WHY DO OUR PAINFUL SITUATIONS KEEP RETURNING

September 20, 2026

(Can we remove pain forever)

A young woman, Ivy, once entered past-life regression therapy because her present relationship was disastrous. The man in her life hurt and abused her, beyond measure. During regression sessions later described by Bruce Goldberg in his book The Search for Grace, Ivy reportedly saw herself across many lifetimes, returning again and again to the same soul, the same wound, the same pattern of domination. In one life he had even murdered her. Injured her in many lives. The faces, costumes and centuries changed, but the emotional script remained disturbingly familiar.
Why do some pains keep finding us with different names, different bodies and different circumstances. Be it financial failures, toxic relationships or anything else?

REPETITION COMPULSION OR KARMA

This is not an isolated pattern. People often ask, “Why does this always happen to me?” Not knowing that it doesn’t always happen to them. Some unhealed part of us keeps walking towards it.
Sigmund Freud gave this mystery one of its most disturbing names: repetition compulsion. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud observed that human beings do not always seek pleasure and avoid pain. Sometimes they repeat what hurts them. They repeat not because it brings happiness, but because the unresolved wound has acquired a strange authority over the psyche. Freud wrote of a compulsion to repeat that could operate “beyond the pleasure-principle,” drawing human beings back into painful patterns even when conscious reason wanted escape. (Project Gutenberg)
Patients did not only remember their old conflicts; they re-created them. The forgotten authority figure, the rejecting parent, the abandoned child, the humiliated self, all began to appear again. The past did not remain past. It became behaviour.
Modern trauma research has expanded this insight. Bessel van der Kolk, in his classic 1989 paper on trauma re-enactment, described how trauma may repeat itself at behavioural, emotional, physiological and even neuroendocrine levels. Maybe it is karma. However, science says that repetition can produce immense suffering because the body and mind are not merely recalling the wound; they are often re-living it
(PubMed)
UNRESOLVED PAIN IS MISTAKEN FOR FATE

Freud’s explanation was profound. The psyche may repeat pain because it is trying to master what once overwhelmed it. Unless the pattern is made conscious, the new situation merely becomes the old wound with new actors. Carl Jung understood deeply that what remains unconscious governs life from behind the curtain. His more formulation in Aion says
Freud’s explanation was profound. The psyche may repeat pain because it is trying to master what once overwhelmed it. Unless the pattern is made conscious, the new situation merely becomes the old wound with new actors. Carl Jung understood deeply that what remains unconscious governs life from behind the curtain. His more formulation in Aion says
utside, as fate.” (Carl Jung Depth Psychology) This sentence is one of the keys to human suffering. The unexamined inner situation does not remain private. It goes out into life and arranges meetings, quarrels, attractions, aversions and failures. A person carrying an inferiority complex may interpret neutral events as insult. A person carrying abandonment may hear delay as rejection. He then says, “This is my fate.” Jung would ask:
Is it fate, or is it the unconscious becoming visible outside?
For Jung, the wound becomes part of a complex: a charged cluster of memory, emotion, image and instinct. A complex is not just a thought. It has energy. When activated, an otherwise mature person may suddenly behave like a frightened child, an angry adolescent. The outer event may be small. The inner reaction is ancient.
SAMSKARA

Indian thought had already understood this through the doctrine of samskara. A samskara is an impression left upon the inner instrument by repeated thought, desire, emotion and action. It is memory becoming temperament. It is temperament masquerading as destiny.
Every time pain is repeated without awareness, it deepens the samskara of suffering. A complaint repeated daily becomes an organising principle. Resentment repeated daily becomes identity. A person does not merely suffer an event; he begins to carry the shape of the event within him. Even when life offers him something new, the old samskara interprets it in the old way.
Every time pain is repeated without awareness, it deepens the samskara of suffering. A complaint repeated daily becomes an organising principle. Resentment repeated daily becomes identity. A person does not merely suffer an event; he begins to carry the shape of the event within him. Even when life offers him something new, the old samskara interprets it in the old way.
“Let a man lift himself by himself; let him not degrade himself. For the self alone is the friend of the self, and the self alone is the enemy of the self.”
In the next verse, Krishna says that for one who has conquered the mind, the mind is a friend; for one who has not, the mind behaves as an enemy. The mind can either repeat bondage or participate in liberation.
The Dhammapada opens with the same truth
“Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.”  (eDhammapada)
The Buddha is not saying that all external pain is imagined. Illness, betrayal, injustice and loss are real. But the mind’s relationship with pain determines whether pain becomes wisdom or a recurring prison. Pain is not always karma that must be endured helplessly. Pain is a teacher, maybe a consequence of old choices. Some pain is inherited through family atmosphere, culture, fear and silence.

THE WAY OUT OF SUFFERING

However, we don’t need to suffer. There is a six step process that can heal us of the circumstance. The first step is recognition. One must stop asking only, “Why is this happening?” and begin asking, “Where have I felt this before?” The repeated situation usually carries an emotional signature: abandonment, humiliation, fear of being left etc. The second step is naming the pattern without selfcondemnation. A person may say: “I choose emotionally unavailable people.” “I over-give to earn love.” Naming is taking the lamp into the room devoid of personal blame. The third step is witnessing the body. Old pain lives as tightening in the throat, heaviness in the chest, heat in the face, collapse in the stomach, restlessness in the hands. (Columbia University). Before we can rewrite the pattern, we must learn to feel it without obeying it. The fourth step is creating the sacred interval. Between stimulus and response, something must be inserted: breath, mantra, silence, prayer, journaling, a walk. Patanjali gives the formula with austere beauty: abhyasa-vairagyabhyam tan-nirodhah Practice builds the new pathway. Detachment refuses to feed the old one. The fifth step is choosing a new action while the old pain is active. This is where healing begins. It is easy to be wise when one is calm. The real samskara changes when the old trigger arises and the person does not perform the old ritual. The sixth step is spiritual replacement. The mind cannot live in emptiness. If resentment is removed, compassion must be cultivated. If fear is weakened, trust must be practised. If shame is challenged, self-respect must be strengthened. Japa, simran, meditation, seva, svadhyaya and satsang are are methods of reconditioning consciousness. The brain calls it new neural pathways. Indian wisdom calls it purification of samskara. PAIN DOES NOT HAVE TO BE DESTINY Healing does not mean that every painful memory disappears. It means the memory no longer governs choice. An old man once told his grandson that for many years he had quarrelled with everyone who advised him. Every suggestion felt like criticism. Then one day, after a bitter argument with his own son, he suddenly remembered his childhood: a father who never praised him and corrected him in front of others. He wept, not because his son had hurt him, but because a boy of eight was still living inside a man of seventy. From that day, whenever someone corrected him, he would place his hand on his heart and say quietly, “This is not my father. This is only a sentence.” Slowly the fire reduced. This is the promise of inner work. The suffering that once repeated itself as fate can finally become wisdom. This is the learning of our souls. Parneet Sachdev, IRS is the Chairman of Real Estate Regulatory Authority and a leading author.