Making the same relationship mistakes?

Why relationships are so triggering

Our closest relationships often trigger us the most because they stir up unprocessed childhood feelings. 

Okay, let's unpack that. 

Basically . . . we get drawn into replaying an important scene(s) from our life in the hopes of having a different ending.

Why we're drawn to certain people

We’re drawn to certain people for reasons that run deep in our unconscious. It’s not just a random attraction—your brain is leading you in this direction with a clear motive, even if you don’t realize it.

When you experience an assault on your self-worth or self-esteem in childhood, those experiences get stored deep in your brain’s memory banks, waiting for the right moment to be resolved. 

Recognizing Relationship Repeat Patterns

Have you noticed yourself going down the same road in relationships? Maybe you repeat statements like, “You’re always on my case,” or “It’s your fault,” even though they rarely lead to positive outcomes. 

Perhaps you find yourself in new relationships, only to face the same issues, like feeling unheard or uncared for.

Notice that these major functions optimize your ability to survive in the world. So it's in the brain's best interest that you find a way to process and finish what didn't get done.

Just know that the "scene" from your past that I refer to above may look quite different from what you're dealing with today. However the script and energy that's driving your present day issue, is no doubt unmistakably familiar.

Ask yourself, where has this theme showed up in your life?

The Deeper Reason Behind Repeating Mistakes

Recognize this?

We'll repeat statements (eg. "You're always on my case." "It's your fault.") even tho it rarely generates a positive step forward.

It’s important to go easy on yourself. You’re dealing with powerful, ingrained patterns. Your brain naturally follows what’s been overlearned from the past, leading to automatic reactions before you even have time to think.

Making the Same Relationship Mistakes: There's a Good Reason

Yes, we often repeat behaviors that haven’t worked in the past. But there is meaning behind this repetition. 

For example, if you’ve never felt “heard” in your family of origin, that unfulfilled need can drive your adult relationships, where you struggle to express your needs and feel crushed when they aren’t met.

Over time, you learned that it's just best to tuck away your needs and find other ways of meeting them. That pattern gets repeated in other important relationships years later when you're an adult.

You learned to avoid getting your parents upset with your concerns as it seemed the family was already under stress.

That's an optimal strategy that works for a while. 

Let me explain.

After a full day of seeing your parents argue and poke at each other, you're quite unsettled inside yet it's time for bed. You ask your Mom to to read you a bedtime story. 

Your mother is exhausted and let's out an exasperated and irritated, "I can't right now." 

Your body collapses into despair. You go to bed, holding your stuffy feeling the tension and fear throughout your body.

In this and many repeated scenarios, your body remembers these memories. Those 'fear-based reactions' become automatic knee jerk responses to anything that remotely relates to these memories. 

Fast forward to being an adult. In your romantic relationships, you find yourself with partners who, in subtle ways, also ignore or dismiss your needs. 

Each time this happens, you feel a familiar pain—a deep sense of being unheard and uncared for. It’s the same feeling you had as a child when your parents were too busy for you.

Without realizing it, your body is reacting to your partner just as it reacted to your parents. Your brain is replaying the old scene, hoping for a different outcome, but the automatic, learned response kicks in, and you feel stuck in the same pattern.

Each time you take that step, your body instinctively clutches inside. You may not in that moment remember your childhood experiences, but in a defensive pattern, your body reacts as it did when you were first learning to express your needs.

(This is how, as a child when 'attuned care' is limited, you'll learn to tolerate more than you care to and you'll naturally give up your needs to preserve the family's survival or in the case of later adulthood, to preserve your connection to your partner.)

Owing to this entrenched knee jerk reaction to expressing your needs, your later relationships suffer. If your partner cannot anticipate your needs, you're crushed. 

Eventually, you end up feeling your partner doesn't care. A string of failed relationships leaves you feeling the exact same way, unheard and uncared about.

No matter how positive the relationship starts, it eventually plays out the same familial pattern you're familiar with. 

Despite your ability to observe these patterns, you inevitably feel powerless to avoid reenacting the same scenario.

So what needs to happen for you to get over this?

Basically, you need to tolerate—throughout your body—being able to express your needs comfortably and to experience satisfying endings. You need to overwrite those old patterns that are now entrenched in your body memory.

Relationship Mistakes Emerge from Childhood Early Patterns 

It's especially easy to notice this pattern because when you're in a session with your therapist, he calls attention to what's going on in your body. Right in that moment, he encourages you to shift the pattern. He guides you to a more settled place.

Eventually, your body begins to learn a new way to respond—one that happens without you having to think of it.

You repeat this same process across several issues until you're no longer triggered into making the same relationship mistakes.

You can maintain your equanimity even if the discussion becomes a little heated.
How awesome is that!

To the outside observer, repetitive reenactments look really confusing. It's hard to understand why you go from one miserable situation to another.

Let's take a classic example. For instance, let's say, I've had a series of relationships that have all ended badly. My partners have eventually all become physically abusive.

Thing is, initially, it sure didn't look like this was coming down the pike. In fact, each new partner felt distinctively different and I was so hopeful that this time around he was a keeper.

Yet, "the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree". In other words, each new partner ended up having the same MO as the last and the patterns of abuse continued.

We actually relive these moments frequently.

Imagine this scenario.

Her mother is suddenly anxious - a pinching sensation is piercing her chest - though she doesn't know why. For some reason, Marnie's behavior is annoying to her. 

Her body remembers though. It recalls similar experiences she had as a young girl played out over many scenes. Her body is bitterly remembering her own mother telling her to "Stop making a rukus". Marnie's liveliness and exuberance is a trigger for her own disappointment and sadness at being unmet so many times. 

She moves to temper her daughter's excitement.

"Now Marnie, settle down."

This message was repeated in many words, in many ways, over many occasions and over many years.

Jump twenty years into the future. That same child is now a grown woman. One sunny morning as Marnie looks at the beauty of the scene from her back deck, tears form in her eyes. She is in awe. "Isn't it beautiful" she exclaims to her husband. 

In response, he remarks, "Yeah, yeah Marnie", as he exclaims dismissively. "We've got to get going. We've got things to do."

Marnie collapses internally and in despair thinks to herself, "I don’t know why I said that, I don’t' know why I thought it could be any different."

Marnie was hoping to have a shared moment with her husband, a moment during which she felt "seen".

A new way of looking at relationship reenactments

Reenactments are not just random events—they're the brain’s way of trying to heal old wounds.

By replaying these scenarios, your brain is giving you the chance to create a different ending, one that preserves your sense of worth and goodness. The challenge is recognizing these patterns and consciously working to resolve them in a way that truly heals.

Owing to the interconnectivity of the brain, the present day reenactment naturally triggers the neuropathways related to that past event. In this way, the new heals the old.

The term reenactment is synonymous with trauma. A popular example is the sexually abused girl who grows up to become a prostitute. She is theorized to be engaging in a reenactment.

If a pattern is laid down during a traumatic event(s), the successful resolution of trauma enables us to discharge the 'fight or flight' energy that otherwise is immobilized in the nervous system.

More typically, we are unaware of the act of reenactment and confound ourselves by our own behaviour. Sometimes we rationalize around it; other times, as mentioned above, we completely block it from awareness.

Bringing consciousness to our behaviour aids in the process of preventing the reenactment but even consciousness may not be enough. A full resolution of the fight/flight energy may be required.

Reenactments arise from the body's innate wisdom

According to Chinese medicine, emotional pain held in the body requires energy to contain it. Too much pain essentially means too many body resources are being devoted to containment, robbing the body's defenses of its capacity to mobilize against threat and to repair damaged cells, organs, glands etc.

So it is natural that the body/mind would devise ways to increase the chances of getting rid of this unwanted energy. (And you thought that the left "logical" brain was the only one controlling the show…)

Neuroscience to the rescue!

Not everyone has the option of going to psychotherapy and there's no guarantee that your therapist does this type of work.

Nonetheless, for a courageous few, it is possible to work through your triggers. Once you understand the plan, you can actually give your brain experiences it can learn from through imagination.

If you'd like to learn more, consider my program: Eliminate Triggers with DeCoding the Brain.

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