Discovering Your Familiar Bad Feeling Place
Your default setting is serving a purpose that makes perfect sense
We all have default positions that I call based on a saying from one of my favorite grad school professors, Dr. Nathalie Kees, your Familiar Bad Feeling Place. Under stress, we tend to start repeating the same old statements out loud or in our heads. You may recognize some of yours in the following list, and for this, we’ll focus loosely on default money themes:
No one helps me.
I never get what I want.
We need to cut back on everything immediately.
Everyone else gets/can/has_________why not me?
I’m there for everyone who needs money, but when I need help, no one is around.
Money is for other people, not me.
Their parents gave it to them; mine gave me nothing.
Rich people/Immigrants/Business owners don’t pay taxes. Why do I have to?
Money is tight; what else of my things can I sell?
There’s never enough [there never will be enough]
My dreams never come true.
After nearly 30 years of working with people and noticing these patterns way back in adolescence, the Familiar Bad Feeling Place (the FBF is formed in childhood) is where we all run for safety. Every single one of us has one.
So what’s hidden in these statements? A need that’s been attached to money but isn’t about money at all.
So often, people who fall into No One Ever Helps Me Land, when watched closely, overtly and covertly help-block anyone trying to assist. These subtle rejections of help are generally unconscious and driven by other needs. But this continues until they get so worn out they collapse and start hollering from their FBF that everyone sucks because no one ever helps them.
Ms. No One Ever Helps Me really wants help but, deeper than that, desires love and connection. Early on, she learned she couldn’t have it, and if she was going to survive, she’d have to help herself, but this decision left behind a story that keeps replicating itself. She tries to leave No One Ever Helps Me Land, but the story and its hidden human need drive her right back à la Groundhog Day.
No One Ever Helps Me is the voice of the long-ago child who is frozen in time, naming the truth of a state of existence that no longer exists.
It’s true. No one helped. For whatever reason(s), the need for help wasn’t met.
All of these default repetitive under-stress statements that are the calling cards of a Familiar Bad Feeling Place were formed in the true-true.
They are true to the child who, early on and often repeatedly, experienced scarcity, loneliness, anger, despair, disappointment, panic, abandonment, neglect, terror, etc.
They just aren’t true anymore.
However, now we’re in the repetition compulsion zone of making them stay true. Until we really recognize this and become willing to go into the incredibly uncomfortable realms of change, we make sure the statement stays true.
We set ourselves up to fail and then retreat to our Familiar Bad Feeling Place to soothe ourselves with food, or numbing out, picking fights, addiction of all kinds, etc.
Repeat scenario ad infinitum: We need help, but our system is programmed to go it alone, so we refuse help because accepting help is now completely foreign or wrong or means something about our character, but then we collapse and have to accept help because now it’s a crisis which is somehow ok because now we “have” to have it. Once we’ve recovered, or in reality, usually when I see this happening, this person jumps up way before they’ve recovered and again refuses help, and here we go ‘round the this-fucking-sucks-mulberry-bush all over again.
Pity Party Land was my personal favorite, and it had shades of some of the statements above. I never get what I want, no one helps me, others can have XYZ, why can’t I, and so on.
Pity Party Land was created as a triple bad dream where I swung my Dream Smashing Hammer over and over again until, eventually, I stopped dreaming and experienced my first might-like to be unalive thoughts in the summer before I turned ten years old.
I didn’t want to die; I wanted all the chaos to stop, and the chaos stopped inside Pity Party Land. I was in control there, and over the years, I remodeled and upgraded and tinkered until by the time I closed it down, decades had gone by.
It wasn’t a fun place to be, but it was true, and it was safe, and it served the very much required purpose of keeping me sane and alive. Human beings are not crazy because they form behaviors to serve a purpose in the moment. It’s just those behaviors can become really problematic later in life.
We are wired for survival, and we are brilliant at finding ways to do just that and still be highly functional creatures!
So what to do?
How do we stop allowing the gates to Pity Party Land stay open?
How do we allow people to help us and give up our addiction to the crisis crash and burn feeling of no one helping us?
How do we, instead of hanging out at My Dreams Never Come True Central, start taking steps to create and fulfill our dreams ourselves?
How do we acknowledge the burning jealousy of the “rich people” and focus on creating our own wealth in our own ways?
It’s simple but not easy. It requires all of the compassionate curiosity we can muster up.
Catch yourself in the act of repeating a statement under stress that you say nearly all the time. If you’re really brave, ask your family what you always say under stress but then don’t get assy when they tell you!
Ask yourself when you first felt the statement was formed.
Ask yourself what subtle and not-so-subtle tactics you’re using to make sure your Familiar Bad Feeling Place stays accessible.
Then this is the hard part because it can really take you back to the origins of the pattern. I do recommend you get support of some kind so you can say all the things out loud, feel them even louder, and be WITNESSED and VALIDATED.
Remember, the default statement was built on a foundational truth which was never witnessed and validated as true, so it created an endless loop of yuck.
You were a little honey bunny, and you couldn’t process the event or events. You couldn’t see that the adults were trying (assuming they were), but your 3-year-old brain couldn’t understand. The truth is that shit happens throughout our lives, and we can experience these moments as traumatic enough to freeze-frame them.
Witnessing and validating are two of the most powerful tools you can use to unwind this pattern. If you feel pitiful, acknowledge that it's normal for children to feel sad and sorry for themselves when a need is neglected. If you feel angry or always fall into the Fuck-Its acknowledge that anger is healthy when boundaries are violated or expressed needs are ignored or punished.
Your Familiar Bad Feeling Place is simply an ingrained truth that needs to be seen as such, and then we can get down to learning how to unfreeze and meet the need.
I need more money becomes a moment to ask, “What do I really need right now? If I felt safe would I be worrying about money? If I wasn’t worrying about money what would I have to feel? Is it possible worrying about money is easier than feeling shame or fear?”
No one ever helps me becomes a moment to practice saying to those around you, “Hey, you offered to help me, and I told you to piss off, but I actually would like some help. Can I take it back? Would you help me with this, please?”
Money is for other people, or I never get what I want, or my dreams never come true, becomes a self-talk session, “You know what? There were lots of times you needed or wanted something really important, and you didn’t get it. Show me a memory of that, and help me feel now how you felt about it then. I wonder if it’s ok for us to really feel how feeling left out made our face burn and our stomach hurt?”
Money is tight. What else can I sell off? “I wonder what it would feel like to look around at ways the money could show up even in small amounts rather than selling off your favorite things? Is there a service we can create? Have you checked all the couch cushions? What if you refused to sell the things that really mean something to you? I wonder what could happen if you let yourself feel safe in this moment?”
I’m there for everyone, but when I need something, no one is here for me becomes a time to self-reflect on boundaries. Where are you jumping in to help when you haven’t been asked and ending up depleted? Where do you want to say no, but keep saying yes? Where are you making yourself the Rescuer or Martyr? The if-I-don’t-help-them-they’ll-die or no one else will help, so I have to do it, person? What’s underneath all that, and how can you meet the need?
Witness.
Validate.
Apply compassionate curiosity.
All behavior has a purpose. All behavior has a purpose. Alllllll behavior has a purpose.
Find the purpose, meet the need, and close the doors to your Familiar Bad Feeling Place once and for all.
XO,
LMW