Key Takeaways

1. Approach-avoidance plays a significant role in reenactments.
2. Following a five-step process can lead to better decisions and actions.
3. The Reenactment Decisions Matrix illustrates the relation between level of awareness and level of commitment to act in new ways.
4. Every decision in the present is a compromise. The task is to live the best possible compromise at a given time.

We all tend to make the same mistakes in our decision-making. Why does this happen? It’s because reenactments often drive these poor choices.¹ Reenactments are a person’s specific patterns of brain, body, and mind responses to traumatic and non-traumatic experiences.² The goal of this article is to explain what we need to do to change our decisions so we can all lead a better life.

Approach-Avoidance Motivation

Every moment, a key decision in each experience is whether to approach or avoid it. Approach behavior involves directing your energy toward objects, events, and possibilities, while avoidance motivation means pushing your energy away from them.³ Your movement toward or away from these things can be physical or psychological.

Approach and avoidance behaviors are habits. Reenactments often depend on avoidance behaviors, while overcoming them involves approach behaviors. In the end, the main motivation behind your actions decides whether you approach or avoid an experience.

Generally, approach behavior is considered adaptive, while avoidance behavior is seen as maladaptive. Approach behavior involves facing and dealing with current problems, which can be helpful over time. On the other hand, avoidance behavior enables someone to escape or ignore present issues, providing quick relief but possibly causing future problems.

The challenge is to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of approach–avoidance behavior in both traumatic and everyday situations. Calculating approach–avoidance motivation often involves considering multiple options along a spectrum of increasing demands and choosing the one you can handle. These options range from less demanding and less rewarding to more demanding and more rewarding in their effects.

Deciding to Break Your Reenactments

How are reenactments broken? What’s the decision-making process in breaking reenactments going to look like? The key to breaking any reenactment is knowing we can change old habitual responses by creating new ones. The idea is to do anything as long as it’s different from the habitual reaction in the past. We can break down any reenactment by examining the following five steps.

In Step 1, ask yourself if you’re repeating the same decision-making process and experiencing the same poor outcome at a certain moment. If your answer is “yes,” then you’re reenacting the same pattern. Becoming more aware helps you understand why things happen to you and what you truly want, which gives you a better chance to break the cycle. There are many methods available to increase awareness (e.g., meditation and journaling), which will be discussed in a separate article.

In Step 2, the question is, “What can I do to calm down enough so that I can think more clearly about what to do in this experience or the next similar one?” To change your behavior during a reenactment, whether in response to a traumatic or everyday situation, you’re trying to observe your physiology, emotions, feelings, and thoughts. However, the intensity of your physiological arousal might be so high that it prevents clear thinking. This is a moment for deep introspection, a chance to understand your reactions and consciously choose to change them. Deep, slow breathing, stepping away from a situation, going for a walk, talking to someone, and journaling are all excellent ways to manage physiological arousal during a difficult moment.

In Step 3, “What are the reenactment themes in a particular experience, and what other recent or distant experiences include similar reenactment themes?” It’s helpful to go beyond simply saying that an experience makes you sad, anxious, or angry. Instead, try identifying which specific factors contribute to your emotional state. Is it a lack of purpose, a recent loss, or being minimized by family?

The more we can identify themes related to reenactments, the better we can develop strategies to target and disrupt them. Remember, multiple themes usually exist in any experience. So, focus on recognizing and analyzing as many relevant themes as you’re comfortable with in each situation. You will likely discover more themes as you improve at noticing them.

In Step 4, ask yourself, “What’s the underlying motivation for my decision to act?” You have identified the reenactment themes and now need to determine the real motivation behind your choice to break the reenactment in a specific situation. A good decision to break a reenactment isn’t based on its appearance but on what truly drives the decision. Are you doing what you need to do to break the reenactment for the right reasons? For example, if you’re reacting to a reenactment theme of loneliness and isolation, deciding to socialize for social approval wouldn’t be the right reason; being interested in getting to know someone is a better reason.

In Step 5, ask yourself, “What action am I taking to break the cycle?” After analyzing the situation, identify a specific action that will break the cycle and make sure that this action is driven by the right reasons. Once you’ve chosen a plan, you can commit to new behavior and disrupt the cycle. This commitment is a declaration of your determination to change and to take better care of yourself.

The Reenactment Decision Matrix

The Reenactment Decision Matrix describes the possible outcomes of handling a reenactment. It shows that breaking the reenactment involves being aware enough to choose a different response from the usual way of doing and being. It’s about the relationship between the level of awareness and the commitment to act.

The Reenactment Decision Matrix has four possible outcomes: two positive, which involve breaking the reenactment, and two negative, which include maintaining it. The top and bottom quadrants on the right side of the graph represent the positive outcome (breaking reenactments) of taking a new action or choosing not to respond. That’s right; sometimes, the best action is not responding to or engaging with a reenactment trigger. For example, deciding not to give in to a request from someone when you’ve always been accommodating can be a new behavioral action. It’s not avoidance; it’s an actively considered choice. Remember, it’s not about how the behavior appears on the surface; it’s what motivates the behavioral choice that makes it positive. It’s energy directed toward better possibilities. The choices in these two quadrants represent approach behavior.

Meanwhile, the top and bottom quadrants on the left side of the graph show that repeating the same old actions or ignoring new options sustains physiological and behavioral dysregulation, leading to negative outcomes (reenactments). They also demonstrate avoidance behavior, which involves directing energy toward worse possibilities.

Let’s consider an example. Jessica is a 35-year-old woman with two young boys. She has been with her partner for four years. She admits she gets irritated with her partner when he doesn’t follow through on evening tasks that help her manage the children and household. Her usual response is to stay silent, stew about it, and feel ignored, disrespected, and unloved.

After some reflection, Jessica realizes that she isn’t trying to control her partner but wants to complete tasks more quickly and efficiently so they can spend an hour together after putting the kids to sleep. In other words, she desires contact and intimacy. If she gains this insight, does nothing, and continues to stew over the issue, she would be reenacting her old behavior pattern. If she remains unaware of her need for intimacy and passively accepts her situation, she would also be reenacting her behavior pattern. These two outcomes align with the top and bottom left quadrants of the graph.

If Jessica talks with her partner and tells him she wants him to complete the evening tasks more efficiently so they can spend more time together, that would break the reenactment. If Jessica chooses not to have a conversation and stops stewing about it, she would be breaking the reenactment. These two outcomes are located in the top and bottom quadrants on the right side of the graph.

Generally, it’s important to recognize that small reenactments accumulate over time until they reach a tipping point, resulting in a change in a person’s behavior and self-perception. It doesn’t matter where we start in the reenactment process; what matters is where we end up. Even if we choose not to take any action regarding the reenactment, it’s okay to accept that outcome for now, let it go, and consider what we might do differently in the next reenactment. There will always be another reenactment, and the key is understanding that different and desired results come from trying new actions.

All Decisions Are a Compromise

Understand that every decision we make in life is a compromise. What seems like a good decision today might not be so tomorrow. Our view of what is best for us changes over time. So, when we use the Reenactment Decision Matrix to choose a course of action, we recognize that each of the four options involves a compromise. Our goal is to select the compromise that best meets our needs at the moment. We might decide today that an action breaks the reenactment, and later conclude that not acting also breaks it. What truly matters is making decisions with awareness. Whether you choose to act or not, breaking the reenactment is always a deliberate choice.

Since breaking reenactment heavily depends on awareness, the following article will focus on strategies to improve awareness.

Notes

1. All things related to reenactments in this article come from Tony Iezzi and Melanie P. Duckworth, Reenactments: Break the Behavior Patterns That Keep You Stuck in Trauma, Stress, and Everyday Experiences (London, Ontario: Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, 2025).
2. Iezzi and Duckworth, Reenactments, 7.
3. Andrew J. Elliot, “Approach and Avoidance Motivation,” in Handbook of Approach and Avoidance Motivation, ed. Andrew J. Elliot (Routledge Press, 2008), 3-14.