• INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

Why You Repeat Unhealthy Patterns: Understanding Repetition Compulsion in Therapy

• Lakeshore Psychotherapy Group

• April 24, 2025

Feeling Stuck in the Same Patterns? You’re Not Alone

Have you ever asked yourself, “Why does this keep happening to me?”

Whether it’s ending up with emotionally unavailable partners, replaying the same conflicts at work, or always feeling like you’re back where you started, these aren’t just coincidences.

From a psychodynamic therapy perspective, these recurring experiences may be the result of something deeper: a phenomenon called repetition compulsion.

What Is Repetition Compulsion?

Repetition compulsion is the unconscious drive to repeat early emotional experiences or unresolved relational dynamics, especially those that were painful or confusing.

This idea, rooted in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and still relevant in modern psychodynamic therapy, explains why people often:

• Gravitate toward familiar (but harmful) relationship dynamics
• Self-sabotage just when things are going well
• Replay emotional roles learned in childhood (like always being the peacemaker, the fixer, or the one left out)

You may logically know the situation isn’t healthy. Yet emotionally, the pull toward these familiar patterns is strong, almost like muscle memory.

Why Do We Repeat What Hurts Us?

Repetition compulsion isn’t about weakness or failure. It’s your psyche’s way of trying to resolve something that wasn’t healed the first time around.

When early wounds—from childhood experiences—go unacknowledged or unprocessed, your unconscious mind may seek to “rewrite the ending” by placing you in similar situations.

There’s a hidden hope:

“Maybe this time, I’ll be chosen.”
“Maybe this time, I’ll be good enough.”
“Maybe this time, I’ll feel safe.”

But without awareness or support, the same outcome often repeats itself. Instead of healing the wound, we relive it over and over again.

What Repetition Compulsion Looks Like in Real Life

Here are just a few ways repetition compulsion may show up:

• Relationship Patterns: Repeatedly choosing partners who are unavailable, critical, or emotionally distant.
• Workplace Dynamics: Always ending up in roles where you’re undervalued or micromanaged, echoing early issues with authority figures.
• Friendships: Playing out caretaker or conflict-avoidant roles, repeating childhood family dynamics.
• Self-Sabotage: Quitting just before success, procrastinating, or sabotaging intimacy because it feels unfamiliar or risky.

How Psychodynamic Therapy Helps You Break the Cycle

Psychodynamic psychotherapy focuses on making the unconscious conscious. Instead of just helping you avoid the pattern, it invites you to understand:

• Where the pattern comes from
• What emotional needs it’s trying to fulfill
• What important psychological issues you are trying to resolve

Over time, therapy helps you:

• Recognize the internal scripts that drive your choices
• Work through the unresolved emotions beneath the surface
• Develop new internal experiences through the therapeutic relationship itself
• Gain the capacity to choose relationships and actions that support growth, not just familiarity

This deep insight, not willpower, is what allows real, lasting change to occur.

Why Insight Alone Isn’t Enough

Understanding the pattern is the first step. But transformation happens when insight is paired with emotional processing and relational healing.

Psychodynamic therapy offers a safe space to:

• Revisit early experiences with curiosity and compassion
• Feel what wasn’t safe to feel back then
• Begin writing a new narrative—one not dictated by past wounds

This type of therapy doesn’t offer quick fixes. But it offers something far more powerful: the chance to live in the present, rather than unconsciously relive the past.

Are You Ready to Break the Pattern?

If you’re tired of cycling through the same painful dynamics, psychodynamic therapy can help you explore the roots of your repetition and create real change.

At Lakeshore Psychotherapy Group, our licensed therapists specialize in helping clients move beyond surface-level symptom relief and into meaningful emotional growth.

We’ll work with you to uncover the “why” behind the “what”—so you can finally step into a new, more empowered version of your story.

Fill out our short form below to connect with one of our therapists for teletherapy across Illinois or Florida today!