Emily is 26 and has just gone through a horrible separation. Her husband was physically abusive, hooked on drugs and alcohol and verbally abused her in front of their daughter almost every day. It was the same way her father treated her mother, and the same way at least three boyfriends treated her in high school. She started to see me for Memory Processing because her current boyfriend started hitting her and calling her names.

Which brings me to this question: why is it that certain people go through the same treatment in life over and over again. There is no sense that they want this is there? In order to answer that, I have to go to one of the tenets of lie-based thinking. In LBT, a person doesn’t just believe something, but that belief also colors the way they act toward others. It affects how they will interact. It affects what they will put up with and what they won’t,.

But, and here is the crux of the matter for Emily, what we believe about ourselves is often what others come to believe about us as well. If we are firmly believing that all men will hurt us or take advantage of us, or lie to us, or all women will cheat on us, or hurt us etc., that is often what continues to happen in repeating patterns.

As Emily went through Memory Processing, she noticed the beliefs about men were consistently lived out, even with men she had only known casually. It never happened with any of the women in her life. Since getting rid of the lies, she doesn’t run into men that try those things on her any more. It brings up another axiom of life: Healthy people tend to attract healthy people, and unhealthy people attract unhealthy people.