R E L A T I O N S H I P S: Back to the future?? or in present moment?
“Mirror mirror on the wall, I’m like my mother after all…”.
“Did I marry my mother? Or am I re-creating situations to make her like my mother?”
Can you relate to any of these sentences? Or totally un-relate?
Oh… relationships… “If he/she were just…more of that… lesser of this…”. This is the tip of the iceberg. But underneath…lay two whole lives of two different people. Two lives with a history. And just as history repeats itself, we continuously repeat our past. We meet up with another person that fits that part of the puzzle that allows us to recreate our past successfully. Unfortunately, this kind of success is not what we are looking for.
In my last post I mentioned Freud’s repetition compulsion. I will expand on it in the context of relationships. Here are two entities doing their best to repeat a quality of feeling from their past, hoping that this time it will be different (unconsciously, of course). However, this entails a paradox. Why would this time be any different?
Patterns of behavior means that we know one way (or a few) to address/ react to a situation. If we are not satistifed with this way and want to bring change- here is the way:
1. First, notice this pattern of behavior- namely bring it to our conscious awareness. Notice the ‘repetition compulsion’. It’s our compulsive, impulsive reaction to a situation that continuously repeats itself. So we find ourselves in a never-ending loop.
2. Once we have brought this to our attention, we can zoom in on the feeling in our body. Similar, to a drug addiction- this feeling is one that we are so used to, we don’t know how it feels to feel any differently. It is on the physical level- it’s the chemistry in our body. It’s the neuron chain patterns that are used to being triggered again and again. We want to create a different chemical running through our body- one that makes us feel good (similar to how doing sports causes the change of hormones in the body that creates the ‘feel good’ feeling). We want to create NEW neuron chain pattern reactions, ones that we don’t know about yet. We want to create new patterns of behavior.
3. That’s it. nerons mirror each other. Once you change your neuronal patterns- the outside -world will adjust accordingly. C’est tout! New possibilitie have opened up!
In therapy, using words- we bring the unconscious to conscious awareness, we zoom in on that feeling, see where it stems from originally, and open up new possibilities of being- this creates the different chemistry, the different neuron chain reactions. We are actually paving new roads. New for ourselves. Possibly, new in our family tree. We think our relationship is in the present. But most of us bring two pasts into the present. Perhaps it’s time to live in the present…
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I work with women on topics such as: Love, relationships, marriage, divorce, parenting, weight, body image, career, chronic pain, illness and health and more.
About me:
* Phd research in Psychoanalysis in Bar Ilan University
* MA in Movement Psychotherapy from University of London
* Private clinic in Gan Haim (near Raanana and Kfar Saba) and online (worldwide)
Pic: improving my drawing skills:) Shadows and light from writing and sketching at 3:00 AM…
