Do you find yourself wondering why you’re repeat the same patterns? And, you don’t know how to stop repeating same story, over and over, and over again?

Emotional trauma can leave lasting imprints on our minds. The wounds suffered in past relationships can shape the way we perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us. Our past relationships are a complex web of experiences with others that can significantly impact our feelings, embodied states, how we act, and our beliefs.

One phenomenon that often arises from this intricate relational interplay is self-fulfilling prophecies.

What is the connection between relational emotional trauma and self-fulfilling prophecies? How can you break free from this cycle?

First, we need to understand what relational emotional trauma is.

Relational emotional trauma stems from unhealthy and distressing experiences with others that overwhelm our ability to cope and it interferes with our innate ability to feel connected.

These experiences can range from not feeling seen, valued, or supported in your quest to be your authentic self, to being rejected, shamed, controlled or dominated, to feeling abandoned and alone like no one really cares. And, all the way to more extreme forms of childhood neglect, abuse, and loss.

Such repeated life experiences trickle down into our nervous system, mind, and body and become part of how we feel about and relate to ourselves and others.These wounds can create deep-seated unhealthy, rigid, and limited emotional perceptions about ourselves, others, and the world. They have a lasting impact on our relationships mental and emotional well-being

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: The Vicious Cycle

Self-fulfilling prophecies occur when our unprocessed, repressed experiences from the past shape our actions and interactions in the present. Current experiences begin to align with our unconscious expectations about relational narratives or  “how relationships always go.”

In other words, we repeat, with or without awareness, our unresolved relational experiences from the past. 

This cycle is particularly potent when it comes to emotional trauma related to our earliest, most important experiences with others. For example, if someone who has experienced emotional neglect as a child and believes that they are unlovable as a result, they might inadvertently act in unloving ways and push people away. They end up reinforcing their expectations through their actions. In other cases, past experiences of abandonment may cause someone to be overly needy and clingy. Their fear of abandonment ends up pushing others away. Another example, when one has received messages of “you’re not  good enough” may not invest their energy to develop a talent or a skill, which perpetually sabotages one’s efforts to become good at something, reenacting that old limited story of “I’m not good enough.” Or is one who has been a “parentified child” raised by an immature parent, may feel “I have to be responsible for everyone, but I can’t rely on anyone.” They will have a hard time to allow others to take their share of responsibilities, perpetuating their story of “I can only rely on myself.’

In whatever way this cycle manifests, it can become a self-perpetuating mechanism. The feelings and beliefs born from trauma lead to behaviors that fulfill those very ways of being, feeling, and beliefs that reinforce the unhealthy cycles. Over time, this can damage relationships, hinder personal growth, and limit our ability to thrive.

Breaking the Cycle: Healing and Transformation.

In my experience as a clinician, the best way to transform repetitive old, rigid, limited stories is a relational based psychotherapy approach that weaves EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).

How does relational based psychotherapy combined with  EMDR help to heal emotional trauma? 

1.In therapy, you experience a healthy relationship with someone who can attune to you moment by moment. You will feel what it means to be seen, understood, valued, inspired, motivated, and encouraged. As you feel more and more attuned to such good feeling states, you’ll start to feel safer and safer. These experiences can be integrated into the nervous system with EMDR, which activates the middle brain structures and allows these healthier experiences to become part of you moving forward. This relational psychotherapy approach that blends in EMDR is based on neuroscience and can help rewire your brain’s responses to triggers and promote healing.

2. As you feel safer, you will have more access to your internal world, you’ll be able to hold space for it, and to be reveal it in the session – you can start to see your inner-workings, including your fears, longings, hurts, and unmet needs. Again, these are opportunities to heal the root of relational wounds: your current emotional challenges become the portal through which EMDR can access and process the source, the “original”painful experiences. This is very important that the root of your struggles is healed. As long as these original painful experiences are trapped in your right brain and your body (preconscious and unconscious), they will continue to be re-enacted. By processing and integrating these experiences with your left and your frontal lobe (your conscious mind), you release old stories and start living with emotional freedom, to create new stories.

3.You’ll also bring your current struggles to your sessions. Your present emotional challenges can be used to access the past traumatic experiences that need to be healed with EMDR. This powerful and effective psychotherapy trauma approach that will help you release unhealthy feelings, body states, and beliefs developed to cope with difficult elements of your past. As you release the trauma that traps you and causes you to recreate old narratives, you can start to access your innate propensity to connect, explore, and express your life energy. You can start living with emotional freedom, to access to fullness, aliveness, and depth of who you really are. You can live your life, not repeat the same limited unfulfilling stories.

Emotional trauma work will help you embrace a new narrative – a narrative that empowers you to thrive, create healthy relationships, and fulfill your potential without being held hostage to keep repeating unhealthy narratives. Healing is possible, and rewriting your story is within your reach.

I offer psychodynamic therapy, EMDR therapy (EMDR certified), psychoanalytic therapy (certified), combined with CBT, and grounded in the neuroscience of psychotherapy and relationships in order to help people discover how to live fully in the present and create more fulfilling, successful lives. 

In particular I have an expertise working with creatives, performers, and artists of all kinds – writers,  actors, fine artists, musicians, producers, directors, fashion designers, and creative entrepreneurs. My office is in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. I provide in-person and online psychotherapy to people across California.

If you are interested in EMDR therapy, please contact me for your free 15 minute consultation to see if this therapy is appropriate for you.