Why we keep doing things that don’t truly satisfy us

Many people notice themselves repeating patterns, chasing experiences, or staying busy, even when nothing they are doing truly feels fulfilling. What is often being played out has not yet been put into words. In psychoanalytic terms, people often repeat to remember. When what is continuously repeated can be spoken about and worked-through, it no longer has to be endlessly relived.

There is a difference between enjoyment and desire. Enjoyment is immediate and fleeting, while desire grows in absence, ambiguity, and in the gaps where something is not yet complete. In psychoanalytic therapy, attention is paid to these gaps — the hesitations, slips, and ambiguities in speech — where something new can begin to take shape.

Rather than offering surface-level freedom through endless choices, psychoanalytic therapy offers a freedom at the level of one’s position: how you show up in the world, how you relate to yourself and others, and how you inhabit your own life.