Reflection
What repeats in relationships can become understandable.
People often seek therapy when familiar patterns repeat despite sincere efforts to change them. A person may withdraw when closeness becomes possible, seek approval at great cost, expect rejection, become caught in conflict, or feel unable to trust their own needs.
Psychoanalytic therapy considers repetition as meaningful. Patterns that now feel limiting may have once served as forms of protection. They may have developed in response to early relationships, loss, shame, longing, or uncertainty.
Treatment offers a setting where relational patterns can be noticed as they appear in memory, current life, and sometimes in the therapeutic relationship itself. What is repeated can gradually become available for thought rather than only action.
Nicole Glass, MA, LCPC offers therapy for relationship patterns and self-understanding in Chicago and throughout Illinois.