole life. It was part of a family tradition. They delayed everything. But he hated it. He had great ideas but no motivation to act on them.
One day, he listened to a sermon about overcoming procrastination. The preacher said, “When you invest your money into your idea, you’ll be driven to complete it because no one wants to lose money.”
Desmond took the risk. He invested in his idea. The thought of losing his money gave him the urgency to follow through and it was a success. He didn’t break the pattern through deliverance, he broke it through good counsel.
Ask Yourself: What are you feeding your mind with? Who mentors you?
Are you in a church or group that teaches practical life wisdom or one that blames the devil for every mistake?
Do you read books?
Do you take responsibility?
Let’s normalize common sense. Can we normalize addressing problems with knowledge first and then backing it with prayers?
God told Moses, “I will make you like a god before Pharaoh.” So why do we act like slaves before our own problems?
Let’s stop encouraging negative patterns. Let’s stop calling every repeated hardship “spiritual.” Let’s learn to recognize the difference between spiritual battles and self-inflicted consequences.
You cannot fight physical problems with only spiritual weapons. Wisdom is also a weapon. Education is a tool. Conversations save lives. Let us be the generation that breaks patterns not by fear but by truth.
