Embrace your whole self to break free from repetitive cycles

Each of us must have had a moment in our lives when we said, "I'm going through the same thing over and over again." "I keep going around and around and the same thing happens again.", "I hold the right side, I hold the left side, it still doesn't happen.", "These things always find me anyway..." If you have made such sentences or if you make them from time to time, you may also be stuck in some cycles.

The fact that someone who wants to be valued is together with people who do not value themselves, that someone who has difficulty trusting people is with people who cannot be trusted, who will let them down, and that they encounter the same kind of people no matter what they do is proof that it is more than coincidence.

Whatever we do in our lives, we do it to fulfill our needs. If what we do is accepted, we often feel feelings of love, trust, self-confidence. But if what we do is not accepted, we can feel fear, anxiety, shame, guilt. At the same time we begin to accept that our needs are not acceptable. For example, if a child asks their parents for something and they are told that now is not the time, that they are asking for silly things, the child may get the message that their requests are silly and untimely, and they may feel shame or guilt.

Therefore, in order to be accepted, not to be shamed, not to be blamed, we start to move away from who we really are and become the person we want to be. As we are treated, over time we start to ignore, criticize and shame the needs of those around us.

For example, if we have a sincere need for a sincere emotional relationship and every time we express this need we are met with reactions such as "there are no such relationships left anymore", "there is no way to find such a person", "you are wasting your time", we may start to find ourselves in relationships that are not open and sincere enough, distant, limited, for fear that we will not be able to express our feelings clearly and establish a real relationship with the people we meet. As our growing needs go unmet, the gap between who we are and who we are expected to be begins to widen. As this gap grows, we begin to think that we are not valuable and lovable. This can push us further into loneliness and despair.

Throughout our lives, we are in a constant search to fulfill our needs. Because we are unable to be our true selves, our needs are not met, and our anxiety and worry begin to increase along with our ever-growing needs. As we start to believe that our needs will not be met, our fears, worries and anxieties begin to rule us and we continue to contact people who cannot meet our needs.  After this situation happens again and again, we say that they don't love me, they don't value me. Unless this cycle is broken, we continue to experience the same things over and over again.

If we were accepted for our worries, fears and failures, we would be more compassionate towards ourselves and we would be able to express our needs without saying right or wrong. Showing our needs and expressing ourselves would help us to believe that we can be understood, and we would be more likely to come into contact with people who understand and value us.

In other words, breaking the cycles can be possible by being open to all the emotions that we have been avoiding contact with. In this way, we can feel compassion for ourselves and be willing to try new contacts. On the contrary, we start doing whatever we do to avoid feeling these emotions.

We are distancing ourselves from our true feelings, and as we do, we become desensitized to everything. In a study investigating cognitive vulnerability to depression, it was found that controlling negative emotions and trying to get rid of them easily initiates a cycle of increasingly negative thinking and deepening sad moods.

Therefore, in order to get out of our cycles, we can start by embracing all our emotions and weaknesses and showing compassion to them. Re-examining our desensitized needs, turning towards ourselves, trying to find out what we like and dislike, what we can and cannot achieve, what we are proud of and what we are afraid of can help.

Observing what we do when emotions we don't want to feel come up can be the key to breaking these cycles. It can be good to share with people we trust who try to understand us without judgment and to know that each of us is going through something similar. We need to be able to openly show and share who we are, our needs, our shame, our failures, so that these needs are met.