Our behavior as adults is heavily influenced by childhood trauma and relationship experiences in childhood. Can’t anything be changed? It turns out that everything is much more optimistic.
There is a beautiful formula, the author of which is unknown: «Character is what used to be in a relationship.» One of the discoveries of Sigmund Freud is that early traumas create zones of tension in our psyche, which later define the landscape of conscious life.
This means that in adulthood we find ourselves using a mechanism that was configured not by us, but by others. But you can’t rewrite your history, you can’t choose other relationships for yourself.
Does this mean that everything is predetermined and we can only endure without trying to fix anything? Freud himself answered this question by introducing the concept of repetition compulsion into psychoanalysis.
Briefly, its essence is as follows: on the one hand, our current behavior often looks like a repetition of some previous moves (this is a description of a neurosis). On the other hand, this repetition arises just so that we can correct something in the present: that is, the mechanism of change is built into the very structure of the neurosis. We both depend on the past and have a resource in the present to correct it.
We tend to get into repetitive situations, reenacting relationships that did not end in the past.
The theme of repetition often appears in client stories: sometimes as an experience of despair and powerlessness, sometimes as an intention to relieve oneself of responsibility for one’s life. But more often than not, an attempt to understand whether it is possible to get rid of the burden of the past leads to the question of what the client does in order to drag this burden further, sometimes even increasing its severity.
“I easily get acquainted,” says 29-year-old Larisa during a consultation, “I am an open person. But strong ties do not work out: men soon disappear without explanation.
What’s happening? We find out that Larisa is not aware of the peculiarities of her behavior — when a partner responds to her openness, she is overcome with anxiety, it seems to her that she is vulnerable. Then she begins to behave aggressively, defending herself from an imaginary danger, and thereby repels a new acquaintance. She is not aware that she is attacking something that is valuable to her.
Own vulnerability allows you to detect the vulnerability of another, which means you can move a little further in proximity
We tend to get into repetitive situations, reenacting relationships that did not end in the past. Behind Larisa’s behavior is childhood trauma: the need for secure attachment and the inability to obtain it. How can this situation be ended in the present?
In the course of our work, Larisa begins to understand that one and the same event can be experienced with different feelings. Previously, it seemed to her that approaching another necessarily meant vulnerability, but now she discovers in this the possibility of greater freedom in actions and sensations.
Own vulnerability allows you to discover the vulnerability of another, and this interdependence allows you to move a little further in intimacy — partners, like the hands in Escher’s famous engraving, draw each other with care and gratitude for the process. Her experience becomes different, it no longer repeats the past.
To get rid of the burden of the past, it is necessary to start all over again and see that the meaning of what is happening is not in the objects and circumstances that surround us — it is in ourselves. Psychotherapy does not change the calendar past, but allows it to be rewritten at the level of meanings.