Virginia Satir once said a phrase that Richard Bandler remembered for many years. She said: “You know, Richard, most people think that the strongest human instinct is the desire to survive, but this is not so. The strongest instinct is the craving for the familiar.” Here she meant a craving for familiar things, actions, situations, and not “familiar” in the sense of a person I know. Those. she meant a craving for what is already familiar to a person, known. This craving forces us to accept what is familiar and reject what is unfamiliar. This craving forces a person to make unfamiliar things familiar. Often this craving makes very broad or ultra-broad generalizations of familiar and understandable things and situations to new unfamiliar things and situations. This leads to a distortion of reality and, as a consequence, to erroneous judgments, actions and negative emotions. So, I think that if you look closely, you will notice that the craving for the familiar is nothing more than the implementation of the instinct of self-preservation at the mental level. Everything that is known to me and familiar does not frighten me. Everything that is known and familiar to me allows me to avoid real dangers. The new, the unknown is scary and alarming. And fear, as we know, is an emotion of manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation. So, the craving for the known is just a shade of the basic instinct of self-preservation.