Different face, same fight. If that sentence landed, you already know the pattern I mean.
Most people who come in after a breakup don't actually want to talk about the breakup. They want to talk about the fact that this is the third, or fifth, or tenth time the relationship has ended for a reason that sounds identical to the last one. That's not bad luck and it's not a character flaw. It's a pattern running on autopilot, usually built long before the person currently triggering it ever showed up.
My associate Analia Rey, AMFT, works specifically with this, heartbreak, recurring dating patterns, and the wider work of building relationships, with yourself and with other people, that don't just repeat the last one with new packaging. She combines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with narrative therapy: ACT for the actual moment-to-moment work of not being run by the old fear, narrative therapy for naming the pattern clearly enough that you can finally see it coming instead of recognizing it three months in.
None of this requires you to have language for it yet. Most people don't, on the first call. You just know something keeps happening, and you're tired of it happening to you like weather instead of something you have a hand in.
Sessions with Analia are $150, fifty minutes, private pay with superbills provided. Her full page covers how she works in more depth, and the first twenty-minute consultation is free.
