The wounding that creates this survival pattern begins at about the age of two, because at that time the child enters a new developmental stage, a stage focused on the development of autonomy and a separate self.

The aggressive pattern develops in people who were in such distress that they feared they would die, but made it through by willing themselves to survive. Instead of leaving, looking to others for help, or simply enduring, they turned inside to their own resources, to their own will and strength, and fought their way through.

Each of the five survival patterns can be seen as the result of getting stuck in a particular developmental stage, unable to learn the skills and complete the main task of that stage.

The merging pattern usually forms during the time of nursing, the time that Freud called the oral stage of development, when the infant is totally dependent on her mother and caregivers and is mostly a bundle of needs.