Behind Every Repetition Lies a Forgotten Wound

By: Isa Pašalić, psychologist

How many times have we found ourselves in a situation where we felt that exactly what we feared most was happening to us. Or, perhaps even more familiar, in a situation where we feel that we ourselves are summoning the scenarios we fear most.

Our psyche functions on the principle of repetition. It seeks to return us to the past so that we can process all those unprocessed experiences from the past. The inner world of a person can be vividly represented in the following way:

We are born with a certain amount of attention or energy that we can direct at any given moment towards everyday life and solving problems in the present. If we experience some misfortune or difficult emotional experience that we then do not process and integrate into consciousness, those experiences go into the dimension of the subconscious. By going into the subconscious, our attention or energy is diminished and fragmented, with part of that energy remaining attached to the emotional experience in the subconscious, thereby reducing the amount of attention we are able to direct towards the present and coping with problems in the present. We witness that people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder constantly struggle to keep the past in the past, so that it does not, through various means such as flashbacks, memories, unpleasant emotions, usurp the present. This is a more serious example, however, experiences of less pronounced trauma also function on the same principle as PTSD. People often, out of fear of pain and discomfort, unconsciously suppress difficult emotional experiences into the subconscious. Yet, what they are most often unaware of is that these experiences, along with the energy they carry, do not disappear simply because we forget them. On the contrary, these experiences, together with the energy they have bound, remain trapped in the subconscious and continue to drain attention from the present moment. This energy and these experiences do not disappear – they continue to act outside our conscious control. It is precisely from this hidden position that they begin to influence our behaviour and decisions, especially in moments of vulnerability. In PTSD, such occurrences are called flashbacks. Flashbacks are nothing more than energy surges that remind us that we have unprocessed emotional experiences that we need to resolve so that we do not fall into the same problems again.

People who have not processed their trauma often encounter a problem where they are unable to break out of the dead loop in which they constantly fall into the same or similar life situations, with intellectualisation offering no help at all. From our vivid description of the human inner world, we can conclude that our psyche actively strives for healing. Flashbacks show us that we are unable to control random bursts of suppressed emotional energy. From the same example, we see that these surges occur when we approach the initial vulnerability, that is, when we experience a reminder of the trauma in any way. This can be interpreted as an attempt by the psyche to return to the initial trauma, to relive it for the purpose of finally processing that difficult experience.

The random occurrence of repetitiveness in life situations functions on the same principle. We always feel that we attract the same or similar bad people and events, and that we fall into the same situations, and intellectual analysis does not help us get rid of this pattern. This phenomenon can be interpreted as an attempt by our subconscious to rid itself of old emotional experiences precisely by placing us in a situation where we are forced to feel and experience exactly what we most shy away from and fear.

If you have had the feeling that you keep encountering the same unpleasant situations and the same wrong people, now you know that your psyche may be telling you that there is material that you need to process so that you no longer find yourself in the same situations repeatedly. Breaking free from old habits is not easy, however, it is very much possible. Our psyche is designed according to a model whereby we become stronger and more capable when we process and integrate the difficult experiences we have lived through. This processing is painful, however, the fruits it ultimately brings represent the best gift we can give ourselves. Sometimes the most beautiful things reside behind the most painful experiences.