May 23, 2024 • 24 mins
In this episode, we explore working with core beliefs, one of my favourite topics.
We discuss what core beliefs are, how they form, and how we can work with them to improve our lives.
Discover how adverse childhood experiences, attachment styles, inherited patterns, social conditioning, and trauma contribute to the formation of core beliefs.
Learn how core beliefs like "I'm not good enough" can obstruct our desires and impact our confidence. We delve into practical examples and share strategies to rewire these beliefs, leading to positive behavioural changes and enhanced well-being.
If you've been struggling with people-pleasing or self-doubt, this episode offers insights into understanding and transforming those limiting beliefs.
Join me for an enlightening conversation that promises to inspire and empower you on your midlife journey.
Follow Meegan on Instagram here
Join the waitlist for The Midlife Upgrade Course: https://meegancare.co.nz/course/
Please note: Nothing within this podcast constitutes medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Kia ora. Are you a woman navigating midlife, menopause and beyond?
I'm Megan Keir, your midlife mentor and psychosynthesis counsellor and coach.
Join me as we dive deep into the heart of midlife, unravelling the complexities
of menopause and exploring uncharted territories that lie beyond.
Together, we'll navigate through self-doubt, bid farewell to people-pleasing,
(00:22):
conquer imposter syndrome and tame those overwhelming feelings.
It's time to celebrate this vibrant second chapter of life, claiming your authentic
confidence and courage along the way.
Midlife is not a time to settle. It is a time to unleash your purpose,
make an impact uniquely your own, all while prioritizing your well-being.
(00:43):
So buckle up for conversations that resonate with the essence of your midlife
journey. Are you ready? Let's begin.
Hey friend, welcome to the podcast. So glad you're here. Before we get started,
I want to give you a personal invitation to join me on the next intake of my
midlife upgrade course.
You can check out all the information on my website, megancare.co.nz forward slash course.
(01:08):
This course is fundamentally changing the way women think about themselves.
Feel about themselves and show up in the world.
It is powerful work and I've got to tell you, it's really fun to take a look.
Hey my friend, welcome to the podcast. I hope that you are having a really great
(01:28):
week and if you're not, I hope that this episode brings you some warmth and some connection.
So today we're looking at working with core beliefs,
one of my most favorite topics and And I've got some ideas around core beliefs
that I've been taught many years ago when I did my psychosynthesis training
(01:49):
and more recently through some trauma training that may go against the grain
of what we see out there in the personal development world.
So we'll be diving into core beliefs today. What are they, how they form and
how we can work with them so that we can improve our lives and they're no longer holding us back.
(02:10):
So let's start with what are beliefs. And we call them core beliefs when,
obviously, it makes sense, right? This is at the core of our being.
This is a fundamental way that we view ourselves, others, the world, and also our future.
Core beliefs are like the headset or the glasses that you're wearing that you
(02:34):
experience the world through.
This is how you're seeing the world and your experience with it.
And core beliefs go deeper than just our general beliefs about the world.
The limiting core beliefs that we have may be general to the different to the
surface level kind of general beliefs about you should take your shoes off before you enter the house.
(03:00):
We should be kind to other people.
Compassion is important.
Those sorts of things. core beliefs are more, in this context anyway,
are more like, I'm unlovable, I'm not good enough, what is the point of trying
because I just will not succeed?
(03:20):
And of course we have positive, supportive core beliefs as well,
but they're working with us and for us and supporting us, so most of the time
we don't feel like we need to look at those or change those for the most part in any way.
So let's talk about the origin of core beliefs. So core beliefs can emerge from
(03:44):
adverse childhood experience, insecure attachment styles or insecure attachment
events that may have happened.
So events will feed into attachment styles.
They might have happened before you learned how to talk and so you might not
have verbal memory or very clear memory of the events that have fed into these core beliefs.
(04:08):
They might have happened before you were even born.
For example, if your mother became very unwell when you were sick and she had a lot of pain,
you as the baby in the womb would have been receiving higher levels of stress hormones,
messages from the nervous system, which then would have impacted the chemicals
(04:31):
that were flowing through the mother's blood.
You would have experienced and lived in a heightened level of tension.
And so if you think about that experience, it's pre-verbal, it's pre-birth,
you would not have a clear memory of that.
(04:53):
So some of the experiences and events that impact our core beliefs go very deep
and very much beyond our conscious thought.
So core beliefs can also arise from inherited patterns and traits from our whānau,
from our parents, from our grandparents.
(05:15):
There have been studies done on people that have experienced trauma and the
genes of their grandchildren have been altered by that trauma and are expressing
differently because of that trauma.
Now I'm not saying that that is a core belief necessarily, but it makes sense
(05:36):
that we can absolutely be impacted by the generations that came before us.
This is a very clear hypothesis that has been studied. Other core beliefs might
come from social conditioning.
So when I was a girl at school,
I think my sister still wanted to study tech
(05:58):
drawing and my parents were no
you can't do that girls don't do that so they
had a lot of conditioning around what was okay for
a girl to do or not do so social
conditioning plays a part in the core beliefs
that we form within ourselves and of
course gender conditioning as well as women
(06:21):
we understand that you know right
in ourselves and in our bones that gender
conditioning has an impact on how
we show up in the world what we think of ourselves and
how we value ourselves and therefore our core
beliefs of course trauma plays a
significant role in the formation of
(06:44):
our core beliefs and trauma might happen
over one event in a finite period of time or early life trauma might have happened
over a long period of time you might have lived through many experiences of
trauma as a child within your family of origin.
(07:06):
And so core beliefs absolutely arise out of our experience of trauma.
The meaning that our mind and our psyche has made from that trauma plays a significant
role in the core beliefs that we hold about ourselves,
the world around us, and the people that we're in relationship with.
(07:28):
So let me share an example of a core belief that many clients I've worked with have.
I think actually 99.9% of the women that I've worked with have had this core
belief, me included, and that is, I'm not good enough. Or it's variations.
Or I'm not worthy. And it could be a little longer than that.
(07:50):
It could be, I'm not worthy of being loved. They're all sort of a variation on I'm not good enough.
And so where might that come from?
Well, I think in that case, that's a very fundamental core belief that most humans have.
Have and all of those other areas that I talked about as origins,
(08:13):
so adverse child experiences, attachment traumas or interruptions,
inherited patterns and traits.
If I look at my family of origin, there has very much been that thread of not
good enough and I can pinpoint some traumas back with my great-grandmother and
(08:34):
my grandmother around Shane that I could then see in my mother.
As an unconscious core belief that I then absolutely held within myself,
which I feel so much freer from now,
but I can see that going back through that lineage very clearly.
(08:55):
And so when you have, for example, a core belief of I'm not good enough or not good enough,
think about how you behave in the world differently versus if you have that
belief of I am enough, right?
So for me, I'm not good enough.
In terms of my behavior, it means I don't take risks.
(09:19):
I don't step out and connect with more people.
I try and hide. A lot of it's unconscious.
If I make a mistake, I feel really bad about myself self and get really down on myself.
If someone is rude or ignorant to me, I take it very personally as if I'm the
(09:42):
cause of their bad behavior.
So you can see there's a lot of ways it shows up. So these limiting core beliefs
absolutely do obstruct our desires.
They're like a roadblock. They get in the way of what we want.
And actually more than that, because our core beliefs are so subconscious,
(10:02):
they actually stop us from being able to imagine a bigger, brighter,
broader, more connected future.
And I've seen that for so many clients when they have reset and unwound those
beliefs and shifted into that place of actually I am good enough and feel it
within in the bones of their body,
(10:24):
that their perspective on their life,
their capacity to desire more joy, more adventure, more connection,
go for that new job, reach out to full relationships.
All of that starts to open up.
And so if we look at a belief, for example, the belief that we're looking at,
(10:45):
I'm not good enough or not good enough, what does that do to our confidence, right?
So if someone says to me, I'm just not confident, and this is something I see
for many clients and experienced it myself, of course, as well,
what underlies not confidence?
There's many levels and layers, but very often not good enough underlies it.
(11:06):
And I know that because I see when women clear and rewrite that belief of not good enough,
their natural confidence courage and inner vitality absolutely rises and when
that rises how they show up in the world changes as an example.
(11:28):
Wonderful woman that I know would continuously get
talked over in business meetings and
when that happened she would become quite flustered and
then embarrassed and then shut down and not be able to find her words so if
there was any kind of challenge in that meeting it would lead to dysregulation
(11:49):
in her nervous system and then shutting down and not being able to continue
with what she was saying,
her point, maybe she lost track of her thoughts because of that dysregulation.
And so then when we worked on that belief of not good enough,
and that got rerouted and reprogrammed to being, I am enough,
(12:12):
I am worthy of love, it's okay to make mistakes,
stakes what happens for that woman is
that she was able to be in those meetings to
be talked over to hear the snide
remarks or the rude comments but they
just bounced off her and did not
(12:34):
dysregulate her so she stayed grounded she stayed settled in her body and settled
in her mind and was able to calmly put her point across in spite of the disruption
and the negativity that was in the room. Now, you can imagine that,
That behavior that changes at that level could change so much about how you
(13:00):
show up in the workplace and how you respond to, say,
disrespectful or even bullying behavior.
So this is why it's so beautifully important to look at our core beliefs and to work with them.
So take an example of people pleasing behavior.
Behavior and of course there's a lot of societal and
(13:22):
gender conditioning around people pleasing we're all taught
in my culture in my generation anyway to be
good girls to be good girls to be
grateful to be nice right so that's there that's
part of it and that is absolutely going to play a part in
shaping our core beliefs but if you layer
on top of that that we might come from an
(13:43):
environment when we're a child that and
our emotional needs weren't being met that our
needs were being ignored whether it was just because our parents were in survival
mode and just having to get on and get get food on the table and the emotional
and psychological needs they had to take a back seat you know we can we can
(14:04):
unpick a little bit of our early life without necessarily
blaming our parents all the time we
can understand that they're a product of their environment and their upbringing
as well and so if I was a child that had my needs ignored overlooked dismissed
or just not even noticed which actually was a lot of my experience.
(14:30):
Then that reinforced and helped to create this belief of I'm not good enough
and how I compensated around that to try and fix that problem of not good enough,
because that's a very painful experience to live with or belief to live with.
(14:50):
What are the behaviors that might show up from that?
Well, they might be people-pleasing. I might have become the funny one in the
family to make people laugh, to compensate for that.
And then I carry on into my adult life and I have this underlying core belief
of I'm not good enough and this overarching behavior that's so ingrained around people-pleasing.
(15:14):
But all the while, because I got the glasses on that are I'm not good enough,
I've got this people-pleasing behavior going on over the top,
I fail to get my needs met because my people-pleasing behavior does not leave
room for me to ask for things directly,
to reach out to people directly, to risk rejection because that is so incredibly
(15:41):
painful when that core belief is very strong and embedded in our psyche.
And so I think this is a really important piece, right? Because we try and change
our behavior and we work really hard on that, but an easier way is to actually unwind,
untangle and alter that core belief and then we can easily and naturally change the behavior.
(16:07):
And so that's a key point. If you're getting stuck, you've been really working
hard trying to change your behaviors, for example, people pleasing,
you're really struggling with it.
That you can't actually even see where you are people pleasing,
that is something that I can help you with, help you to unwind and reshape for yourself.
I love talking about the connection between emotions and beliefs because here's
(16:30):
a question, do we need to release the emotion connected to a belief to be able to rewire it?
Right, so the short answer is no.
Not really, and not in every single case. So I believe that wholeheartedly,
firmly, and I've seen it in evidence over and over again.
(16:51):
Now, sometimes there does need to be a sort of a release,
but I want to move away from thinking that a release is a big,
cathartic, emotional dump.
And when we do that we feel better, we feel great and the belief is gone.
(17:11):
It just doesn't work like that.
So of course you do feel relief when you've had that big release but that's
because it's a state change and that may well be temporary.
Rewriting beliefs and connecting to and processing Emotions does not always
need to be very loud, big, and cathartic.
(17:36):
There was a lot of that going on in the 70s and 80s.
Primal scream work. There was a lot of rage release work. And it was big and loud.
And it felt good, right? I was involved in some of that in the early 90s.
And that felt really good.
You felt really empowered. empowered and you go away from the weekend and yeah,
(17:58):
your field is way more open,
your voice is bigger, but you just go back to the same state that you were in
unless it's processed in a way that goes deeper than just an expression of emotion.
And so there is, you know, the expression of emotion can be part of it,
(18:19):
but I don't want us to get confused thinking that every single belief we have has got,
big pocket of emotion in our body as well and if we just release the emotion
then the core belief will rewrite itself.
Well that can be part of the equation but I
can tell you now I have seen women and
(18:40):
I've done it myself rewrite and rewire core beliefs without needing to express
any kind of negative emotion and they're very embodied it was happening all
the way through the system and how How do we know that it stayed and it had
longevity and it stuck? Well, their behavior changed.
(19:01):
Months later, their perspective changed and their natural behavior changed.
So that is a sign that their core belief had altered, had been reprogrammed.
So to be able to change our beliefs, we need to have some awareness of what they are.
We might not have the exact words, but there is an awareness process that I
(19:23):
guide my clients through so that we can understand what is actually driving
this behavior that I'm finding really negative and unhelpful in my life that
has become very chronic for me.
So awareness is important and of course core beliefs absolutely do drive our behaviors.
So we identify it first but then how do we change that
belief and like I said just before think about
(19:45):
it like rather than my beliefs
are made up of traumas and emotions that are
like stones in a bucket and this
bucket is just overflowing with these jagged heavy big stones right those are
the emotions and the core beliefs but rather think of it like this our core
(20:06):
beliefs are like a computer program and it's programmed a certain way.
So if we want to change those beliefs, what we have to do is rewrite and reprogram
some lines of that entire computer program so it gets rewritten.
And what's happening in your brain is that you've got
(20:29):
pathways that have been reinforced by trauma
events and experiences and then you formed a core belief around it and then
your behavior stems from that and then you you get the feedback of the emotion
that feeds back into that and then reinforces that connection in your brain
or those pathways in your brain.
(20:50):
When we rewrite or reprogram that core belief, you're actually creating new pathways in the brain.
And so then if you've created a strong enough new pathway there,
then your behavior will change and what will happen?
The feedback that comes in from the external world will be different,
(21:11):
then your emotional response may well be different and then you're starting
to reinforce the new pathway that is serving you so much more,
that is more positive actually for you.
Because core beliefs happen at the level of our personality,
of our personal psychological makeup.
(21:35):
But in psychosynthesis psychology, which I was trained in, our personal psychology is only one part of us.
We are so much more than that. So remember that even if you have limiting core
beliefs, and most of us do,
and they're either totally running our lives you
know partly a little more some
(21:57):
of us a whole lot that's part of your psychological makeup
but you as a human being are
so much more than even your psychology which
includes your thoughts and feelings and
emotions and that we can rewire and recall beliefs beliefs it's kind of like
(22:17):
waking up from a dream and I love it when I see clients who go through that
experience where they wake up and they're like hang on a minute I am wholly completely.
Lovable and good enough just the
way I am and as a therapist I can
feel into and track with them the difference
(22:40):
between somebody who's trying to convince themselves that they
are right okay and good enough and
someone that has woken up and made
those new connections in the brain has rewritten
a part of their computer program to now give instructions based on the foundational
(23:00):
belief that you are good enough you are lovable and you are okay just as you
are I do love talking about core beliefs and how we can unwind them,
how we can rewrite them, and how we can show up and be our best selves.
I hope that's been so helpful and so inspirational.
(23:23):
If you love the podcast, please share it with a friend and connect with me on social media.
I always love hearing from people that listen to the episode.
I love hearing what you got out of the episode.
Okay, go well, and we'll talk real soon. hey thanks
for joining me on the podcast really appreciate you check
out my course where we just go so much deeper than
(23:46):
I can ever do on a podcast over an eight-week period
the midlife upgrade course is a blend of
video and learning modules and weekly live calls where you will discover a roadmap
for psychological freedom in midlife check out all the details on my website
I really really would love to have you join the course megancare.co.nz forward slash course.
Kia ora. Are you a woman navigating midlife, menopause and beyond?
I'm Megan Keir, your midlife mentor and psychosynthesis counsellor and coach.
Join me as we dive deep into the heart of midlife, unravelling the complexities
of menopause and exploring uncharted territories that lie beyond.
Together, we'll navigate through self-doubt, bid farewell to people-pleasing,
(00:22):
conquer imposter syndrome and tame those overwhelming feelings.
It's time to celebrate this vibrant second chapter of life, claiming your authentic
confidence and courage along the way.
Midlife is not a time to settle. It is a time to unleash your purpose,
make an impact uniquely your own, all while prioritizing your well-being.
(00:43):
So buckle up for conversations that resonate with the essence of your midlife
journey. Are you ready? Let's begin.
Hey friend, welcome to the podcast. So glad you're here. Before we get started,
I want to give you a personal invitation to join me on the next intake of my
midlife upgrade course.
You can check out all the information on my website, megancare.co.nz forward slash course.
(01:08):
This course is fundamentally changing the way women think about themselves.
Feel about themselves and show up in the world.
It is powerful work and I've got to tell you, it's really fun to take a look.
Hey my friend, welcome to the podcast. I hope that you are having a really great
(01:28):
week and if you're not, I hope that this episode brings you some warmth and some connection.
So today we're looking at working with core beliefs,
one of my most favorite topics and And I've got some ideas around core beliefs
that I've been taught many years ago when I did my psychosynthesis training
(01:49):
and more recently through some trauma training that may go against the grain
of what we see out there in the personal development world.
So we'll be diving into core beliefs today. What are they, how they form and
how we can work with them so that we can improve our lives and they're no longer holding us back.
(02:10):
So let's start with what are beliefs. And we call them core beliefs when,
obviously, it makes sense, right? This is at the core of our being.
This is a fundamental way that we view ourselves, others, the world, and also our future.
Core beliefs are like the headset or the glasses that you're wearing that you
(02:34):
experience the world through.
This is how you're seeing the world and your experience with it.
And core beliefs go deeper than just our general beliefs about the world.
The limiting core beliefs that we have may be general to the different to the
surface level kind of general beliefs about you should take your shoes off before you enter the house.
(03:00):
We should be kind to other people.
Compassion is important.
Those sorts of things. core beliefs are more, in this context anyway,
are more like, I'm unlovable, I'm not good enough, what is the point of trying
because I just will not succeed?
(03:20):
And of course we have positive, supportive core beliefs as well,
but they're working with us and for us and supporting us, so most of the time
we don't feel like we need to look at those or change those for the most part in any way.
So let's talk about the origin of core beliefs. So core beliefs can emerge from
(03:44):
adverse childhood experience, insecure attachment styles or insecure attachment
events that may have happened.
So events will feed into attachment styles.
They might have happened before you learned how to talk and so you might not
have verbal memory or very clear memory of the events that have fed into these core beliefs.
(04:08):
They might have happened before you were even born.
For example, if your mother became very unwell when you were sick and she had a lot of pain,
you as the baby in the womb would have been receiving higher levels of stress hormones,
messages from the nervous system, which then would have impacted the chemicals
(04:31):
that were flowing through the mother's blood.
You would have experienced and lived in a heightened level of tension.
And so if you think about that experience, it's pre-verbal, it's pre-birth,
you would not have a clear memory of that.
(04:53):
So some of the experiences and events that impact our core beliefs go very deep
and very much beyond our conscious thought.
So core beliefs can also arise from inherited patterns and traits from our whānau,
from our parents, from our grandparents.
(05:15):
There have been studies done on people that have experienced trauma and the
genes of their grandchildren have been altered by that trauma and are expressing
differently because of that trauma.
Now I'm not saying that that is a core belief necessarily, but it makes sense
(05:36):
that we can absolutely be impacted by the generations that came before us.
This is a very clear hypothesis that has been studied. Other core beliefs might
come from social conditioning.
So when I was a girl at school,
I think my sister still wanted to study tech
(05:58):
drawing and my parents were no
you can't do that girls don't do that so they
had a lot of conditioning around what was okay for
a girl to do or not do so social
conditioning plays a part in the core beliefs
that we form within ourselves and of
course gender conditioning as well as women
(06:21):
we understand that you know right
in ourselves and in our bones that gender
conditioning has an impact on how
we show up in the world what we think of ourselves and
how we value ourselves and therefore our core
beliefs of course trauma plays a
significant role in the formation of
(06:44):
our core beliefs and trauma might happen
over one event in a finite period of time or early life trauma might have happened
over a long period of time you might have lived through many experiences of
trauma as a child within your family of origin.
(07:06):
And so core beliefs absolutely arise out of our experience of trauma.
The meaning that our mind and our psyche has made from that trauma plays a significant
role in the core beliefs that we hold about ourselves,
the world around us, and the people that we're in relationship with.
(07:28):
So let me share an example of a core belief that many clients I've worked with have.
I think actually 99.9% of the women that I've worked with have had this core
belief, me included, and that is, I'm not good enough. Or it's variations.
Or I'm not worthy. And it could be a little longer than that.
(07:50):
It could be, I'm not worthy of being loved. They're all sort of a variation on I'm not good enough.
And so where might that come from?
Well, I think in that case, that's a very fundamental core belief that most humans have.
Have and all of those other areas that I talked about as origins,
(08:13):
so adverse child experiences, attachment traumas or interruptions,
inherited patterns and traits.
If I look at my family of origin, there has very much been that thread of not
good enough and I can pinpoint some traumas back with my great-grandmother and
(08:34):
my grandmother around Shane that I could then see in my mother.
As an unconscious core belief that I then absolutely held within myself,
which I feel so much freer from now,
but I can see that going back through that lineage very clearly.
(08:55):
And so when you have, for example, a core belief of I'm not good enough or not good enough,
think about how you behave in the world differently versus if you have that
belief of I am enough, right?
So for me, I'm not good enough.
In terms of my behavior, it means I don't take risks.
(09:19):
I don't step out and connect with more people.
I try and hide. A lot of it's unconscious.
If I make a mistake, I feel really bad about myself self and get really down on myself.
If someone is rude or ignorant to me, I take it very personally as if I'm the
(09:42):
cause of their bad behavior.
So you can see there's a lot of ways it shows up. So these limiting core beliefs
absolutely do obstruct our desires.
They're like a roadblock. They get in the way of what we want.
And actually more than that, because our core beliefs are so subconscious,
(10:02):
they actually stop us from being able to imagine a bigger, brighter,
broader, more connected future.
And I've seen that for so many clients when they have reset and unwound those
beliefs and shifted into that place of actually I am good enough and feel it
within in the bones of their body,
(10:24):
that their perspective on their life,
their capacity to desire more joy, more adventure, more connection,
go for that new job, reach out to full relationships.
All of that starts to open up.
And so if we look at a belief, for example, the belief that we're looking at,
(10:45):
I'm not good enough or not good enough, what does that do to our confidence, right?
So if someone says to me, I'm just not confident, and this is something I see
for many clients and experienced it myself, of course, as well,
what underlies not confidence?
There's many levels and layers, but very often not good enough underlies it.
(11:06):
And I know that because I see when women clear and rewrite that belief of not good enough,
their natural confidence courage and inner vitality absolutely rises and when
that rises how they show up in the world changes as an example.
(11:28):
Wonderful woman that I know would continuously get
talked over in business meetings and
when that happened she would become quite flustered and
then embarrassed and then shut down and not be able to find her words so if
there was any kind of challenge in that meeting it would lead to dysregulation
(11:49):
in her nervous system and then shutting down and not being able to continue
with what she was saying,
her point, maybe she lost track of her thoughts because of that dysregulation.
And so then when we worked on that belief of not good enough,
and that got rerouted and reprogrammed to being, I am enough,
(12:12):
I am worthy of love, it's okay to make mistakes,
stakes what happens for that woman is
that she was able to be in those meetings to
be talked over to hear the snide
remarks or the rude comments but they
just bounced off her and did not
(12:34):
dysregulate her so she stayed grounded she stayed settled in her body and settled
in her mind and was able to calmly put her point across in spite of the disruption
and the negativity that was in the room. Now, you can imagine that,
That behavior that changes at that level could change so much about how you
(13:00):
show up in the workplace and how you respond to, say,
disrespectful or even bullying behavior.
So this is why it's so beautifully important to look at our core beliefs and to work with them.
So take an example of people pleasing behavior.
Behavior and of course there's a lot of societal and
(13:22):
gender conditioning around people pleasing we're all taught
in my culture in my generation anyway to be
good girls to be good girls to be
grateful to be nice right so that's there that's
part of it and that is absolutely going to play a part in
shaping our core beliefs but if you layer
on top of that that we might come from an
(13:43):
environment when we're a child that and
our emotional needs weren't being met that our
needs were being ignored whether it was just because our parents were in survival
mode and just having to get on and get get food on the table and the emotional
and psychological needs they had to take a back seat you know we can we can
(14:04):
unpick a little bit of our early life without necessarily
blaming our parents all the time we
can understand that they're a product of their environment and their upbringing
as well and so if I was a child that had my needs ignored overlooked dismissed
or just not even noticed which actually was a lot of my experience.
(14:30):
Then that reinforced and helped to create this belief of I'm not good enough
and how I compensated around that to try and fix that problem of not good enough,
because that's a very painful experience to live with or belief to live with.
(14:50):
What are the behaviors that might show up from that?
Well, they might be people-pleasing. I might have become the funny one in the
family to make people laugh, to compensate for that.
And then I carry on into my adult life and I have this underlying core belief
of I'm not good enough and this overarching behavior that's so ingrained around people-pleasing.
(15:14):
But all the while, because I got the glasses on that are I'm not good enough,
I've got this people-pleasing behavior going on over the top,
I fail to get my needs met because my people-pleasing behavior does not leave
room for me to ask for things directly,
to reach out to people directly, to risk rejection because that is so incredibly
(15:41):
painful when that core belief is very strong and embedded in our psyche.
And so I think this is a really important piece, right? Because we try and change
our behavior and we work really hard on that, but an easier way is to actually unwind,
untangle and alter that core belief and then we can easily and naturally change the behavior.
(16:07):
And so that's a key point. If you're getting stuck, you've been really working
hard trying to change your behaviors, for example, people pleasing,
you're really struggling with it.
That you can't actually even see where you are people pleasing,
that is something that I can help you with, help you to unwind and reshape for yourself.
I love talking about the connection between emotions and beliefs because here's
(16:30):
a question, do we need to release the emotion connected to a belief to be able to rewire it?
Right, so the short answer is no.
Not really, and not in every single case. So I believe that wholeheartedly,
firmly, and I've seen it in evidence over and over again.
(16:51):
Now, sometimes there does need to be a sort of a release,
but I want to move away from thinking that a release is a big,
cathartic, emotional dump.
And when we do that we feel better, we feel great and the belief is gone.
(17:11):
It just doesn't work like that.
So of course you do feel relief when you've had that big release but that's
because it's a state change and that may well be temporary.
Rewriting beliefs and connecting to and processing Emotions does not always
need to be very loud, big, and cathartic.
(17:36):
There was a lot of that going on in the 70s and 80s.
Primal scream work. There was a lot of rage release work. And it was big and loud.
And it felt good, right? I was involved in some of that in the early 90s.
And that felt really good.
You felt really empowered. empowered and you go away from the weekend and yeah,
(17:58):
your field is way more open,
your voice is bigger, but you just go back to the same state that you were in
unless it's processed in a way that goes deeper than just an expression of emotion.
And so there is, you know, the expression of emotion can be part of it,
(18:19):
but I don't want us to get confused thinking that every single belief we have has got,
big pocket of emotion in our body as well and if we just release the emotion
then the core belief will rewrite itself.
Well that can be part of the equation but I
can tell you now I have seen women and
(18:40):
I've done it myself rewrite and rewire core beliefs without needing to express
any kind of negative emotion and they're very embodied it was happening all
the way through the system and how How do we know that it stayed and it had
longevity and it stuck? Well, their behavior changed.
(19:01):
Months later, their perspective changed and their natural behavior changed.
So that is a sign that their core belief had altered, had been reprogrammed.
So to be able to change our beliefs, we need to have some awareness of what they are.
We might not have the exact words, but there is an awareness process that I
(19:23):
guide my clients through so that we can understand what is actually driving
this behavior that I'm finding really negative and unhelpful in my life that
has become very chronic for me.
So awareness is important and of course core beliefs absolutely do drive our behaviors.
So we identify it first but then how do we change that
belief and like I said just before think about
(19:45):
it like rather than my beliefs
are made up of traumas and emotions that are
like stones in a bucket and this
bucket is just overflowing with these jagged heavy big stones right those are
the emotions and the core beliefs but rather think of it like this our core
(20:06):
beliefs are like a computer program and it's programmed a certain way.
So if we want to change those beliefs, what we have to do is rewrite and reprogram
some lines of that entire computer program so it gets rewritten.
And what's happening in your brain is that you've got
(20:29):
pathways that have been reinforced by trauma
events and experiences and then you formed a core belief around it and then
your behavior stems from that and then you you get the feedback of the emotion
that feeds back into that and then reinforces that connection in your brain
or those pathways in your brain.
(20:50):
When we rewrite or reprogram that core belief, you're actually creating new pathways in the brain.
And so then if you've created a strong enough new pathway there,
then your behavior will change and what will happen?
The feedback that comes in from the external world will be different,
(21:11):
then your emotional response may well be different and then you're starting
to reinforce the new pathway that is serving you so much more,
that is more positive actually for you.
Because core beliefs happen at the level of our personality,
of our personal psychological makeup.
(21:35):
But in psychosynthesis psychology, which I was trained in, our personal psychology is only one part of us.
We are so much more than that. So remember that even if you have limiting core
beliefs, and most of us do,
and they're either totally running our lives you
know partly a little more some
(21:57):
of us a whole lot that's part of your psychological makeup
but you as a human being are
so much more than even your psychology which
includes your thoughts and feelings and
emotions and that we can rewire and recall beliefs beliefs it's kind of like
(22:17):
waking up from a dream and I love it when I see clients who go through that
experience where they wake up and they're like hang on a minute I am wholly completely.
Lovable and good enough just the
way I am and as a therapist I can
feel into and track with them the difference
(22:40):
between somebody who's trying to convince themselves that they
are right okay and good enough and
someone that has woken up and made
those new connections in the brain has rewritten
a part of their computer program to now give instructions based on the foundational
(23:00):
belief that you are good enough you are lovable and you are okay just as you
are I do love talking about core beliefs and how we can unwind them,
how we can rewrite them, and how we can show up and be our best selves.
I hope that's been so helpful and so inspirational.
(23:23):
If you love the podcast, please share it with a friend and connect with me on social media.
I always love hearing from people that listen to the episode.
I love hearing what you got out of the episode.
Okay, go well, and we'll talk real soon. hey thanks
for joining me on the podcast really appreciate you check
out my course where we just go so much deeper than
(23:46):
I can ever do on a podcast over an eight-week period
the midlife upgrade course is a blend of
video and learning modules and weekly live calls where you will discover a roadmap
for psychological freedom in midlife check out all the details on my website
I really really would love to have you join the course megancare.co.nz forward slash course.
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