Why do I keep doing the same things over and over?

What is my pattern of negative thinking?
What is holding me back? Why do I feel like I don’t have a choice in life?

Do you keep making choices that have the same result? Is there a consistency in the pattern of picking partners for relationships? Is there a consistency in the pattern of dealing with conflict, family and friends, dealing with anxiety, depression? Are you resisting seeking help and therapy? Fiver years from today if you do nothing are you going to be happy?  Yes/no or Just five years older.

The important part of wanting to change and changing attitudes, ideas, patterns of belief is with awareness! Awareness is seeing how we keep doing the same thing or having the same thought patterns, same belief systems or picking the same type of partner. It is not as easy as it sounds. Most often we are surrounded by folks thinking in similar ways. Behaving the same not expecting anything different. Settling for the status quo, believing they do not deserve better, allowing fear to keep us stuck. Not effective or empowering and guess what nothing changes. Why suffer life is a gift to be enjoyed.

Sometimes we have to suffer, in some cases suffering for years in crappy relationships and workplaces before deciding we are worth healthy respectful relationships, workplaces and that includes the relationship with ourselves. The big question is why? Why do I stay stuck and what is holding me back from seeking our professional help?  Why do I not call, what is holding me back, is it fear, shame, embarrassment, rejection from family?
All good questions. People stay in unhealthy relationships for all sorts of reasons and from the article in Psychology Today on “Are you Feeling Stuck in your Relationship?”

When you think about what leads you to stay with your partner, what reasons do you come up with? Is it love that binds you to your partner? Is it fear that, were you to leave, you’d become lonely and isolated? Are you afraid of how much it would cost to go through a breakup? Do you worry about your children?

According to a new study by the University of New Hampshire’s Tyler Jamison and West Virginia University’s Jonathan Beckmeyer (2020), feelings of commitment by partners to each other are generally thought of as an indication of healthy relationships. However, as they note, “commitment is not always the result of a genuine desire to remain romantically involved with a partner.” Additionally, one partner may try to coerce the other to stay through psychological control tactics, or partners may use a strong sense of obligation to each other as a reason not to leave.

When factors other than romantic attachment keep couples together, according to Jamison and Beckmeyer, “individuals may feel stagnant, bound, or stuck in a partnership.” How, you wonder, do people reach this point? One factor is just plain inertia, a problem particularly likely to characterize the early phases of a relationship when couples are just starting to settle in together. As they do so, couples “slide” through major relationship steps without giving serious thought to the implications, including the impact on their personal development. As a result, their relationship becomes one that undermines the ability of each partner to achieve their own independent goals.

Remaining in any relationship that you do not feel fulfilled, respected and loved comes at a cost. A cost to our mental and physical health. People stay for reasons such as comfort, it is too difficult to break up, fear of hurting someone, social shunning and abandonment issues,  control over them, just plain tired of trying to be happy and accepting this is my fate! There are many excuses and reasons and each of us tries to justify the good parts, the fun parts and tend to leave out the stuff that is not so great. Like why would you want to miss out on your own life?  Miss out on your own potential? Miss out on your dreams whatever they may be? I was there and missing out on being the best of me. It is never too late to leave and try something new, to be happy.

Hey, I have been in those confused shoes/boots! On a personal note, it took me several years, several terrible unhappy self-loathing years before I realized my own fear was holding me back and keeping me stuck in my mental pain in picking losers. Deciding to go for and continue therapy was the best gift to my emotional growth.

I can still remember the conversation with my therapist when I suddenly realized I was the most common factor in all my unhealthy relationships because I truly believed that’s what I deserved. This was the beginning of breaking that pattern of believing the negative and switching it to a positive pattern of behaviour. Counselling also helps us learn to ‘shut up’ the negative chatterbox inside our head replacing a more nurturing, encouraging positive voice.  This takes practice but yes you can learn.

From my own experience fear was the dominant part of being stuck and repeating these poor negative patterns. Learning about fear where it started and how to deal with it was indeed empowering and the changes began. From the article in Psychology Today ‘Overcoming Fear: The Only Way Out is Through’.

The experience of anxiety involves nervous system arousal. If your nervous system is not aroused, you cannot experience anxiety. Understandably, but unfortunately, most people attempt to cope with feelings of anxiety by avoiding situations or objects that elicit the feelings. Avoidance, however, prevents your nervous system from habituating. Therefore, avoidance guarantees that the feared object or situation will remain novel, and hence arousing, and hence anxiety provoking. Moreover, avoidance tends to generalize over time. If you avoid the elevator at work, you will soon begin to avoid all elevators, and then all buildings that house elevators, etcetera. Soon enough, you’ll be living in a prison of avoidance.

Anxiety, fear, past trauma from childhood, poor role models of healthy relationships affect how we grow up into adults. None of us have perfect lives. We start innocently as children and soon our family, life events and experiences change. We may not see how important boundaries are in relationships and with ourselves. Quite often we have to learn that later in life. But the good news is it’s never too late to learn something new.
Let’s face it if we don’t have people helping us(professionals)along the way we might keep believing we are worthless and life would be years of sadness and unfulfilled dreams. Like who wants that future?

It’s an ongoing journey and consistent therapy is part of the process.  To really make a difference in your mental health and pattern of behaviour every week for at least six months. That’s what worked for me, consistent weekly therapy. Did I have setbacks? Yes, I did. The difference was I noticed it and was able to get back into healthy patterns of thinking, believing and behaving.

Self-compassion is important. Try to Be patient and be mindful that it’s okay to hesitate, everyone feels like second-guessing their own life. We tend to make excuses, deny things are really bad. We have a choice.

People often say ‘but I don’t have a choice.’ But you do. Think about it, doing nothing is a choice, it’s not effective it’s not empowering and nothing changes but it is a choice.

The hope is that you decide to move forward. We cannot have one foot behind living in the past and stuck and one foot forward trying to move forward. This results in us being off-balance, and nothing changes. Is this fun, are you happy?

Choose to swing that back foot forward and keep going forward. That’s empowering. You are worth it today and in your beautiful tomorrows. Yes, you can stop doing the same thing over and over again, you can do it!