Hurt Yourself Again With The Same Stone

You certainly realize that in your life the same problems are repeated over and over again. You may also see this very frequently in people around you.

“I always go out with men who cheat on me,” this friend can tell you. “I never find a job that is rewarding,” says the other. “Why do they all end up using me?” Exclaims a third.

Seeing this, we sometimes tell ourselves that fate exists and that all of these things are already written in advance, or that these actions are part of some kind of karma from our past lives, which we have to carry as a burden.

However, there are other more rational explanations for understanding the repetition of these events in our lives.

The repetition compulsion

The repetition compulsion is defined as an unconscious impulse, which causes people to repeat painful situations, facts, feelings, thoughts and realities.

However, this does not appear to us to be coherent. Why would anyone want to relive a negative experience, if the purpose of these situations is to learn a lesson not to make the same mistakes?

Doesn’t life revolve around avoiding what causes us suffering and which brings us unhappiness?

Animals learn from one experience, but humans do not. A rodent does not return by the path in which he may have had the bitter experience of a trap, or on which he saw the corpse of one of his congeners.

An elephant is able to remember throughout its life the face of a person who has harmed it. If he meets his attacker 50 years later, he will avoid or attack him.

But the human being acts differently. He can hurt himself a thousand times in the same way, be surprised 150 times by the same things or be eternally the victim of the same aggressor.

Humans don’t often learn from their wounds, and they always hurt themselves with the same stone.

Humans also find it difficult to learn from the experiences of others. He always assumes that his case is different.

He literally repeats the same mistakes, and finds himself facing the same problems or the same conflicts as his relatives, without realizing it.

How does this repetition work?

The mechanism of the repetition compulsion works in the following way: in the life of a human being, trauma occurs mainly during childhood.

It is so painful that it is thrown out of consciousness, forgotten, or interpreted as something trivial.

However, the impact of this trauma is never forgotten, but it can be repressed. It remains latent and resurfaces frequently, as long as it is not made aware.

The problem is that it doesn’t emerge as a memory. Instead of remembering it, we stage it.

We ourselves create a whole conjunction of factors to make this trauma repeat itself, unconsciously hoping that the end will be different this time around.

An ideal example to illustrate what we are saying is that of Norma, a girl with whom her mother was stern and cold.

She prostituted herself, hiding him from the girl’s father, and made him watch the bedroom door, so that no one would find out about his activities.

Years later, Norma married a man who had a relationship with pimps, and she too began to prostitute herself.

However, she was obsessed with keeping tabs on her husband to get to know the smallest details of his life perfectly. In addition, she had a daughter whom she quickly regarded as an unbearable being.

In this example, it is easy to see how Norma repeated the pattern of her own trauma: promiscuity, distance in mother / daughter relationships, and her role as “watchman”.

Trauma condemns victims to enter a vicious circle of pain and suffering.

It is therefore fundamental to be particularly attentive from a psychological and psychoanalytical point of view, to the following two circumstances: when a person has experienced a trauma (it does not matter whether we think they have overcome it in some way or of another) and when it is repeated in its existence.

We all have a habit of always hurting ourselves with the same stone.