These people often want to relive past traumas and early experiences. Findings on why they did such a thing and how it was maintained are really interesting.
When you learn more about the concept of “Reenactment”, which once again proves how complicated and unpredictable human psychology is, by reading this content, you will perhaps realize that you exhibit the same pattern and you need to take action.
The concept of “Reenactment”, which we can also define as “trauma reenactment”, was first put forward by Freud.
Sigmund Freud, the famous doctor known for his psychoanalytic method, named trauma reenactment, which can be summarized as a person’s continuing to search for things that remind them of their trauma despite the negative consequences they have experienced.
According to him, the reason for this situation was the death instinct in humans. They were living the death instinct with their repeated pursuits of self-harm.
So why do people tend to experience trauma reenactments?
Although there is no single and clear cause, there is a possibility that it may occur due to several reasons. The first of these is attachment problems. People who experience attachment problems at an early age, especially from neglect or trauma from their parents, may also seek unhealthy relationships in their adulthood.
They may generalize the behaviors they have been taught or seen at home in childhood to human relations, and this affects their sense of security and belonging. Even if the person knows that their childhood affects their relationship choices, they may not be able to see how these patterns tend to emerge.
Other reasons are the conditional associations and emotional disorganizations that prove how interesting human psychology is.
Conditional associations are related to the occurrence of repetitive behaviors that become automatic after a while. The person is now fully conditioned and exhibits repetitive automatic movements.
In emotional dysregulation, people may show weak emotional responses to negative events. This can cause them to react in ways that are disproportionate to the situation. As a result, trauma reenactment appears at the end of the path.
Personality factor and coping mechanisms can also pave the way for trauma recurrence.
Sometimes, certain personality traits, such as impulsiveness or perfectionism, can increase the likelihood that a person will enter a trauma reenactment.
In addition; Stress and trauma are often the underlying cause of this type of behavior. People often feel they have more control over the situation by engaging in risky behaviors or seeking traumatic situations.
In addition, people may take risky actions, such as driving while intoxicated, even though they know the potential risks. This can be a way to recreate a past experience or to help move away from feelings of pain. This can also manifest as condoning an unfaithful relationship. If the person had a cheating parent role in their childhood, they are reliving the painful experience in this way.
Trauma reenactment; It can occur in romantic relationships or dreams.
Trauma reenactment can occur in romantic relationships where people continue to seek relationships similar to past destructive relationships, in conjunction with the terms we now often hear as “mommy-daddy issues.”
We can say that having nightmares and dreams in the past are involuntary symptoms of trauma reenactment. People can engage in a kind of trauma reenactment by having nightmares in which they relive the trauma.
There are three types of trauma re-enactment: re-victimization, re-enactment of neglect, and re-enactment of attachment trauma.
In the re-victimization type, the person unconsciously; The narcissist may perceive partners as impulsive, unpredictable, or emotionally volatile as “safe” because he experiences the repercussions of early attachment traumas. His partner’s emotional state is predictable in terms of its unpredictability.
In portraying neglect, the person may be interested in leaving their partner if they have experienced childhood abandonment trauma. This is because feelings of abandonment are triggered and can self-destruct by impulsively leaving their partner or immediately replacing that relationship with a new one.
In the reenactment of attachment trauma, the person’s parents pass similar traumas to their own children because they are not aware of their own trauma. This can lead to cycles of trauma and are passed down from generation to generation.
If you have established a relationship with the trauma re-enactment we mentioned, you can prevent it by getting support from a specialist.
Most of the time; Underneath our psychological state, which we associate with general names such as depression, anxiety, and sadness, may lie much more different and complex things.
It could be trauma re-enactment, which we call “addiction.” That’s why you can deal with things that go wrong by talking to an expert and taking the right steps.