Patanjali would call them samskaras. Cognitive scientists call them schemas. Most people call them "just who I am."
They are not who you are. They are conclusions you drew under pressure, at an age when you lacked the conceptual tools to draw better ones. Then they calcified. And then you built an identity around the calcification, which made them even harder to examine.
Here is a simple test: notice where you are most certain about yourself. "I am not someone who asks for help." "I work better alone." "I do not really need much affection." These sentences, spoken with the casual confidence of fact, are usually where the most interesting self-examination lives.
The pattern is not the self. The pattern is the adaptation. The examined life asks what it was adapting to, and whether those conditions still exist. Often they do not. Often you are carrying armor into rooms that have no weapons.
This is not a quick unraveling. Patterns this old have served real purposes and will not release without some negotiation. But the negotiation has to begin with noticing — which is to say, with the willingness to be surprised by yourself.
When were you last genuinely surprised by something you felt or did? That surprise is the opening.