Core Deficiency Beliefs Are Not True

Many beliefs we formed as children are not true. Our survival depends on our relationship with our parents and we take on the blame to try to hold on to that. We were not to blame for what happened to us as children. This guided somatic inquiry helps us see through old core deficiency beliefs of being unlovable, broken, or unworthy and opens our hearts to compassion.

Transcript

Let's check in,

See how we're feeling today.

What's going on with your body,

Your breath,

Your mind?

We're going to work with an inquiry today around co-efficiency beliefs and some things that get stirred up in us.

We'll do a little bit of relaxing too.

One of the things that we need to really keep in mind when we're healing trauma is that we need to be here in the present moment.

One of the things that's hard which activates us and isn't conducive to healing is when we get really dragged back into the past.

We're having an emotional flashback or we might have memories coming up.

Practices that we do,

They're really good for the nervous system.

Letting our breath be more continuous and smooth and relaxing our shoulders or our jaw and all of those things.

One of the underlying ways that this helps to improve the resilience and strength of our nervous system is that it helps us to stay here where we actually are not back in whatever it was that was going on.

And if we're dealing with someone who's difficult and who we're getting into some kind of a fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Or fawn response around,

Somatic awareness,

The training that we're doing day by day,

Here's my body,

I notice I'm getting tighter,

I notice I'm holding my breath,

I can take some deeper breaths,

I can hold my hands,

Whatever that is.

I can look around the room.

Over time that really starts to heal what's unresolved because we're able to witness it,

We're able to stay present.

And often we're able to bring compassion to ourselves as well.

When we think back to what it was like when we were younger,

Especially when we were a child,

But also as a younger adult,

We can really look into how could I have known anything else to do?

Of course I couldn't have.

I was a child,

I was 7 or 17 or whatever the age I was.

And when there are things going on where we don't feel protected,

Where we don't feel like there's anyone paying attention to us,

Then sometimes we go into those people-pleasing responses or we might get angry and be a hothead.

We have all of those things going on for a reason.

Now,

As an adult,

We can bring ourselves into this moment with awareness,

With that feeling of,

I know right now,

I know in my bones that I'm not back in the past,

I'm here.

The past lives in our body for sure.

It lives in our mind through the thoughts,

Certainly lives in our nervous system.

And I also have the capacity to look around the room and go,

I'm in the place where I live now or where I am right now.

I'm not back 20 years ago or 50 years ago or two weeks ago.

I'm here.

And then we can come into more of a regulation.

As you're looking around,

Just notice that I'm here in the space that I'm in.

You could look behind you,

Let your eyes check that out.

Is there any danger that you need to brace yourself for?

If not,

You could let your shoulders relax,

Your upper back relax.

And bring your mind in now from other times and other places.

Let yourself really settle in here.

Your breath becomes smoother,

More continuous,

More ease in your breath.

And check if your body is the most comfortable it could be.

You might change your position,

You might get a blanket,

You might move or stretch a little bit.

As you're breathing out,

Let some of the tension release from your body.

We could do a deep inhale,

Bring your shoulders up a little.

We could do a deep inhale,

Bring your shoulders up a little.

A long exhale.

And once we're in the present moment,

We could enjoy that.

And not everything in the present moment is enjoyable,

Of course.

We might be feeling sick or in pain,

Emotional or physical.

There's all kinds of things in the present moment that might be challenging.

And yet here we are,

We're here to do a practice.

We could appreciate ourselves for that.

Last night in the Strong Minds course,

We were working a little bit with core deficiency beliefs.

And one of the participants said that a year ago,

When that came up,

She would have ticked yes to all of them.

And now she's not.

Just this work that we do of being friends with our mind,

Of connecting with ourselves,

It makes a huge difference.

And it makes a difference over time.

If you were to bring up just something that reminds you of a belief that you once had,

And that maybe you still do,

These beliefs,

I find,

Tend to go over time.

Look at the experiences that we've had of feeling unloved,

For instance.

And then we have this feeling now of,

Well,

You know,

I'm really getting closer to myself.

I'm able to love myself now in a way that I couldn't before.

And I'm noticing that now that I'm not so much in freeze,

That I'm able to take it in when a friend tells me that they enjoy being with me,

Or someone gives me a compliment.

Instead of immediately going to a rebuttal in my mind,

Well,

If they really knew me,

They wouldn't think I was so nice.

Our inner critic can be so horrible.

Instead of that,

Though,

Maybe we've got a little bit more openness to just take that in.

These are beliefs that formed because of our experiences.

If we experienced being hurt by people,

We're probably going to have a belief that people are not trustworthy,

And that we need to protect ourselves.

And even though in our conscious mind,

We might know that that's not true,

The negativity bias in the brain and in the nervous system,

It's always,

Well,

You know,

Some people have,

Don't fool yourself.

If we've experienced being shamed for not learning quickly,

For instance,

We might have that as a lingering belief of,

Well,

You know,

I'm not very smart.

See what happens as you're sifting through these different,

I'm not worthy,

I'm really damaged,

These different deficiency beliefs that we have.

And just to notice,

Where did that come from?

Like,

Do you remember feeling that way when you were really young,

Like before school age,

Before puberty,

As a younger adult?

Where did that belief start to really form?

As we're looking back,

We're witnessing what's coming up,

So we're not going back into the memory.

We're noticing,

Oh,

Okay,

That I just had a little flash of having to get up and read in grade three,

And stumbling over the words,

Or make sure that you're staying here.

In this moment,

We're not actually back in that situation.

And if you were to bring in these two phrases,

I have experienced,

So I have experienced feeling awkward in front of the class,

For instance,

And I believe,

What was the belief that was formed from that experience?

And this is across the board,

We all do this.

We're all in this together.

And this is across the board,

We all do this.

We're all trying to make sense of our life so that we can keep ourselves safer.

Notice what impact that has on your body.

And most of us had some situations where we felt awkward,

And some where we felt really accepted and powerful.

Maybe after that experience of not being able to read,

You went out into the sports field and you ran track and you won or something.

We often have parts of our life where we have a lot of power and parts of our life where we feel like we don't measure up somehow.

If you had an amazing race on the field,

Did you form the belief that I'm powerful and incredible?

Not often how it works.

We usually have a lot more energy in the negative beliefs than in the positive ones.

We're just stirring some of this up.

What were some of those beliefs?

And does it make sense as an adult now that you look back on it?

At the time,

This is the way I explained it to myself.

Nobody was paying attention,

Nobody seemed to care about me.

And I grew to believe that it was because there's something wrong with me.

But now that you can see through adult eyes,

We can look back and see,

Well,

You know,

There was a lot of trauma stuff going on in my household.

There was addiction,

Or there was a disconnection for some reason,

My parents were really checked out.

Maybe it wasn't because I wasn't lovable,

Maybe it was because they didn't have the capacity.

Let's try that on and see,

Is there different kind of evidence that you might see now looking back on that that you didn't then?

Continue to notice your breath,

Notice what it feels like in your body.

And see if you could bring some compassion to that younger self who was having experiences that led to beliefs of unworthiness.

The thing about court efficiency beliefs is that they're not true.

We're not to blame for what happened when we were a child.

It doesn't necessarily mean our parents were to blame either.

There might have been a lot of intergenerational trauma or systemic oppression,

There's all kinds of factors here.

But what's really true is that as a child,

I was not to blame.

And it wasn't anything deficient in me.

I was experiencing some tough conditions.

Could I bring that to my heart?

Maybe you had a kind adult,

One of your parents or a teacher or auntie or somebody.

So you had that experience at times of being gathered in,

Feeling loved.

You could bring that back as a memory.

Yeah,

That was going on too.

Or maybe there really wasn't anybody that was doing that.

You were one of those lost people who were just trying to get along.

But even that now we can bring ourselves in.

I'm so sad that you had those experiences and what you believed then made sense then,

But it doesn't actually make sense.

It's not actually true.

And I'm here now.

Let yourself feel that warmth,

That caring.

That was a tough situation to be in.

I'm sorry you felt so alone.

It was never your fault.

Even if you didn't behave perfectly,

It was never your fault.

Let yourself feel that.

Let yourself believe that.

What I believed is not true.

The truth is,

I was a child and now I'm an adult.

And I can be here with myself,

With kindness.

Take some deeper breaths.

You might have your hands on your heart.

Let yourself feel that.

Let yourself feel that warmth.

Take some deeper breaths.

You might have your hands on your heart.

Let yourself feel that.

So many times we explain it to ourselves through,

Well,

You know,

If I wasn't such a hothead,

If I wasn't always checked out,

Or if I wasn't this,

Or if I was smarter,

Or whatever it is,

That it wouldn't have happened,

That I would have been loved and protected and it wouldn't have been hurt.

And that's a natural function of the way we're trying to explain things to ourselves and it's not true.

If you're having any kind of a rebuttal in your mind,

Well,

I kind of think that's okay,

But I don't really believe it full.

Right in my whole body,

I don't really believe that.

I must have been at fault somehow.

And sometimes it helps to bring in somebody else.

Maybe you know somebody at that age when you were really starting to believe that and having trouble.

You could bring them into your heart and really look into that.

Was that their fault?

They were hurt like I was hurt,

But what does that mean?

It doesn't mean that they were bad.

It means that they were hurt.

They were traumatized just like I was.

And now that's in the past and it's safe enough for me to let go of those old beliefs.

They're not true.

And there might be all kinds of feelings coming up,

Or you might be feeling numb,

Or notice that you're disconnecting a bit.

You might be angry.

That was not fair what happened.

If I stop blaming myself,

Then where is that anger going to go?

Let yourself feel whatever's here.

Notice that in your body.

Maybe you've drifted off into thinking about other things,

Flight response,

Or feeling kind of shut down.

There's no right or wrong way to do this.

We could just stay present with ourselves as much as possible.

We notice that we're checking out a bit.

We could come back.

Take some deep breaths.

Release the energy out of your body.

Maybe do a little bit of raising your shoulders on the inhale,

Releasing on the exhale.

You can look around.

And when we really tune into what we've believed for all these decades,

Since I was a child,

I've had this sense that I'm broken.

I'm bad.

And maybe that's actually not true.

The reason that we know that it's not true,

One of them,

Is that we can not find a bad person in here.

We can find a hurt person.

We can find experiences of acting in ways that we're not happy about.

Maybe we went into big fight responses with people,

Or all kinds of ways that we were trying to protect ourselves.

These are survival responses.

But having a survival response does not mean that we're a bad person.

It means we were under threat and we were trying to survive.

That's all it means.

As you're bringing yourself into your heart,

Let yourself be human.

We don't have to be perfect to be a good person,

To be loved,

To care about ourselves either.

As we're integrating that,

Maybe there's something that comes forward like,

I'm going to really notice my self-talk for a while.

And what's underneath that inner critic?

Is it a feeling that there's something wrong with me?

If there is,

I could work with that.

I could challenge those thoughts.

I could put them up on the wall on the other side of the room.

Well,

There I'm having a thought about whatever it is.

I don't have to believe what I believed when I was five years old.

I have more resources now.

And I have the opportunity to be compassionate with myself.

All of those years of believing there was something wrong with me.

And in fact,

That's not true.

What a relief.

It's not true.

Notice your body through the whole of your back,

Back of your head and neck,

Your upper back,

The area behind your heart center.

Let those muscles soften.

Back of your arms and legs,

Let your body rest.

Notice your front and forehead,

Eyebrows and eyes,

Mouth and jaw.

Oftentimes when we're working with beliefs,

There's a lot of thoughts involved and memories and a lot of brain activity.

And that's useful.

And we can also come down into our heart.

We have the face,

Mouth and jaw,

The neck and shoulders.

And then we come into the large muscles of the chest,

The stomach area.

Any feelings,

Sensation in our chest,

Our heart center.

Notice the whole of your body,

Head to toes.

You notice what came up during the inquiry.

Is this something new or something that you've been working with for a while and you're noticing,

You know,

I am seeing something new.

That you've been working with for a while and you're noticing,

You know,

I am seeing some shifts in that.

What I believed as a child is different than what I know to be true now.

And I could honor and offer myself some kindness.

Thank you everybody for doing this inquiry.

And I hope that you have some ongoing experiences of kindness and connection with yourself.

None of us are bad.

We're all good just as we are.

Reviews

Such powerful reflection with a safe container. Thank you. 🙏