Why We Repeat What Hurts Us: The Pull of Familiar Pain
Many people notice the same patterns repeating across relationships, work, and self-esteem. The details change, but the emotional outcome is familiar. This can feel confusing, especially when part of you clearly wants something different.
In therapy, repetition is often understood as an automatic response to unresolved emotional experience. The system returns to what it recognises, even when it hurts, because the familiar can feel more predictable than change.
This article outlines how the cycle works and what therapy does with it.
Overhead image symbolising repetitive relational and emotional patterns.
How the cycle works
A common sequence looks like this:
A feeling begins to rise
Anxiety increases
Defences appear
The original feeling is reduced or avoided
The situation repeats in a new form
The feeling might be anger, grief, sadness, longing, fear, or shame. The response is rarely deliberate. It is often fast, automatic, and difficult to interrupt without help.
Common defences include:
Rationalising
Pleasing
Withdrawing
Staying busy
Self-criticism
Shutting down emotionally
When the feeling is avoided, it does not get processed. The system stays organised around the same threat, and the pattern tends to return.
Why repetition can feel compelling
Repetition is often a failed attempt to create safety.
People may find themselves drawn into dynamics that resemble earlier experiences such as criticism, neglect, abandonment, or unpredictability. The pull is not usually conscious. It is more like an emotional recognition.
In some cases, repetition is linked to an implicit hope: that this time the outcome will be different. In other cases, repetition simply keeps life within familiar territory. The cost is high, but the uncertainty of change can feel even more threatening to the nervous system.
This is one reason people can feel stuck even when they understand the pattern.
What therapy focuses on
Therapy aims to make repetition visible in real time and increase capacity to stay present with the underlying feelings.
This often involves:
Identifying the moment anxiety rises
Noticing defences as they appear
Tracking what feeling is being avoided
Staying with the feeling at a manageable pace
Understanding the emotional logic of the pattern
Over time, the system begins to register new options. The pattern becomes less automatic. Different choices become possible.
A simple reflection
Repeating patterns often began as ways of coping. They can persist long after the original context has passed.
Therapy offers a space to understand what the pattern is doing and to work with what it protects, without forcing change faster than your system can tolerate.
If this reflection resonated, you might explore:
Explore more in depth
FAQ: Repeating Relationship Patterns and Self-Sabotage
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Because your nervous system recognises familiarity, not safety. You’re drawn to what once felt unresolved.
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It’s a sign that something inside still needs to be felt and integrated. It’s an opportunity, not a failure.
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By noticing the pattern in real time and learning to stay with the feelings that drive it, instead of escaping them.
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That part is protecting you from pain. In therapy, we respect its purpose while exploring what lies beneath it.
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Awareness is the first step, but feeling is what completes it. Change happens when insight meets emotion.
Are you a therapist reading this?
Therapists interested in this topic can explore my clinical guides.
Written by Rick Cox, MBACP (Accred)
Psychodynamic Psychotherapist, UK & Online
