Many of us dimly sense that, despite ourselves, unfortunately and mysteriously, we keep ending up in some very similar dark places.
Perhaps another relationship with someone who doesn't seem to love us properly, or another breakdown of trust at work, or another panic about reputation or sex, or else the repeated patterns involve a return to a background mood.
Yet again, we feel highly anxious.
Yet again, we feel convinced that everyone hates us or that something terrible is about to happen.
Psychotherapists have given all this a name.
Insofar as we keep steering ourselves back to some familiar negative circumstances or emotions, we may be in the grip of what is known as a repetition compulsion.
We aren't here again by coincidence.
We are, in an unconscious part of our minds, steering ourselves to a place of pain with hidden intent.
This is a hugely perplexing notion to have to take on board.
It's bad enough to keep winding up in particular trouble; it's even worse to have to think that we're being driven towards it by some kind of ineluctable internal force.
