Origin of My Book Framework For Explaining Repetition Compulsion and the 3 Ways to Break Free

How The Six Bad Messages and "Nip and Flip" Were Developed

How abusive childhoods shape the subconscious

Children are biologically wired to depend on their caregivers. Because of this, a child cannot afford to believe that their parent or caregiver is unsafe, wrong, or abusive. That truth would be overwhelming and terrifying. Instead, the child internalises the abuse. Rather than thinking "Something is wrong with my parent", the child unconsciously concludes: "Something must be wrong with me."

This is not a conscious decision. It is a survival response.

Over time, repeated experiences of criticism, neglect, emotional manipulation, unpredictability, or abuse become absorbed into the child's subconscious and crystallise into core beliefs about who they are and how the world works. These beliefs do not disappear when childhood ends. They continue to operate silently in adult life, shaping relationships, choices, emotions, and behaviour.

The development of The Six Bad Messages

Through years of observation, reflection, and lived experience, I noticed that adults who grew up in abusive or emotionally unsafe homes were not carrying random negative beliefs. Instead, I felt their inner dialogue consistently fell into 6 distinct themes.

These themes appeared again and again, regardless of background, gender, or life circumstances. I came to understand these themes as The 6 Bad Messages — subconscious messages that children take from abusive or toxic childhoods and carry forward into adulthood. The child does not think these messages — they absorb them. They are not learned intellectually; they are learned emotionally and relationally. A child cannot dare admit that their caregiver is toxic or abusive, so they turn the blame on themselves. They must be the problem and hence the Six Bad Messages are born.

The Six Bad Messages are:

You are not enough
You are responsible for me and for others
Don't trust your feelings or your instincts
You are bad, you are wrong
You are alone, nobody loves you
You must be perfect or nobody will love you

Each message reflects a child's attempt to make sense of an environment where their needs were unmet, their feelings were dismissed, or their safety was compromised.

What is important to understand is this:

These messages are not true — but they feel true.

Because they were formed in childhood, they sit in the subconscious mind, not the conscious or rational mind, and they follow us all the way into our adult lives.

How these messages continue to harm us in adult life

As adults, these Bad Messages quietly influence the partners we are drawn to, how we behave in relationships, what we tolerate, how we speak to ourselves, and the situations we repeatedly find ourselves in.

This is why people often say: "I don't know why I keep ending up in the same painful situations." Freud named this tendency to fall into repetitive patterns as Repetition Compulsion — the unconscious repetition of childhood patterns in adult life. In my opinion, The 6 Bad Messages keep us stuck in Repetition Compulsion because they act like an internal narrator, constantly commenting on our lives and pulling us back toward familiar (but harmful) emotional territory.

The development of the "Nip and Flip" strategy

Once I understood how these Bad Messages operate, the next question became:

How do we stop them harming us in daily life?

Insight alone is not enough. The subconscious does not respond to logic — it responds to interruption and replacement. This led to the development of a simple, practical strategy I call "Nip and Flip."

Nip and Flip has two steps:

1. Nip it
The moment you notice a Bad Message speaking — for example:
"You're not good enough."
"This is your fault."
"You'll be abandoned."

You consciously interrupt it or you nip it in the bud, as they say, by not by arguing with it, but by naming it:

"This is a Bad Message from my childhood."

That moment of awareness breaks the automatic loop.

2. Flip it
You then replace the Bad Message with a grounded, compassionate truth — one that speaks to the adult you are now, not the child you once were. You flip the Bad Message to a Good Message.

For example:
"I am enough as I am."
"I am not responsible for other adults' emotions."
"My feelings and instincts matter."

Over time, this repeated interruption and replacement begins to retrain the mind.

Why Nip and Flip works

Nip and Flip works because it targets the subconscious, acknowledges the origin of the message, replaces shame with understanding, and restores agency to the adult self. It is not about positive thinking. It is about undoing childhood conditioning with awareness and compassion.

A final word

This framework was developed by me to make complex psychological processes understandable, recognisable, and usable in everyday life. It gives people a language for experiences they have often felt — but never been able to name. Healing begins when we realise:

The voice in our head is not who we are.
It is something we had to create in order to survive a difficult childhood

And once we can hear it clearly, we can finally begin to change it.