Episode Overview

Why is it so hard to let go of things we know aren’t good for us? Whether it’s a toxic relationship, a draining job, or even physical clutter, we often hold on—not because it’s right for us, but because it’s familiar.

In this episode, Laura shares how the brain’s need for safety and predictability keeps us stuck in what feels comfortable, even when it’s not healthy. Drawing on two fascinating studies—the Mere Exposure Effect (Zajonc, 1968) and research on habit formation (Lally et al., 2010)—Laura explains how our brains become wired for familiarity, and how awareness and small, intentional choices can help us break free from the block of familiarity to create space for healing and growth.

Listen in to learn:

• Why the brain clings to the familiar—even painful or toxic situations.

• How habit loops and neural pathways reinforce the same old patterns.

• Simple ways to recognize when you’re stuck in familiarity.

• Practical steps to let go, make space, and invite in what truly serves you.

• Why letting go is not failure—it’s an act of love and alignment.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2), 1–27.

• Lally, P., et al. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.

Explore more support 

• Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership: https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/lifecoaching

• Becoming You 2.0 Program: https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/you

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Read the full transcript:

0:00
You're listening to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a Certified Life health and nutrition coach, and I'm also a breast cancer thriver. If you're trying to figure out how to move past the trauma and the emotional toll of breast cancer, you've come to the right place in this podcast, I will give you the tools and the insights to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer. Let's get started.

0:32
Hey there, friends, welcome to episode 436 of better than before breast cancer. You know, today I'm just freshly back from a trip to Tulum, Mexico, where I was fortunate enough to not only witness my amazing nephew marry his beautiful fiance, both amazing people as well as an amazing couple, but I got to be there with my four adult children and my husband, my sisters, brother in laws, nieces, nephews, like a lot of families and very, very close friends that I think of as family. It was a fantastic experience. We were at an all inclusive resort, so we got to spend a lot of time together, and, you know, just hanging out in the ocean and hanging out in the pool, chatting with each other. And I love that, because I love, I love hearing people's stories, and these are people that I've known their whole lives, right? Something that is always fascinating to me is how when you can see someone who's investing time and energy into healthy lifestyle habits, whether that's the thought work that they do, the physical work they do, and most of the time, that's very intertwined. But to have discussions with people and hear how their lives are evolving and changing, versus having discussions with other people and see how their lives are changing, in the sense that the people are changing out, but the experience is remaining the same, right? They are stuck in these certain patterns, and it's they're not aware of the pattern. It's almost like they cannot see the pattern, even though, as one person said to me, we're having this talk about how they had a relationship broke up, had another relationship broke up, went back to the other relationship and said to me, you know, I I'm just attracted to chaos. My life is chaos. And I thought that is such a fascinating thing to say, right? So you you realize and you see the pattern. But do you see why we come back to this pattern? Right? It is so interesting. And I know that we all have found ourselves there at some point in our life. Maybe you're there at that point in your life right now, right where we struggle to hold on to things that we know are not serving us, whether that is a habit of not exercising or eating the wrong things, or going back to the same people over and over again when we feel like we've outgrown them going back to the same job week after week, month after month, year after year, when you know it drains your energy, when you're in relationships where you don't feel seen, you don't feel heard, you don't feel fulfilled, or even if you have habits where you live In physical clutter that just consumes your home and your mind. You know these things aren't helping you, but somehow, for some reason, it feels safer to stay than to let it go, and that's what I want to unpack here today. Why does our brain do this? How do we recognize when it's happening to us when we're stuck in this block of familiarity and what we can do to free ourselves from it. So first of all, it's human nature to want safety and predictability. It's how our brains are wired. So even if something is painful or toxic, if it's familiar, it feels less threatening than the unknown. And I think that is so fascinating, because, as I've said so many times, I think even on this show, we live in the unknown every day. We never know what's coming one minute from now, for example, this is the second time I recorded this podcast, because the first time I did it, the internet disconnected halfway through it, which I didn't know, right? Did I know I was going to have to make time to redo a podcast today? Right? We're always in the unknown, and yet we convince ourselves somehow that any kind of change is scary, because we don't know what's on the other side of that change. There is a fascinating psychological principle that explains this. And back in 1968 there was a researcher named Robert zajanc. It's Z, a, J, o, n, c is how you spell his name. I probably have to the pronunciation, but he described what he called the mere exposure effect, and his study showed that the more. Exposed to something, even if it's not particularly good or pleasant, the more we start to like it simply because it's familiar. So really think about that for a minute, our brains literally start to prefer things that we've seen or experienced over and over, even when they make us unhappy or we know it's unhealthy. So when you find yourself holding on to these things, when you cry, why do I do that? You know we question ourselves. Why do I go back to that? Why do I keep making that choice? Why do I keep saying yes to this person? It isn't because you're weak or you're broken or you don't have willpower, right? We judge ourselves so much. And if we can stop and drop the self judgment and understand why that really happens, that can be one step to helping us break free, right? We do those things because your brain is wired to find comfort in familiarity. Comfort feels safe even when it's not healthy. So once familiar patterns are set in the brain, they become habits, and they literally live in our neural wiring. There was another study in 2010 by Philippa Lally and her colleagues, and it was published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, and they looked at how habits are formed in the real world. What they found is that through repetition, the brain creates efficiency. It builds neural pathways that make certain thoughts, behaviors and reactions automatic. So think about automatic reaction, what we also call those triggers, right in other words, once a pattern gets wired into your brain, like staying in situations that drain you, it becomes the path of least resistance, and your brain says, Well, this is just how it is. This is just how I do life. And that's why, like with any kind of change, awareness is the first step. It's got to be you cannot rewire what you're not aware of, but once you see it, once you realize that the reason you keep returning to what's familiar isn't because it's good, but because it's familiar, it's known, then you can start to make choices that feel uncomfortable at first, but ultimately bring you more freedom, more growth, more happiness. So like my family members, as you know, my life is chaos. Why? Right? There's an awareness I'm living in chaos. But then why do I choose it? And that's an important thing. How do you know when you get stuck in in this pattern, whatever the pattern might be, one important way to recognize it is by really listening to your body. When something isn't right for you, your body tells you the truth through tension or fatigue or headaches or tightness in your chest, heaviness that you can't explain, a mood that you can't get past, I could tell you I distinctly. Can recall, in my second marriage, I suffered from horrendous migraine headaches and pelvic pain all the time. And magically, when I left that relationship, which I knew I needed to do for years, it was so toxic and unhealthy for me, and the minute I left it, I never had that problem again. I had no more pelvic pain after that. Think about the energetics behind that, and what that means, like my body was sending signals of what I already knew but wasn't ready or willing to psychologically, mentally deal with. So paying attention to your body and noticing Do you feel drained after certain interactions with people? Do you find yourself constantly trying to fix things and yet things never seem to really change, at least not for not for permanent change, right? Maybe a little bit at a time. Do you find yourself making excuses for things or people or behaviors. Do you find yourself lying about them, hiding them, hiding what is actually happening in your life? These are all signs that you're clinging to something familiar, not because it's good for you, but because your brain says, At least I know how this feels. I can deal with this another way we can tell when we are stuck in this block of familiarity is when we notice resentment coming up. So resentment often shows up when you keep investing your time, your love, your energy, and something that no longer matches the person that you have become or that you are becoming, and it's like this emotional smoke alarm that's saying, hey, you've outgrown this. I distinctly can recall when I was in Life Coach School training, there was a woman we kind of all did coaching in our little group that we were studying together. There was group of about 13 of us, and there was one woman in. Particular, she was really committed to making some healthy change in her life. And she was struggling because she was saying, you know, I feel bad because I have this group of friends, and I don't want to hang out with them anymore, because they like to go to the club, and they like to go to the bars, and, you know, they're have all kinds of drama in their lives, all kinds of chaos in their life, and she was seeking peace. And so it's an interesting thing, because she would notice it didn't align with her anymore, right? And so this is an important thing when we're trying to break through this block of familiarity, and we have that feeling, we have this understanding that something doesn't align with us anymore, we have to look at our story of why we keep choosing it. So a lot of the times, the stories are things like, for instance, with this woman, well, I don't want to hurt their feelings. I don't want them to think I think I'm better than them, because that wasn't where she was coming from. She just wanted a different lifestyle. So what is the narrative that keeps you stuck and choosing things that aren't serving you, things that aren't aligning with you, things that aren't supporting your health, stories like, I don't want to hurt someone's feelings, I don't want them to think a certain thing of me, or I've already invested so much time in this. Sometimes it's a relationship or a job, I've invested so much time in this, or I've known this person for so long, or you think about, well, I could probably fix it, we want to take on the responsibility and judge ourselves for if I can't fix it, then maybe I'm a failure, right? So these stories, when we can drop the self judgment and we can write down these stories, this is the important thing, to take your stories, write them down, because this helps your brain get awareness. It looks at it. And sometimes if you feel resistance to writing things down, is exactly that. It's your brain saying, don't write it down, don't say it out loud. Because if you write it down and you say it out loud, it suddenly has a lot more truth, right? And it starts to untangle the story from the truth. Because we can say, Well, why are you choosing that thought? Is that really true? What would it matter if someone thought a certain thing of you? How would that change who you want to be and what you're becoming? So when we start to see these stories and we look at them with curiosity and not self judgment, we start to get so much more clarity, and we start to see, wow, that's really just a story, and it's not one that I have to keep choosing, because that that fear that we're feeling, oftentimes we tell ourselves it's for the loss, so for the story I just shared with you is, was there a fear of change? Because, oh my gosh, I might lose these people in my life. No, it was the uncertainty. It was the fear of not knowing who she would be or what she would do, what the next thing in our life would be if she decided to make the change. So I see this. Oftentimes, people will say to me, You know what, I don't want to hang out that group anymore. They don't have the kind of healthy behaviors that I want to adopt. I had a client one time, and she said, You know, I just, I really don't want to consume alcohol, but everybody that I hang out with drinks, and they like to go to the bars, and this is, you know, their social interactions are based around alcohol, and I don't want to feel like the odd man out, so I keep drinking alcohol. So we have to look at that story and examine it with curiosity in how it's serving you and why we're choosing it, and recognize that the fear isn't giving up the alcohol when the fear isn't not hanging out with the people who want to choose that lifestyle, the fear is not knowing what's coming next, but we get to create what's coming next. We get to choose what serves us, right? So remember, the brain learns through repetition, and so we have to give it new experiences of safety. A lot of people want to make change. They want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? They want to change everything all at once. And that rarely works. But when we can give our brain new experiences in a safe way, it starts to go okay. I can make change and it can feel okay. So maybe if we're dealing with clutter, overwhelmed, right, collecting too many things in our home, we unclutter one drawer, or we start with a hall closet instead of the big closet in your bedroom. Maybe we say no to one thing, for example, with the story I gave you, the friends are going to the bar, and maybe we say this time, maybe it's not that in your brain, you're going to say, I'm going to say no to this forever, but I'm going to say no to this tonight. Tonight. I'm not going to go there, because I don't want to be there where I know I'm going to feel pressured into consuming alcohol. I'm going to stay at home and take care of myself. And then we see, wow, that worked out. That's okay. I feel good. And we teach our brain a little bit of time it's safe. So we set small boundaries, and we show our brain that letting go is okay. It's safe to let things go. Now, this is my favorite part. When we decide we see that pattern, we have awareness of it, we make small choices that move us closer to what we want to achieve and further away from what we're not comfortable with. Anymore. The beautiful thing there is we create space. So when we hold on to what doesn't serve us, we block what's meant to come to us, right? But when we clear space, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, we create room for new things that align with who we're becoming. We create space for people who have the kind of behaviors that we want to be around. But when we go back to that story, we have to change the way that we see letting go. And instead of seeing letting go as something that is bad or something that will hurt other people's feelings or something that results in judgment, we can see letting go as an act of love, not rejection. You didn't fail. It's not a failure. It's choosing peace over conditioned patterns. It's saying I deserve to feel free when I work with women who've had a diagnosis of breast cancer, one of the things that I hear so often is this huge realization, because when we get a life threatening illness, a diagnosis of a life threatening illness, we start to look at time and lifespan very differently. And I will often hear women say things to the effect of, I don't have time to keep living out of alignment with myself. I don't have time to deal with that pettiness. I'm not available for those things anymore. Facing cancer, can change your relationship with time, with the meaning of life, and with yourself. And I think any big event, you know, I started this conversation, this episode, because of my thoughts that came up and the things that I saw at a wedding, right? A wedding is a huge transition in life. It's the coming together, the marriage of these two people causes you to stop and think about other relationships. You know, weddings can be a very revolutionary experience for a lot of people. So any of these big events in life, whether they're positive events or not, so positive events can really foster that change in the relationship with your life, and it shows you how precious every day really is, and how heavy it is to carry around what is no longer meant for you, what is no longer serving you. And yes, letting go can be uncomfortable, but it's also can be very sacred, because every time you release what's not meant for you, what served its purpose, you invite in what is meant for you and what does serve you, like peace and possibility and healing. So ask yourself, What in your life feels too small for who you are becoming, what doesn't fit right? What's one thing you can release to make space for more peace or space for better things or more happiness. And when you do that, that block of familiarity is going to show up, but you get to realize that it was familiarity and not the protection that you told yourself it was right, it was fear and it wasn't keeping you safe, because on the other side of that fear is freedom and the potential for so much more happiness. So I think that we all need to hear this at some point in our life. Maybe this message resonates with you and your personal situation right now. Maybe it resonates with you in that there's someone you love who needs to hear it. If so, please share the episode, and if it is you and you want more support in letting go of old patterns and creating a life that truly feels like you come and find me, the breast cancer recovery coach, join my better than before breast cancer, metabolic health and mindset membership, where we talk about these small steps that lead to big change and support each other in making courageous choices that create lives that truly are better than before. Breast cancer. All right, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram. Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, come DM me. Share your thoughts with me. I'd love to hear from you, and I will talk to you again next week. Until then, be good to yourself.

19:01
You've put your courage to the test, laid all your doubts to rest. Your mind is clearer than before, your heart is full and wanting more. Your future's at the door.

19:19
Give it all you got no hesitating.

19:22
You've been waiting all your

19:31
life. This is your moment.