Repeating Bad Patterns in Love and Life

"I keep getting involved with people who aren't good for me."
"I often get depressed and lonely."
"I'm always annoyed with my partner."
"I can't keep the weight off."
"I hate my job but can't seem to leave it."
"I feel anxious a lot."


"We can view painful patterns as unconscious memories that we repeat as enactments. One of the aims of psychoanalysis is to produce a story of the past - a reconstructed life history - that makes the past available as a resource to be thought about rather than a persecution to be endlessly reenacted."
-- Adam Phillips