48. Anxious Thoughts Debunked: Part 3

Core beliefs! Let’s go!

Core beliefs are a person’s deepest, most central ideas about themselves, others, and the world around them. Core beliefs can be sneaky. Because they’re so ingrained, we often can have no idea that they exist. And yet, they are the lenses through which we see and understand everything.

Core beliefs are like wearing a pair of glasses with a smudge on them. When you first put them on, the smudge bothers you. But after wearing them for a while, your eyes adjust and you don’t even notice it anymore.

Core beliefs can be positive, or they can be not so helpful. Because we’re focusing on anxiety in this series, we’re going to be talking specifically about those unhelpful core beliefs…and also ways to turn them into more helpful ones.

Here are some examples of unhelpful core beliefs people commonly have about themselves, others, and the world:

• I am a loser

• I am a failure

• I am a burden

• I am unlovable

• I am a victim

• I need to be perfect

• I am responsible for others’ happiness

• People will let me down

• People can’t be trusted

• People are stupid

• Everyone is just looking out for themselves

• The world is dangerous

• Something bad is always going to happen

There are many more possible unhelpful core beliefs - but hopefully this gives a good idea of what they can look like.

How do we develop core beliefs? Often, we are taught to believe them either directly or indirectly by our early experiences, and then they are reinforced so many times that we internalize them. Here are some examples:

• Jayden, the oldest of 4, grows up in a military family that moves a lot. At first, he made new friends whenever they moved, but he became disappointed over and over at having to eventually leave them, that he stops trying. His parents are so preoccupied by their jobs and caring for their other children, that they never have time to sit with Jayden and check in on how he is handling the stresses of their many moves. As Jayden grows up, he learns to be extremely self-sufficient and never need anything from anyone. He learns never to get too close to people, because relationships don’t last. Eventually, Jayden is 26 years old and feels very lonely. He lives alone, works 50 hours a week, and closes himself off from intimate friendships because he’s afraid of getting hurt. He is ashamed at feeling lonely because he has a deeply ingrained belief that he shouldn’t need anyone but himself.

• Rose’s parents got divorced when she was 4. She spent most of her childhood going back and forth between the two houses. Each parent felt insecure that Rose would love the other parent more, so they showered her with gifts, fun experiences, and anything she wanted. They told her she was such a wonderful daughter and would make comments like, “How could such a kind girl have come from such a terrible mother/father?” They would each tell her their own sides of the story about the other parent, so that Rose had absolutely no idea who or what to believe. Rose never told her parents anything that the other parent said, because she didn’t want to upset them - and she worried that if she told, her other parent wouldn’t love her anymore. Because she felt bad for her parents and the stresses they carried, she tried to be perfect so she wouldn’t add anymore stress onto their plates. She also felt like, if she could be perfect, her parents would be united in being proud of her instead of angry at each other. Rose carried such a burden to be perfect that she tended to have periods of being kind and giving to others, followed by angry lashings-out over small things as her resentment grew. She also heard her parents play the role of victim so often, that she began to feel like a victim herself for having to carry their burdens.

• Casey grew up with high-achieving parents, and from the time she could walk she felt pressure to be just as successful. Her parents would push her to practice soccer for many more hours than was age-appropriate, would expect her to make her bed and tidy her room every morning, and made sure she knew how to read before she started kindergarten. Casey was naturally a free-spirited and sensitive child who would have thrived under a routine that allowed her space to be creative and connect emotionally with the adults in her life, but her parents’ view of connection was of taking her out for ice cream when she achieved perfect test scores or scored goals in a soccer game. Casey wanted to please her parents, so she tried hard to be the person they wanted her to be. But because it wasn’t who she was at the core, she always struggled to live up to their standards and constantly felt like she wasn’t enough. She didn’t realize until she was an adult that it was okay for her to have her own feelings and needs, especially if they were counterintuitive to what her parents had taught her.

These are all made-up people and stories based on common human experiences. Reading them over, can you identify what core beliefs each person may have internalized through early experiences and reinforced over time?

Because core beliefs are so deeply ingrained, it can be really difficult to change them. But it absolutely can be done. It will take time, patience, self-awareness, and a lot of self-compassion.

Core beliefs, reinforced many times over a lifetime, become ingrained neural pathways in the brain. When you’re working to change an ingrained core belief, you’re literally working to re-wire your brain. Can you blame yourself that it doesn’t happen overnight? Our brains are incredible. They remember these early messages we learned to keep us safe, and they store them so we can continue to be safe. If you experienced hurt many times over because you made friends and then had to move away from them, your brain remembers that pain and reminds you of the danger anytime it senses you getting too close to someone. It does this to protect you because it’s learned that getting close to people leads to getting hurt.

Changing this ingrained belief begins with simply becoming aware of the belief. Some therapists may recommend keeping a journal and recording every time you notice your identified belief coming up. This can help increase your awareness of how often the belief occurs, if there are specific triggers for it, and what happens in your body when you experience the identified thought. Perhaps you shut down when you experience it, or you try to distract yourself with something else, or you fight the thought or criticize yourself for having it. There’s no right or wrong answer. Everyone is different, and every nervous system reacts in its own way to these internal stresses. The more aware you can become of your unique reactions and how your body and mind respond, the better.

Next post, we’ll talk about the nervous system in more depth. We’ll go into more detail about the ways the nervous system responds when triggered, and how we can work with our nervous systems to restructure our ingrained core beliefs. Stay tuned!