Hey there,
Quick question.
You keep returning to something you know is bad for you.
You overthink one tiny interaction for three days.
You somehow end up in the same situation with a completely different person.
Parasite or personality trait?
Let’s find out.
🪱 You’re attracted to the thing you should avoid
You know the person is trouble.
You know the habit never ends well.
And yet, somehow, there you are again.
Humans call this many things.
Toxoplasma gondii has a more disturbing version.
This parasite can infect rodents and alter their response to cat odors, reducing the fear that would normally tell a rat:
Perhaps do not approach the giant animal designed to eat you.
Conveniently, cats are exactly where the parasite needs to end up to complete part of its life cycle.
So if you’ve ever wondered why you keep returning to something your rational brain already rejected...
At least there probably isn’t a parasite orchestrating it.
Probably.
🪱 You feel compelled to do something that makes no sense
Ever opened your phone without consciously deciding to?
Driven somewhere on autopilot?
Texted someone and immediately thought, “Why did I do that?”
Meet the horsehair worm.
It develops inside insects like crickets and eventually needs water to continue its life cycle.
Unfortunately for the worm, crickets generally live on land.
Researchers have found that infected crickets can be manipulated into approaching water.
The cricket jumps in.
The worm emerges.
A horrifyingly successful travel arrangement.
🪱 You keep repeating the same pattern
New job.
New relationship.
New year.
Suspiciously familiar problem.
Parasites are experts at life cycles.
Some move through multiple hosts, changing form and behavior along the way, all while following the same biological program again and again.
Humans have loops too.
A trigger creates a thought.
The thought creates a reaction.
The reaction brings relief, distraction, reassurance, or control.
Then the cycle starts over.
And after enough repetitions, we sometimes give the pattern a name:
“That’s just my personality.”
Which raises a better question:
Is it?
That’s one reason we like EntheaCare’s microdosing program.
Their 8-week nurse-guided program combines microdosing education with journaling, meditation, nutrition, and reflection, creating space to notice the patterns that keep showing up.
A useful place to start is simply asking:
What keeps happening?
What tends to trigger it?
What do i automatically do next?
Where did I learn that response?
Sometimes a “personality trait” is a pattern that became very well rehearsed.
The weird thing about patterns
Parasites survive because they understand their host extremely well.
Your oldest habits have had plenty of time to learn you too.
So the next time you catch yourself saying:
“I’m just like this.”
Get curious.
There may be a whole life cycle hiding underneath.
— Gabi & Bea
P.S. Curious about EntheaCare’s guided approach? You can learn more about their 8-week microdosing program here.