The Sacred Act of Returning

Repetition, Healing and the Living Equation that is Our Wellbeing

In life, there’s something sacred in the act of returning—where the body remembers what the mind has yet to understand. In that remembering, we begin again—perhaps, even becoming something new. And when we find the words, even tentative ones, we can—with practice, begin to give shape to what once lived unspoken—making the invisible available to knowing.

Bronce Rice

For many of us on the path of healing, repetition can feel painful—a return of old wounds or ways of being we believed we’d already outgrown. But what if these moments aren’t signs of regression, at least not in the classical psychoanalytic sense, but rather invitations to deepen our understanding of what it means to be human?

Repetition, then, may not be something to eliminate—but something to understand, and in time, relate to differently.

In the context of the Wellbeing Equation, repetition may not signal failure—even if it often feels that way when we’re suffering. Instead, it may mark the moment the equation is asking to be reworked. Often, we don’t even realize we’re repeating—we’re simply living. In this context, some of our most persistent patterns aren’t conscious choices, but echoes of unconscious living: habits shaped long ago that quietly write our scripts until we begin to question them.

Perhaps, this is where healing begins: not in avoiding the return but in noticing it, listening to it differently and learning over time how to allow it to reshape how we relate to ourselves in the present. As Freud once noted, when we cannot remember, we often repeat. In this way, repetition can be a form of unconscious remembering—an attempt to bring the past into the present, not through thought, but through action.

Clinically, I often see this in clients who find themselves repeating familiar relational patterns—over-functioning, withdrawing, people-pleasing—even when they’re aware of them. The repetition frequently isn’t due to lack of insight or willpower but rather an embodied memory still seeking safety and conversation. When met with curiosity rather than self-criticism, these patterns can become pathways into deeper self-understanding—and over time, transformation.

In the landscape of the Wellbeing Equation, repetition may be one of the most idiosyncratic—yet essential—variables: rarely named, but constantly at work. We revisit, we relearn, we re-feel. And in that return, if we’re present to it, something can shift. Not always dramatically but sometimes—on rare occasion—profoundly so.

Repetition, in this sense, when held with awareness, can become ritual—a passageway, a sacred act of becoming. But for it to take this shape, it requires learning how to tether it to what is meaningful, life-giving and aligned with the sacred within us. A way of returning not just to the familiar, but to what heals.

When the Equation Isn’t Solved, But Lived Again

As I’ve shared before, the equation that is our wellbeing isn’t a type of fixed solution—something solved once and forever settled. It’s a living, breathing framework, meant to help us breathe new life into ourselves even as we struggle to contend with life’s more difficult moments. In other words, it shifts as we do.

At times, we land in moments of clarity or balance that feel like resolution—like a truth we can finally live inside. And perhaps we do, for a while. But more often than not, we find ourselves circling back. Often because the rhythm of healing is less a straight line and more a spiral—like the tide, pulling us back to shore with something new in hand.

This can feel frustrating especially for those of us who long to tick the box, close the chapter and move on with our lives. But this return—often insistent—can be life’s way of calling us back: to question our capacity for continued compassion, to consider the new tools we may need and to help us soften our resistance to love and care. Not to merely repeat, but to learn, relearn, or reclaim something essential about the way we live.

The equation—the kind that gives life—doesn’t punish us for returning. It simply asks: What are you ready to see now that maybe you couldn’t before?

Sometimes repetition is conscious. Other times, it isn’t—more akin to unconscious living. It can be unlearned behavior that continues because new understanding hasn’t yet emerged. It becomes a kind of embodied remembering—a message from the body, not just the mind. We act it out without fully knowing why. This is the paradox of repetition: it can feel familiar yet inexplicable—because while the behavior lives in the present, its origins may be buried in the past.

For example, a client named Jordan came to therapy feeling stuck in a recurring pattern: whenever a relationship began to deepen emotionally, he would start to withdraw. Plans were canceled, texts left unanswered and a vague sense of irritation or restlessness would emerge—often without a clear reason.

Though Jordan longed for closeness, he found himself repeatedly pulling away just when intimacy became possible. From an attachment lens, this wasn’t mere avoidance—it was more of an unconscious strategy of protection, shaped by early experiences of inconsistent caregiving. In childhood, emotional closeness had often been unpredictable—sometimes nurturing, sometimes overwhelming or absent. As a result, Jordan had developed an avoidant attachment style, where distance became a way to maintain emotional safety.

In this way of viewing his wellbeing equation, his repetition wasn’t merely a failure to progress—it was more an embodied remembering, a message from the nervous system shaped long before the mind could make meaning of it. Over time, as the therapeutic relationship offered a stable, attuned space, Jordan began to experiment with staying present in moments of emotional closeness—learning that connection no longer had to come at the cost of self-protection.

And just as our relational patterns carry echoes of the past, so too do the subtle postures and sensations in the body.

The Memory in the Body: Repetition as Repair