Hey friends,
Welcome back to the Primal Question Newsletter.
Last week, I showed you How You Got a Primal Question in early childhood.
This week, I want to talk about what you decided to do about it.
Because you did decide something. You were a kid, and you were confused about an important need. You didn’t have any adults explaining what was happening. So you did what every kid does. You made sense of it yourself.
We call this Kid Logic.
Kid Logic is a child’s best explanation for an experience they don’t have the power, perspective, or language to understand.
Kid Logic isn’t stupid or irrational. It’s developmentally logical. A child has limited information and has to make meaning out of what they experience. And because children are naturally self-referential, they tend to interpret whatever happens around them as being about them.
“This is happening because of me, so the solution must be up to me.”
Remember, your Primal Question represents a need.
When your need is silenced, shamed, or dismissed, it doesn’t just disappear. It demands to be met. Human beings will risk life and limb to secure their needs, and children are no different. So as a kid, you developed strategies (brilliant strategies) to force the answer to your Primal Question back to a yes.
We call this The Scramble.
The Scramble is all the behaviors and choices you use to force a “yes” to your Primal Question.
And here’s what you need to understand about it: it worked. People-pleasing works to get people to like you. Hypervigilance works to catch danger. Perfectionism works to get you praised. The Scramble is not a character flaw.
It’s a set of highly adaptive strategies a child developed to solve a real problem.
That’s exactly why it’s so hard to put down, even though it comes with serious costs.
My own Kid Logic drew a conclusion very early: I’m responsible for my own safety. The adults aren’t here to protect me. I need to come up with my own strategies. So I became a risk management expert before I could drive. I learned to notice every detail, predict every problem, and control every variable I could get my hands on.
The problem is, the Scramble is inefficient, and it makes your life feel unstable, anxious, and exhausting.
So what does this have to do with your life now?
You don’t get a new brain when you turn 18.
All of this was happening while your brain was at its most moldable. While it was still forming. While you were learning the building blocks of life and the wiring of your nervous system was being laid down. Left unchecked, all of those patterns you developed as a kid? They’re still there.
The strategies you run today are the strategies a much younger version of you invented under pressure.
Of course, the Scramble gets more sophisticated in adulthood.
The hypervigilant kid becomes the financial planner who can spot a bad investment from a mile away, but can’t fall asleep without checking the accounts one more time.
The kid who took care of everyone becomes the pastor who can’t say no. The whole congregation feels seen while his own family gets whatever’s left.
The kid who worked twice as hard becomes the founder who built an empire that still doesn’t feel like it’s enough. She pushes harder even though she’s burnt out.
Different packaging. Same foundation. Same Kid Logic.
And here’s the mistake most of us make.
We diagnose these symptoms instead of treating the root cause.
We go to therapy for the financial anxiety and learn we have Money Dysmorphia. We take the assessment about our people-pleasing and learn we have an Anxious-Preoccupied Attachment Style. We read the book on hustle culture and learn we have Maladaptive Perfectionism.
We’re the most diagnosed, self-aware generation in history.
We have a name for why we are the way we are, but we still can’t seem to change.
We call this Trauma Karaoke.
It’s when we learn the song of our pain. We memorize every lyric. We sing it to our spouses and our kids and our friends over coffee. We perform it in therapy, and to anyone who will listen. Somewhere along the way, we began to confuse naming our symptoms with solving our problems.
But understanding isn’t transformation, and insight isn’t change.
I want to be clear: I’m not upset with anyone singing Trauma Karaoke.
I’m angry with an industry that perpetuates it. A culture that convinces us that’s the end of the story. That’s the only song we can sing. The truth is, naming symptoms is a starting point. It’s nowhere near the finish line.
Look at what we’ve actually done:
We’ve named the imprint (this is what happened to me).
We’ve named the symptoms (this is why I do what I do).
We even try to “tame” the symptoms (how do I stop what I do?).
We’ve named everything up in the canopy of the tree, but we still haven’t named the root!
Most of us haven’t named the underlying need we’ve been trying to meet since we were kids.
As long as the need stays unnamed, it stays unmet, and as long as it stays unmet, the Scramble keeps running our lives.
Friend, if you’ve been doing the work for years and still feel stuck, I don’t think you’re broken. I don’t think you’ve failed. I think you’ve been treating the Scramble like it’s the problem, when the Scramble is a scared kid’s solution to a deeper unmet need.
We want to fix the Scramble, not you.
And the only way to do that is to go deeper to the thing underneath the thing that drives everything.
Here’s your journal prompt for the week.
Kid Logic feels true, so don’t ask whether your strategy makes sense. Ask what it costs. Pick one Scramble behavior you recognize in yourself and answer honestly:
What is this costing me? My energy? My voice? My relationships? My peace?
What is the deeper need I’m trying to meet through this strategy?
Next week, we finally get to the good part. What it looks like to name your need, meet it yourself, and step into the unique gift that it’s given you.
To your growth,
Mike Foster
P.S. If you’re ready to name your need, take the free Primal Question assessment!
P.P.S. Was this helpful? If so don’t click away without leaving a like or comment. I love when you join the conversation, and your engagement helps others discover their Primal Question :)
These concepts are very helpful and reassuring. As a fairly new widow, I am reassessing everything and finding out who I am now. This information helps me to understand and get to the root of my unmet need. So, I raise a toast - to better health, and to a life where I really LIVE until it is time to go home to Heaven!