Something in you changed a while ago. You know it did. You handle things now that used to undo you.
And then, in the room, you introduced yourself the old way. Took the smaller chair. Said yes to the role you outgrew a year ago. The choice was made before you noticed there was a choice.
Self-image updates slower than behaviour. The old version keeps choosing until the new one is written down.
Identity is a stored model of who you are, and under pressure the brain reaches for the stored version because it is fast. The newer version exists. It exists as experience, as things you have actually done. It does not yet exist as a default, and defaults are what get used when there is no time to think. So every moment that requires speed is run by the old file.
This is why insight does not fix it. You can know the story has expired and still act from it, because knowing lives in one system and defaults live in another.
The structural alternative works on the default directly.
Find one situation this week where the old version made the choice. A small one. Then write down, in one line, what the current version would have done instead. Concrete. A sentence you would have said, a chair you would have taken.
Then do it once, on purpose, in a moment that does not matter much. Low stakes, full attention.
Defaults are rewritten by repetition under low pressure, and then they hold under high pressure. Not the other way round. The story updates when the behaviour has been run enough times that the brain stops checking the old file.
Next issue in a week.