Why do we keep repeating the same cycles? (intro to nervous system work)

Do you ever feel that your life is a series of repeating cycles? It may feel as if you keep falling into the same groove and "attracting" the same type of relationship or recreating the same sabotaging behaviors.

The newest research on nervous system regulation shows that the reason for it is not because you lack intelligence. Instead it could be the result of a traumatic memory stored in your nervous system as survival stress.

When an unpleasant event occurs, we experience a sharp spike in the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (fight/flight). But if it was unsafe for us to fight or flee (movement, energy release), we were left with a third option - to freeze. We freeze when we are unable to safely and naturally come down from the experience through the activation of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.

Too much survival stress can cause all sorts of unpleasant symptoms, ailments and self-destructive behaviors. It can be very easy to fall into the same "groove " over and over again. However, if we can access the stored trauma and express it somatically while feeling the emotion (such as during a flashback), we will be able to experience completion and relief. Repetition compulsion as a subconscious desire towards completion is the topic of today's (long) video. Hope it is helpful to you.

As always, I look forward to your comments...

Suggested reading:

Nurturing Resilience. Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell
The Body Keeps The Score. Bessel van der Kolk
Waking The Tiger. Peter Levine
When The Body Says No. Gabor Maté
The Brain That Changes Itself. Norman Doidge
The Trauma Spectrum. Robert Scaer, MD

From Wikipedia: Repetition compulsion is a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats an event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to happen again. This "re-living" can also take the form of dreams in which memories and feelings of what happened are repeated, and even hallucinated.

Repetition compulsion can also be used to cover the repetition of behavior or life patterns more broadly: a "key component in Freud's understanding of mental life, 'repetition compulsion' ... describes the pattern whereby people endlessly repeat patterns of behavior which were difficult or distressing in earlier life".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_compulsion

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