I sat on a wooden chair in the exam room about 5 feet from the frustrated young man and his trembling whippet. “Looking at the chart,” I said, “I notice that Geralt seems to have these bouts of diarrhea every couple of months. Is there anything happening in his life around those times?” The owner first shook his head ruefully and then stopped. His eyes went wide. “Yes! It’s every time my parents come to visit! I wondered why he always followed my mom around. I bet she’s buying his love with forbidden treats.”
From there, we quickly resolved the case of Geralt the whippet’s mysterious bouts of diarrhea.
The Power of Pattern Recognition
It’s amazing how rarely we solve problems by methodically processing information as opposed to spotting patterns. Any number of issues might cause Geralt’s GI upset, but everything becomes clearer as soon as we learn that certain visitors come to the house around the time he tends to present for the issue.
That’s the power of pattern recognition. We’ve all taken pieces of information like those in Geralt’s case, found the link between them and reached our conclusions, often to great effect. Pattern recognition is, after all, a hugely powerful tool and part of our evolutionary success as a species.
In their book “The Phantom Pattern Problem,” economist Gary Smith and data scientist Jay Cordes write: “The survival and reproductive payoffs from pattern recognition gave humans an evolutionary advantage over other animals. … Indeed, it has been argued that the cognitive superiority of humans over all other animals is due mostly to our evolutionary development of superior pattern processing.”
Consider how often we get a diagnosis through a single definitive test (diagnosing an ear infection by visualizing bacteria on an ear cytology) compared to how frequently we get a diagnosis from recognizing a pattern (diagnosing pancreatitis the day after Thanksgiving in a dehydrated miniature schnauzer with a painful abdomen and a history of vomiting for the past 16 hours). My point isn’t that we only make predictions based on patterns, but that pattern recognition is a particularly handy and familiar tool for those who rely on logic and inductive reasoning.
The Quest for Certainty
I like the idea that each of us has a piece of our personality that arrived in our mind via a time capsule from the Stone Age. This piece of our consciousness shares (sometimes quite adamantly) the wisdom of our tribal ancestors. It grabs the steering wheel when we need our fight-or-flight response, and it has a lot to say about things, such as:
- The importance of maintaining good status in the tribe.
- How famine could come any time (so grab one more slice of pizza).
- The likelihood that any task to which we set our minds will end in our literal death.
Those were the realities of being human in an age when a good chunk of our mental hardware was created. Our time-capsule component ensures we don’t forget the realities regardless of how outdated they become.
Our time-capsule consciousness lives in fear. It’s the part of our mind that reacts to work stress with the same physiological responses we would use to flee from a bear or fight off a pack of coyotes. Have you ever wondered why your heart pounds and your palms sweat when you are about to call an angry client on the phone? Is it because you think you’re in some physical danger that might require you to fight or flee? Of course not. But your time-capsule consciousness is from an age when failure would likely equal death, so here we are — shallow, fast breathing and all.
The greatest comfort to our time-capsule consciousness is certainty. If we know what to expect, we can plan for it. And if we plan for it, we can exert at least some control over our situation. Ultimately, we can use certainty to avoid danger and pain, and avoidance is a top priority.
What do you think made the whippet’s owner feel better, safer and more confident? Was it me treating the diarrhea? Or was it the certainty that came from recognizing the pattern around Geralt’s condition? Once we identified the pattern, we could quickly create a plan to return some control to Geralt’s owner. That is why he relaxed and his entire demeanor changed before I talked about how we would treat Garalt.
People love finding patterns because pattern recognition brings clarity, and clarity allows for control. Control, or the perception of it, makes our time-capsule consciousness feel safe, and that’s when we get to relax.
The Problem With Loving Patterns
We all desire a strong sense of control, but control can’t exist without having some degree of certainty about what is happening in our lives and the world around us. Finding patterns is one of our best tools for creating the certainty we desperately need.
But here’s the problem: Certainty is rarely possible in a world full of randomness (and other people). We simply can’t know what will happen in most situations, and pattern recognition gets us into trouble when we create an entirely unwarranted sense of certainty.
Anyone who has worked in veterinary medicine (or existed as a human being) has seen patterns where they don’t exist. One of my colleagues found the syringe drawer to be out of syringes, the paper towel dispenser out of towels, and an exam room unclean after the last appointment. She took in those three pieces of information, recognized an obvious pattern with clear implications, and told me: “That’s it. This clinic is collapsing.”
One day, I repeatedly called a client who never answered and failed to set up her voicemail. I had another who stopped giving the medication that worked wonderfully to manage her pet’s chronic illness. A third walked in 30 minutes before closing with a problem he had been “monitoring” since 8 a.m. The pattern was obvious to my tired and frustrated brain. I immediately had clarity. “Society is devolving into chaos.”
What terrible conclusions to come to! Sometimes we get busy and have an afternoon where balls get dropped, and then we go home and the next day is fine. Sometimes we happen to come across more than one person who is struggling and behaving in a way that’s frustrating to others, and then the next day, we get a batch of cookies from a wonderful person who wants to say thanks.
Looking at hardships we encounter in our personal or professional lives and deciding how to address them is one thing. Rolling those hardships and frustrations together to form a pattern that’s supposed to give us certainty about the future is something different (and a terrible idea). The latter course creates false clarity about a dark future and, more importantly, gives small setbacks an unwarranted importance and enormous emotional weight.
Often, we can perceive challenging experiences as individual rough spots (like countless others we moved past), or we can interpret them as part of an imagined and deeply troubling pattern leading inevitably to ruin and calamity. The choice is ours.
Finding New Patterns
Pattern recognition is a tool. Like every other tool, it can be overused and misused. The best approach I found for trying to avoid seeing patterns where there are none is to be aware of our tendency to make the mistake.
By recognizing our tendencies to roll minor setbacks into false patterns, we can become empowered to avoid the behavior. Catching ourselves as we start to take little frustrations and give them a larger meaning allows us to pause and consider what is true. Perhaps these events are simply coincidences. Maybe our personal or professional lives aren’t collapsing; we’re just having a bad day. The troubling pattern might be real, but we can adjust our actions and perspectives so it doesn’t continue. By paying attention to the patterns we create in our minds, we can regain control of our responses.
We also can decide to look for new and different patterns. Do you have a pattern of fixing patients and building great relationships with pet owners? How about a pattern of getting through hard times and finding good days on the other side? Do you regularly work hard, care for yourself and others, and find that everything works out OK? Those are patterns as well, and they are worthy of consideration.
What would our days be like if we focused on the positive and hopeful patterns in our lives instead of looking for negative ones exclusively? Why don’t we let our history of successes provide us with clarity about what is most likely to happen in the future instead of ignoring this long-term trend?
Our personal patterns of accomplishment, not the patterns we create from hardship, are often better predictors of the future. These optimistic indicators can make us feel just as much clarity and control.