A place to understand why the same problem keeps repeating
Most people look for psychological counselling when the same problem keeps repeating.
Even when the relationship changes, the conflict is much the same. You meant to say no, and once again you did what was asked of you, and afterwards you are worn out. You promise yourself that this time will be different, and before long you catch yourself doing exactly what you did before.
So you ask yourself:
“Why do I keep doing the same thing when I know better?”
Inner Work Notes is a depth-psychology record that takes up that question. It looks at how dreams, the unconscious and the ways of relating formed in childhood affect what you feel and do now.
Behaviour that repeats does not arise without a reason. Even behaviour that is hurting you now may have started as a way of bearing anxiety, rejection, shame and loss. If you try to change the behaviour without understanding that reason, it looks different for a while and then slips back into the familiar pattern.
These notes do not treat you as something to be fixed. They try to understand where the problem began, what it has protected you from, and what it is producing in your relationships now.
Why these pieces are called a record
This site is not a psychotherapy programme or a step-by-step self-improvement course. It does not promise that a few methods will change your life quickly.
These are pieces that draw on theory and clinical experience to set down the psychological difficulties met again and again in counselling and supervision. The aim is not to offer one correct answer, but to describe those difficulties clearly enough that you recognise your own experience in them.
The three perspectives these notes are built on
Jung’s analytical psychology
Jung’s analytical psychology explains how the parts of yourself you will not acknowledge, and have pushed away, show themselves.
You may believe you are not angry and still be excessively sensitive to anger in other people. You may dislike dependent people and yet be unable to bear being left alone. You may appear strong and yet, in dreams, be someone who is lost or being chased.
Jung called that disowned, pushed-away part the shadow, and the face you show others in order to fit into society and relationships the persona.
The shadow does not disappear. It shows itself in strong condemnation of other people and in strong attraction to them, in repeated conflict, and in the figures and events of dreams. Who you are drawn to and who you cannot bear are important clues for understanding your own unconscious.
Object relations theory
Object relations theory explains how the relationships of childhood repeat themselves in the relationships of the present.
Through the relationship with whoever cares for them, a child learns how to be loved and how not to be abandoned. If you were rejected when you showed what you felt, you may hold a relationship together by fitting yourself to the other person. From outside it looks like consideration; inside, exhaustion and anger build up. In the end you break the relationship off abruptly, or come to resent the other person.
Winnicott gave a name to the self that is made by hiding your own feelings and needs in order to keep a relationship: the false self. The false self is not a pretence. It is a way of surviving, made by someone who felt that showing who they really are could break the relationship.
So before you change a behaviour, you have to understand why that way was needed.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis does not see a symptom only as a fault to be removed; it looks at the function the symptom is carrying out.
Anxiety may be a signal about a danger you are avoiding. Compulsive behaviour may be an attempt to control feelings that are too much to bear. Apathy may be a resistance to being pulled along any further by what other people want.
Change becomes possible only once you know what the symptom is blocking and what it is expressing instead.
Who writes this
Kim Hyung-keun — director of the Seoul Addiction Psychology Institute and an object relations supervisor. He holds a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) in pastoral counselling and has worked for twenty-six years as a certified addiction counselling specialist, in clinical practice, teaching and supervision.
Current roles are as follows.
- Director, Seoul Addiction Psychology Institute
- Chairman of the Board, Self-Love Community (incorporated association)
- Director, Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis
- Supervisor, Korean Association of Christian Psychological Counseling
- Board Member, Korean Probation Society
- Policy Advisory Committee Member, Korea Association Against Drug Abuse
Previous roles are as follows.
- Director of General Affairs, Korean Association for Object Relations Psychotherapy
- Adjunct Professor, Hanshin University Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
- Lecturer, ABC Addiction School, University of the Nations Jeju
This background is set out not to claim authority, but so that you can see what experience and what point of view this writing comes out of, and judge its content for yourself.
Why psychology and spirituality are taken together
Alongside his clinical experience he also applies the spiritual perspective set out in A Course in Miracles and Conversations with God.
How a person understands themselves, how they come to terms with guilt and forgiveness, and how they are to love another person are psychological questions and spiritual ones at the same time.
But a psychological injury must not be covered over with a spiritual explanation. Nor, conversely, should psychology leave out the questions of human meaning and of transcendence. The aim is to understand concretely how the wound was made, and at the same time to look for a direction in which to live that is not bound to it.
How this differs from self-improvement writing
Self-improvement writing generally sets a goal and offers methods for changing behaviour. That can help in building everyday habits or improving a particular ability.
But deep difficulties in relationships do not arise from a lack of method.
You cannot say no because you are afraid that refusing will mean being abandoned. You hide what you feel because conflict seems likely to end the relationship. You put off starting because it feels as though failing would expose you as worthless.
Problems of that kind are not solved by instructions for behaviour alone. The fear that produced the behaviour has to be seen together with the price you are paying for that behaviour now.
So before offering a solution, these notes ask:
- When the other person is disappointed, why does it feel as though I have done something wrong?
- Why, even as I want to be close, do I want to run the moment the relationship deepens?
- Why am I drawn again to someone like the person who made things hard for me?
- Why can I not even begin unless I can do it perfectly?
In working through these questions, you stop seeing your own behaviour only as a defect and come to understand why it was made.