# Repetition Compulsion: Why We Recreate Childhood Dynamics In Our Adult Relationships (& How To Stop)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7HCJoHVmf0

[00:00] hey guys I'm Heidi PRI welcome back to my Channel or welcome if you're new here
[00:05] this month on this channel we're talking about neuroticism and today in particular I want to talk about the tendency for people to recreate the dysfunction of their early family environments in their adult attachment relationships
[00:20] now it is well documented throughout the history of psychology that this is something people tend to do
[00:28] so Freud had this term called repetition compulsion where he suggested that when we had trauma that we didn't consciously remember often because it happened when we were too young to make concrete memories around it what we would do as adults is unconsciously act out that trauma in a way that would end up recreating that original traumatic experience in our adult lives
[00:49] and a lot of different people have kind of played with this term and this idea over the years but essentially there tends to be a general consensus that yes we have
[01:01] observed the phenomenon of people unconsciously ending up in dynamics that look quite similar to what they experienced when they were children and here's the thing I absolutely buy into the idea that there is a strong correlation between the Dynamics of our families of origin and the Dynamics of our adult attachment relationships it also makes sense to me when we have phrases like we don't choose what we want we choose what is familiar but in general I am not satisfied with correlations I always want to know why especially when it comes to psychology because if we can get at the causation if we can figure out precisely where this whole thing is going wrong then we can start manipulating the variables to our advantage so we can start getting a different result than what we have gotten in the past because when I was a young student of psychology I remember getting frustrated hearing things like this because I wanted to know why why on
[02:02] Earth would we pick something that's familiar but terrible over something that is different but wonderful?
[02:10] If we have these giant human brains that are good at conscious reasoning, why don't we just use our reason to choose something better?
[02:17] And so what I want to do with this video is lay out some of the answers that I've arrived at in response to that question over the years of examining it.
[02:25] So these are five very specific blind spots that you might have if you grew up in an insecurely attached family dynamic and you find yourself replaying those same dynamics without consciously wanting to in your adult life.
[02:41] So what this might look like is going into every new relationship thinking, 'I am going to do this completely differently. This relationship is going to be healthy,' and it might even feel pretty good and pretty healthy for a while.
[02:55] But then inevitably it devolves back into the same form of dysfunction that feels familiar to you.
[03:03] Video once again we're going to go over five blind spots you might have that is contributing to that as well as what you can start to do differently to avoid repeating the exact same mistakes unconsciously in the future.
[03:18] Blind spot number one is that you may have internalized the incorrect definition of secure love and so now you're going out in the world telling yourself and other people and truly believing it that you want secure love but what you're doing with your actions is actually eliciting insecure forms of love because you don't realize that certain things you thought were loving and secure based on your early dynamics were actually a product of your caregivers or your family environments attachment or trauma wounds themselves.
[03:53] So to help us kind of wrap our minds around this I'm going to give a very silly metaphor.
[04:00] Let's say from a very young age you managed to mix up the terms for sandwich and spaghetti so.
[04:06] every time you saw someone putting meat between slices of bread you went oh cool.
[04:10] they're making spaghetti and every time you saw someone boiling pasta noodles and putting sauce on it you thought hm that looks like a delicious sandwich now.
[04:19] it's not that you were hallucinating and seeing something different than what was in front of you it's just that you got the naming of that thing incorrect so this might get really confusing when let's say you go to a restaurant and you look at the menu and you see the word sandwich on the menu and you go yeah I could really go for a sandwich that sounds delicious but what you're picturing in your mind is a plate of pasta because you have those two words confused.
[04:45] so the server comes and takes your order and you go I would like the sandwich please and the server goes back to the kitchen and delivers your order and the kitchen makes you up a sandwich and the waiter brings it to you and you look at it and go what is this because in your mind you were expecting spaghetti noodles with pasta sauce on top of them because that was the word.
[05:06] that you associated with sandwich and you might start an argument with your waiter and go I want a sandwich and your waiter might be going I gave you a sandwich and nobody's going to understand what's going on because you have the wrong word internalized for what you actually want which is pasta.
[05:24] now this is very similar to what happens when we go out searching for a secure romantic relationship but our idea of what a secure romantic relationship is is actually an insecure relationship.
[05:38] so very often when we're raised insecurely attached there are things that we can recognize okay this isn't healthy in our early Dynamics but there's also a ton of stuff that we have internalized as perfectly normal that is in fact a product of insecure attachment.
[05:56] so then if we try to get into a relationship with a secure person and they start doing secure things that we have internalized as insecure things so
[06:06] let's say we came from a really distanced family environment where we didn't really put our needs on each other.
[06:11] and then we get into a relationship with a secure person they're going to start telling us about their problems or asking us for help with things and we're going to go oh what's this I wanted a secure attachment relationship and it's going to be like having that argument with the server where they gave you what you technically asked for but you you aren't recognizing that as the thing that you're being given.
[06:32] or let's say if you were raised in a more in mesh Dynamic and so you grew up never stating what your needs were but assuming that other people would be attuned enough to you to meet them for you without you having to ask and you would do the same in response.
[06:48] and then when you get into a secure relationship you might start getting frustrated when your partner isn't picking up on your needs because coming from a more secure standpoint they're expecting you to say what your needs are and ask them directly if you need help with something and so you might start getting frustrated and going this isn't a secure relationship my partner isn't meeting my
[07:07] needs without me saying what they are.
[07:10] when in reality once again you've internalized something that is insecure.
[07:12] as secure and there's truly no end to the misunderstandings that we might have in this department.
[07:19] and so you have to keep yourself open to the idea that you might have some blind spots in this area.
[07:27] and this was something that kind of broke my own brain in the attachment healing process.
[07:29] I actually specifically remember reading the book the fantasy bond by Robert Firestone and coming across this one passage where he was talking about how in healthy attachment relationships particularly between parent and child the parents role was to be present with the child when they were struggling and to help them understand what it was that they were struggling with and build the skills to meet that challenge with support.
[07:58] and this passage though it is probably the most obvious thing on earth to a lot of people out there absolutely broke my brain because having had a lot of toxic shame growing up I had the deeply ingrained belief.
[08:10] that the only way to be in an attachment relationship and to stay in deep connection with other people was to be perfect and to push down all of the ways in which I was not perfect hide them from sight and only show my absolute best side when engaging with people
[08:28] and if I was dealing with a vulnerable ability or something painful or an area of my life where I was not yet perfect the way to stay in connection with other people was to either withdraw until I became perfect again or to absolutely hide that thing from them at any cost
[08:44] and learning that one of the core components of deep authentic intimately connected relationships is sharing our challenges with other people and being seen by people and supported in our navigating of them truly was a challenging thing for me to accept as the truth because it required me to fundamentally change my definition of what love was
[09:07] and so what we're going to be doing in the process of moving
[09:12] towards secure attachment is constantly updating our definition of what a healthy relationship is and this is often going to mean arriving in moments where we're getting frustrated because in our minds we're going I don't understand why this isn't working I am doing all the right things I'm pushing down all of my feelings of anger and frustration and I'm only sharing positive things with my partner that's secure right I'm staying hyper attuned to my partner's ever shifting moods and I'm doing the emotional regulation work that my partner can't do on their own on their behalf so that they stay consistently emotionally regulated as long as I'm around because that way they treat me kindly and if I don't regulate them for them they treat me unkindly that's secure right and I say all of this not to shame any of us for the insecure things that we have internalized as secure but just to encourage us to kind of deal with these with a sense of levity as we go because there are likely to be a lot of things
[10:12] we have internalized under the umbrella term of love and secure attachment that actually belong Under The Umbrellas of codependency or avoidance and we need to stay open to readjusting our definition continuously as we learn and grow grow through our relationships
[10:31] second reason why you might unconsciously be recreating early family Dynamics in your adult attachment relationships is that if you are someone who grew up with a significant amount of early wounds related to attachment or with a significant amount of trauma you might genuinely feel the most seen and mirrored and understood by other people who also have quite a bit of trauma or wounding and in the early stages of a relationship before a strong Mutual attachment forms which is when all of our triggers and attachment wounds start coming online being with another person who is very significantly insecurely attached if you are might actually feel
[11:14] like the most astonishingly healthy thing you have ever experienced because this person might genuinely and truly be much more capable of understanding you than the average person you meet.
[11:27] the problem is that if the thing you were bonding over is a shared trauma history, it's likely that you're now in a relationship with a lot of triggers and wounds and attachment patterns online that might make it really challenging to keep the relationship healthy.
[11:44] and there is a huge amount of variability within this right at the absolute most optimistic end of the spectrum we have two people who have earned secure attachment who are able to deeply understand each other but also are not in significant ific an ways still operating out of their past insecure patterns.
[12:02] and at the really destructive end of things we have two people who are still really deep in their own attachment wounding and as much as they don't want this to be the case when they meet and fall in love with each other as
[12:16] Soon as that deep attachment starts forming all of that wounding and all of those triggers come to the surface and create chaos.
[12:23] But what I really want to emphasize here is that if you are insecurely attached meeting someone who is also insecurely attached often in a complimentary way to you.
[12:35] So if you're anxious someone who airs more avoidant but is approximately the same level of avoidant as you are anxious is probably going to feel like an absolute beautiful match made in heaven until the wounds come out.
[12:47] And parts of that can also be related to the fact that if we have parts of ourselves we've repressed and we find a partner who really exemplifies those parts of themselves potentially the expense of the things that they have repressed that maybe we have super online.
[13:04] Once again meeting and falling in love is going to feel for both of you for a period of time like you finally feel whole.
[13:11] And I have an entire video that explores this phenomenon so I will
[13:16] link it in the description of this one.
[13:18] rather than going too deep with it here.
[13:20] that one is about compatibility and how.
[13:22] insecure attachment can accidentally.
[13:24] have us choosing Partners who are wrong for us over and over and over again but.
[13:28] in short the point that I want to drive home here is that insecure attachment relationships when both people still have their attachment wounds fairly online often feel very secure at first.
[13:37] in fact more so than being with a secure person does and the ideal is that as you go through this journey and end up doing the work to regulate yourself around your triggers and to make the things that are in your blind spots conscious you will eventually earn secure attachments.
[13:59] and once you have earned secure attachment and you still have all of those memories of what it once was to have trauma and wounds online you're probably still going to relate best to other people who understand what that's like but you're going to be able to tell a fellow earned secure person who's able.
[14:18] to regulate themselves and has learned strategies for coping with their own trauma responses from someone who still has those responses fairly online and that doesn't mean that you can't be close to people who are still in the healing process if you are earn secure it just means that you're able to use your reason to figure out who it might be challenging for you to get really close to because they still have a lot of wounds online that they might end up taking out on you unconsciously versus who else has done enough work to be able to enter into a healthy romantic relationship and with less of your own blind spots online it's going to get easier and easier to Spot the Difference In The Dating process third reason why you might might unconsciously recreate your Early Childhood experiences in your adult attachment relationships is because you might not realize that your strategy for forming connections with people would only really appeal to other insecurely attached people so the kind of bids that you have unconsciously learned to make to get connection it's
[15:20] almost like they're operating at a frequency that only other insecurely attached people can pick up on.
[15:25] so those are the people who are responding to those bids.
[15:30] and on the flip side of things you might have no idea how to recognize a secure Bend for connection when it comes your way.
[15:36] and so you also aren't tuned into what types of bids for connection you would need to be putting out in order to attract more secure people.
[15:43] so I'm going to give you an example of this.
[15:46] there was a point of time when I was in my attachment healing Journey where I went to a silent Retreat.
[15:51] and one of the rules that the instructors gave us at the beginning of the retreat was nobody is allowed to caretake each other in this retre trade.
[15:59] so if you see someone who looks like they're really struggling or is having a trauma response or needs help come get one of the instructors and let them know.
[16:11] do not try to attend to that person on your own.
[16:13] and there was a couple of reasons for this.
[16:15] one was that of course the instructors were trauma informed.
[16:17] they knew what to expect and what might get triggered in people so they were the
[16:20] most equipped at handling this but they also explained that part of what they were trying to do was to just get everyone to stay aware of Their Own desire to caretake as it came up and so when we were given the instructions I was like that's great no problem as someone who does generally just naturally track what's going on for most people who I'm in a room with at any given point in time it actually felt like kind of a relief to be explicitly told that I was not to do that and not to take care of other people's emotions so long as I was at this retreat but what was really interesting was that as the retreat stretched on and we hit our second and then our Third Day of Silence I started to notice that there were certain people I felt more drawn to despite the fact that I couldn't speak to them and in particular I noticed that there were certain instances or certain facial expressions or certain kind of energies people gave off that felt to me like I would naturally understand how to
[17:21] make a bid for connection with that person.
[17:23] so I kind of started noticing these moments where if I could speak I probably would have reached out to this person and said something.
[17:32] and what was interesting was that more often than not the moments where I felt that compulsion to go talk to someone was when I saw somebody looking kind of distressed or like they needed help or guidance.
[17:45] and I realized that is totally what my body recognizes as the go-ahead sign to start being in connection with someone if they look like they need help or guidance in some way.
[17:55] I want to jump in and see if I can save them from whatever feelings they are having and that is not at all conscious.
[18:03] that is not something I thought through and decided was my strategy for connecting with people but I noticed that when I wasn't allowed to do that it was almost painful in my body.
[18:13] like I had so many impulses where I wanted to do that and this became a really interesting inquiry around what do I see as a door for connection and
[18:24] which doors might I be not seeing that are actually the healthier doors to walk through?
[18:28] so if I am compulsively only forming connections with people who struggle to regulate themselves
[18:36] essentially I am putting out a bid for connection that is not entirely secure.
[18:41] I'm putting out a bid that says hey I will help you make sense of your own feelings and someone who really wants someone else to help them deal with all of their feelings might go great my bin for connection is that I will always treat you as invulnerable and bring you all of my problems and now we are in an insecurely attached connection that feels deeply secure to both of us until it doesn't.
[19:05] and so the art of learning to change this tendency is to start noticing how do secure people form connections with each other what do they talk about when they meet each other to what degree are they vulnerable how long does it take them to weigh deeper into the connection and something that I really want to stress here is that in
[19:25] mutually secure Dynamics there is a lot lot of reciprocity in the way that they interact with each other so it's not that one person is always capable and the other is always vulnerable it's that both of them trade off being capable and vulnerable with each other fairly regularly so that's the third thing we want to be looking at is which bids for connection are we putting out that only insecure people would pick up on but we also want to be looking at the flip side of this which is which secure bids am I not putting out that means I not naturally attracting secure people to me so a metaphor I like to picture when I'm thinking about this is imagine that the dating field so to speak is a literal soccer field and right down the center of that soccer field there is a line and that line represent secure attachment so all of the people who are securely attached are kind of going to that line and they're standing around waiting for other secure people to meet them and form Connections in a reciprocal way and
[20:27] so part of what's required in order to
[20:29] stand on that line is being vulnerable
[20:31] and open enough to show up and say hey
[20:34] I'm looking for connection I'm wanting
[20:36] to meet someone here's who I am and what
[20:39] I want and then the other part of that
[20:41] skill is letting someone else come to
[20:44] you and meet you where you're at someone
[20:46] else who is open and looking for
[20:48] connection and doesn't have to be chased
[20:51] and when two people find themselves
[20:53] standing in the middle of that soccer
[20:54] field on the line of secure attachment
[20:57] the stage is set for them to start
[20:58] forming something that is healthy but
[21:00] let's say you don't like the
[21:02] vulnerability that you would have to put
[21:04] forth in order to walk to the center of
[21:06] that line and so you pull way back and
[21:09] you're kind of outstanding by the soccer
[21:11] net so you're not making many bids for
[21:13] connection you're not going out and
[21:16] pursuing people you're not putting
[21:17] yourself out there you're not being
[21:19] honest and authentic and vulnerable when
[21:21] you are dating and so who are you going
[21:23] to meet out there probably someone who's
[21:26] really comfortable coming so far over
[21:29] that line because they don't have a
[21:31] natural awareness of boundaries that
[21:33] they aren't noticing that you aren't
[21:35] being reciprocal in their interest and
[21:38] then eventually you might go okay well
[21:40] I'm lonely and this person is hanging
[21:42] around this section of the field which
[21:44] for some reason nobody else seems to be
[21:46] around so I guess I'll date them and
[21:49] then you're going to be really surprised
[21:51] when that person is not very respectful
[21:53] of your boundaries when in reality a
[21:56] person who was respectful of boundaries
[21:58] would never have gotten close to you in
[22:00] the first place because you are giving
[22:02] off so many get away from me I don't
[22:04] want to be in a relationship Vibes that
[22:06] a secure person would just naturally see
[22:09] thems out or assume that you just want
[22:11] to be friends the only person who is
[22:13] going to persist when that's the type of
[22:15] energy you're giving off is someone who
[22:17] doesn't really know how to read those go
[22:19] away signals so it's probably not a
[22:21] surprise if that person ends up crossing
[22:23] a lot of your boundaries in the
[22:25] relationship same goes on the other side
[22:27] of things if if you walk up to the
[22:29] secure center of the line and go hey I'm
[22:31] here I'm open I'm vulnerable I'm ready
[22:33] for a relationship and a secure person
[22:35] on the other side goes hey I'm also here
[22:38] and I'm open and I'm vulnerable and I'm
[22:40] ready for a relationship and you
[22:41] unconsciously go I don't want you to be
[22:44] vulnerable You're going to walk right
[22:46] past that secure person and look at that
[22:48] person who's way far off on the other
[22:50] side of the field and go they look like
[22:52] they've got their stuff together and
[22:54] you're going to ignore the fact that you
[22:55] are taking 10 steps in their direction
[22:58] for every one step that they are taking
[23:00] in yours and that that in and of itself
[23:03] is not a secure Dynamic so again what we
[23:06] want to be doing here is not shaming
[23:07] ourselves for approaching these
[23:09] situations from an insecure place what
[23:12] we want to be doing is just keeping
[23:13] ourselves aware of how these Dynamics
[23:16] are playing out for us
[23:18] unconsciously so as much as possible we
[23:20] want to start studying how to secure
[23:23] people form connections with one another
[23:25] and what are they doing that I am
[23:27] neglecting or what am I doing that would
[23:30] be a no or a boundary for a secure
[23:32] person in a relationship are there
[23:34] vulnerabilities that we're failing to
[23:35] show so are we seeming closed off to
[23:38] more secure Partners or are we not
[23:41] stepping into our personal power and
[23:43] setting boundaries in a way that would
[23:45] attract healthy secure partners and the
[23:48] last blind spot I want to encourage us
[23:50] to watch out for if we find that we tend
[23:52] to compulsively unconsciously recreate
[23:55] our early family Dynamics and our adult
[23:57] attachment relationships is we want to
[24:00] get clear on whether we are putting the
[24:02] right expectations on our
[24:05] relationships because if we were raised
[24:07] in families were either Community was
[24:10] heavily undervalued so we kind of
[24:13] internalized this idea of my attachment
[24:15] relationship is meant to meet all of my
[24:18] needs including my needs for friendship
[24:20] and belonging we might be putting way
[24:23] too much pressure on every attachment
[24:25] relationship we get into the same might
[24:27] be true if we internalize that
[24:29] relationships all together were
[24:31] unimportant and self-reliance was the
[24:33] whole way to go in that case what's
[24:36] likely to happen is we don't notice our
[24:38] attachment needs until we are suddenly
[24:41] starving to death to have them fulfilled
[24:43] and just like when we're starving to
[24:45] death and looking at food delivery apps
[24:47] our discernment goes way down when we
[24:50] are shopping from a place of desperation
[24:53] we're not looking for what's healthy
[24:54] we're just looking for food and on the
[24:57] flip side of things if you're prone to
[24:59] putting too many of your needs into a
[25:01] romantic partnership what's likely to
[25:03] happen is that as soon as you get out of
[25:05] a relationship you're going to be kind
[25:07] of desperate to fill that role again
[25:09] because it's meeting a ton of your needs
[25:11] at once so you feel kind of disregulated
[25:13] across the bored when you're not in a
[25:15] romantic connection so this is kind of
[25:17] the equivalent of being in a four-person
[25:20] startup versus a large company and
[25:23] losing one employee in the startup if
[25:25] that one employee is doing 25% of the
[25:28] the work that keeps the entire company
[25:30] running you need to replace that
[25:31] employee and ASAP in a larger company
[25:34] you can go for a longer period of time
[25:36] with that role not being filled because
[25:39] there are a lot of people working to
[25:41] keep the company running smoothly and so
[25:43] you can disperse that person's workload
[25:45] in tiny increments amongst a bunch of
[25:47] other people until you find someone else
[25:49] to fill the role and this is what it's
[25:52] like when we are securely attached and
[25:54] we have healthy thriving communities
[25:56] around us if we lose someone like a
[25:59] romantic partner of course that is going
[26:01] to hurt and of course it is going to be
[26:04] an adjustment but we find ways to
[26:06] redistribute our emotional needs across
[26:09] the networks that we have available to
[26:10] us so that we don't feel like we are
[26:13] absolutely desperate to get someone back
[26:15] into that role right away we can wait
[26:18] until someone who actually fits the
[26:20] criteria to knock that role out of the
[26:22] ballpark comes along and
[26:25] applies and to follow this metaphor from
[26:27] the more voidance side of the spectrum
[26:30] if you haven't been deeply tuned in to
[26:32] what roles that person was playing in
[26:34] the company because it is not your
[26:36] natural tendency to stay a tuned to that
[26:38] when you're interviewing new candidates
[26:40] you don't even necessarily know what
[26:41] you're looking for and you're going to
[26:43] end up just taking a lot of shots in the
[26:45] dark or hiring the first person who
[26:47] comes along and seems to really want the
[26:49] job because you don't want to go through
[26:51] the process of bothering to recruit for
[26:53] it and so looking at whether we are
[26:56] putting too much pressure on or not
[26:59] enough intention on our romantic
[27:01] relationships can make a huge difference
[27:03] as to whether or not we are ending up in
[27:05] ones that we have consciously and
[27:08] intentionally chosen or whether we are
[27:10] out of desperation or laziness
[27:13] defaulting to whatever is available to
[27:15] us which very often means we're falling
[27:18] back on our old patterns because we're
[27:19] just repeating the same bids for
[27:21] connection that we've always tried and
[27:23] getting more of the same in return
[27:26] without realizing it
[27:28] all right I think that's all I'm going
[27:30] to say for today on this topic though
[27:32] this is far from the end of this list
[27:33] this list could stretch on and on so
[27:35] feel free to drop in the comments any
[27:37] other blind spots that you have become
[27:39] aware of or worked through that have
[27:41] helped you approach your attachment
[27:43] relationships from a healthier and more
[27:45] intentional and aware place as always I
[27:49] love you guys I hope you're taking care
[27:50] of yourselves and each other and I will
[27:53] see you back here again really soon
[27:58] oh