"Pain on repeat Also referred to as repetitive compulsion, compulsion to repeat, or trauma reenactment, repetition compulsion was described by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as an unconscious tendency of individuals to re-create and repeat painful traumatic experiences from early childhood. Adverse childhood experiences ( ACEs) include experiencing or witnessing physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse, neglect, family breakdown, and domestic violence."
"In his 1998 publication, "A Helpful Way to Conceptualize and Understand Reenactments," Michael S. Levy, Ph.D., defines such reenactments as "a reflection that a patient is continuing to act in stuck and rigidified ways," which "often lead to revictimization and related feelings of shame, helplessness, and hopelessness.""
"In a 2021 New York Times interview, author and trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., described the nature of the compulsion to repeat as "instead of remembering something unpleasant, you keep reliving something very unpleasant," and that overcoming trauma is "to make it into a memory where your whole being knows this happened a long time ago, it's not happening right now.""
Repetition compulsion involves unconsciously reenacting painful past experiences, particularly those rooted in adverse childhood experiences such as abuse, neglect, family breakdown, and domestic violence. Freud characterized the phenomenon as a drive to re-create and relive early trauma rather than integrating it as past memory. Reenactments can perpetuate revictimization and generate shame, helplessness, and hopelessness. Reliving differs from remembering; healing requires transforming traumatic reliving into resolved memory so the experience is known as past rather than present. Awareness of these patterns is the essential first step toward change and recovery.
Read at Psychology Today
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