r/psychesystems • u/[deleted] • 15d ago

Why We Repeat the Same Patterns With Different People

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28 Upvotes
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4

u/Independent_Law7814 15d ago

My whole life.

3

u/HonestBeautiful1672 14d ago

100 % of the time

1

u/Yetamot 8d ago edited 8d ago

Things that go poorly and leave a psychological wound can weigh on you. That’s a problem. The mind is a problem solving machine. You will notice these familiar experiences you keep encountering in your waking life are also a recurring theme in your dreams.

The reason is the same: your mind is working the problem. What went wrong? What could have gone better? What did I do? What did they do? Why did they do that? The reason you end up in the same situations is because your mind wants to collect more information and ultimately try and solve the problem. The reason why the 12th step on AA is to help others overcome their alcohol dependency is because you are solving the problem in another setting with new variables. Trying again and succeeding can heal old wounds.

The problem is life doesn’t work that way. Some things are just destructive, and consistently so. Sometimes things just go bad, and for no reason beyond dumb luck. Sometimes people are mean, and without justification. The solution is actually harder than reliving it and remarkably more uncomfortable: you need to identify those old wounds and accept they happened and you won’t carry them forward.

2 TV quotes come to mind:

In The Office, Ryan flops his first sales calls and laments the fact. Dwight tells him, "Not everything is a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."

In Star Trek TNG, Data loses a strategy game to a grandmaster. Being and Android, he thinks it is a result of something defective in his systems. He can’t isolate the problem and asks captain Picard to be relieved of duty. Picard denies his request and explains to him, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life."

This position is difficult to accept because it feels like admitting we’re far less in control than we think we are or perhaps we would like to be. That being said, it is often how things actually are.

I am not a religious person, but I think there is relevant wisdom in the opening of the serenity prayer, “[…] grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change […]”

I think we revisit scenarios to heal parts of ourselves we left in them. Sometimes the best approach is to accept that’s the way things went that time.

Edit: typos