When the Story Keeps Repeating "Why do I keep marrying men who turn out to be jerks?" "Why do I keep losing and then gaining weight?" "Why do I always end up working for a creep?" "Why can''t I ever seem to get ahead financially?" "Why am I always fighting with my kids?" "Why am I disappointed with my life more often than not?" "Why can''t I seem to break free from this awful rut?" Do you find yourself worried about why your life seems to be going in circles, rather than moving forward? Are you sometimes a little panicked by the prospect that you may never end this seemingly unending chain of repeating circumstances? This time, it wasn''t supposed to happen. This time, things were going to turn out better. You thought you had learned your lesson, but somehow you''ve landed in the very same painful place. How many times have you said this? This time I won''t marry someone who turns out to be a jerk like the one before. Or maybe, this time I''ll make sure the boss isn''t a tyrant before I take the job. This time, I won''t get myself so far into debt. And then, despite your very best effort, you find yourself right back where you were before. The new relationship is just like the last one, the new boss is even worse than the one you quit or the bank account is overdrawn, again.

What''s going wrong? What keeps you from breaking free from those old painful patterns? Why can''t you seem to take control of your life and change it for the better? You''re not alone. Therapists'' offices around the world are flooded with people frustrated that their lives keep repeating the same painful scenarios. They have tried and tried, but they keep hitting a brick wall and can''t seem to break free of an old, painful pattern. They are asking the same question you are: "Why does this keep happening to me?" This book will help you find the answer to that question, and more important, help you find a way to break the bonds that have held you in the same painful patterns. It isn''t magic, or a quick fix, but rather it is solid advice that I''ve accumulated over years of working with people just like you. In fact, what this book offers is something that everyone who finds peace and fulfillment in life has discovered -- I''ve simply tried to put it down in words that might help you to find it more easily. You''re not sick, broken, mentally ill, or inadequate. You don''t lack will power.

You aren''t cursed with a life of misery. What you are experiencing now is something that everyone experiences. How you handle this situation will determine if you break free or stay stuck in the same self-defeating cycle. This book is here to guide you through the pain to a better, more fulfilling life. "So, if nothing is wrong with me, why do I feel so terrible?" Good question -- and let''s get started answering it. First, what you''re going through has a name: crisis. A crisis isn''t life-threatening, but it is painful, and if it continues, it can be debilitating. When you''re in the middle of it, there''s no place more miserable.

A crisis happens when you experience a painful void in your life. You''ve done everything you know, and still, you wind up at the same place, with the same results you swore you wouldn''t repeat again. So here you are, right back where you never wanted to be. Everyone experiences crises. High-ranking executives, ministers, therapists, and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors all have crises. Smart people, rich people, happily married people, single people, old people, young people all experience crisis. It''s easy to think that smart or successful people have no crises in their lives, but that is dead wrong. Money, intelligence, power, and success are no insurance against crisis, and in fact, often make crises worse.

Everyone experiences them. There are four ways in which crises can manifest in your life. They can be latent crises, inflamed crises, suppressed crises, or resolved crises. To begin with, a crisis first appears in your life as a latent crisis. That is, it is present but is not causing you any pain. For example, you may be aware that spirituality is important, but feel no urgent need to find spiritual answers for your life. In this case, your spiritual crisis is a latent crisis. If, however, your husband dies suddenly and unexpectedly, you may find yourself in urgent need of spiritual answers about the fundamental meaning of life and eternity.

Suddenly, your latent crisis has become inflamed. You''re in pain and needing some solid answers. An inflamed crisis is the most painful and most distressing form of crisis. What makes a latent crisis become an inflamed crisis? Almost always it is a painful or traumatic event that activates the latent crisis and starts causing you pain. You lose your job. Your relationship falls apart. You have a heart attack and suddenly must scale back your activities. Your son fails in school.

Your best friend no longer wants to see you. Whatever the event might be, it unleashes the energy of the latent crisis, and you begin to experience great distress. It''s more than just the pain of a broken relationship or a lost job -- you begin to have some serious and painful questions about your life. The questions keep you up at night and hound you during the day. There''s no escape from a crisis that has become inflamed. The point at which you experience a crisis is when it becomes inflamed. When the crisis is latent, you don''t experience it as a crisis -- in fact, you may not be aware of it at all. It takes a triggering event to bring a latent crisis into your full awareness and make it inflamed.

Once it is inflamed, you have two choices: You can either suppress the crisis (for example, by immediately dating your high-school boyfriend after your divorce and then marrying him three months later) or you can take steps to resolve your crisis -- a process that you''ll learn about in this book. When you''re locked into a repeating pattern that you just can''t seem to break, it happens for one reason: You''re suppressing a crisis rather than resolving it. A suppressed crisis occurs when you experience a crisis and rather than confront and resolve it, you push it back into the recesses of your mind in an effort to avoid the pain it is causing you. There are many ways you might suppress a crisis. For example, you might distract yourself with busyness, or occupy yourself with addiction, or throw yourself into a mind-numbing depression. However you do it, suppressing a crisis has one monumental negative side effect: It keeps you stuck in the same repeating circumstances. Because you''re coming from a place of fear and avoidance, you don''t move forward, and instead remain in the same painful situations. Suppressing a crisis takes lots of energy.

It slowly depletes your psychic resources, leaving you unable to grow, take risks, and move forward. There are seven basic crises that you will experience in your life. Every single person will experience these seven crises, regardless of race, education, or background. Chances are, you''re experiencing one of them right now. How you respond to these crises, whether you suppress them or confront them, will dictate whether you are able to move on with your life. If you''re stuck repeating the same painful patterns over and over again, it is because one of these seven crises is in your life and you are not confronting it. This book will help you identify the unresolved crisis you are suppressing and will teach you how to confront and resolve it. A little further in the book there will be a quiz that will help you to identify your crisis and will direct you to a specific chapter that will help you resolve it.

So what are the seven basic crises that everyone experiences? They are, in no particular order: The Crisis of Passion The Crisis of Contact The Crisis of Self-Confidence The Crisis of Individuation The Crisis of Fear The Crisis of Spiritual Meaning The Crisis of Broken Dreams Some people immediately suppress a crisis as soon as it becomes inflamed, living rigid lives that are dedicated to avoiding the crises that lurk just beneath the surface of their carefully crafted exteriors. Others live in a state of continuously inflamed crisis, unable to suppress it and reluctant to take on the task of resolving it. Still others experience each crisis as it occurs and then go about the work of finding healthy resolution. The goal of this book is to help you learn this process and to resolve each crisis as you experience it. Let me tell you how some of my clients have experienced crisis: Marianne''s Crisis When she walked into my office, the frustration she was feeling oozed from her. The way she walked with leaden feet, the half-hearted smile, and the downward gaze -- they all betrayed her heart. And it said volumes more than she could have told me in ten therapy sessions. She was overwhelmed with frustration.

At first glance, Marianne appeared to be a successful woman. She was attractive and dressed smartly. With her slim briefcase clutched in one hand and the other ready to be extended and pull you into her world with a firm handshake, there was no doubt that Marianne meant business. As I later learned, M.