Core Deficiency Beliefs, Attachment And Authenticity

When children feel unloved, they develop beliefs they are unlovable. In this talk and guided practice, we focus on staying present in the moment in our adult self as we see the experiences that led us to develop these false core deficiency beliefs. This is the 2nd of 4 Insight Timer Live talks on Attachment and Authenticity in August.

Transcript

Bring your attention into your forehead.

And as you soften your forehead,

That often helps us to let go of worry.

And notice your mouth and jaw,

Down through your neck and shoulders.

See if you can relax and soften the large muscles of the back.

Large muscles of the chest as well.

As you're breathing,

What does it feel like in your stomach area?

Navel centre,

Lower belly.

Generally when we soften our lower belly,

Our breath becomes smoother,

More even.

One of the main principles of working with traumatic experiences and events is that we need to be in our body as an adult in the safety of the present moment.

Traumatic memories will often bring up a pull into the past.

So if there's a feeling of helplessness or if you have a memory come up of a time when you were harmed,

Or when you felt really alone,

Then that's going to be reflected in our body.

We're going to tighten up somehow,

We might stop breathing.

And so we want to be present in this moment,

We need to stay here.

So one of the ways that we can do that is to keep your eyes open,

Or if you have your eyes closed,

Then open your eyes if you start to feel a little distressed.

And look around the room,

Look at cues of safety.

Come back into your body,

You could hold your own hands.

You could do some box breathing,

There's a lot of different practices,

And I have some up on Insight Timer on practices to self-regulate your nervous system,

Which are very helpful.

One of the principles,

And it kind of doesn't make sense in a way,

But another way it makes complete sense,

Is that when a child is experiencing some kind of fear or anxiety or feeling like nobody really cares about us,

There's a couple of things that happen.

One is that we tend to make experiences turn into beliefs.

If we experience,

Nobody's paying attention to me,

We will probably turn that into a belief of I'm not lovable,

Or I'm not worthy.

So we have these core deficiency beliefs that are not true.

Our childhood brain and our childhood nervous system experience something that led us to this belief.

And the other main thing that happens is that children will turn it against themselves to try to maintain hope that they could improve their situation.

If an adult,

For instance,

Is really contemptuous of the way we dress,

Or that we're not getting very good marks at school,

Or that we're not a very good athlete,

Or something like that,

Quite often the parents will push us or pressure us into living their dreams.

So that's a fairly innocuous example.

In some ways,

There's not a physical abuse,

And yet a child can really feel like there's something really fundamentally wrong with me.

There's something wrong with me that my dad or my mom or my other adults around me don't seem to value who I am.

There's also experience that many of us have of just not being attuned to.

So people might be providing good food and a safe environment to be in,

But they don't really get to know us.

They don't seem to have an interest in getting to know us.

So that's another source of these core deficiency beliefs of,

I'm not worthy of someone paying attention to me.

I'm not worthy of love.

So notice your response to those words.

And if any of those are experiences that you've had or that you resonate with,

Then there's probably going to be some kind of response in your body.

It might be an emotional response.

Your worries might be coming back.

So notice your breath.

Stay grounded.

Notice your feet,

Your seat,

Your breath.

Look around the room.

Remind yourself that you're here in an adult situation where you're safe.

Let your breath settle a little bit.

Let it become more open if you hold your breath,

Which is very,

Very common.

Notice that you could breathe more deeply.

And maybe your situation was more dire.

Maybe there was physical,

Sexual,

Verbal,

Some kind of abuse that was going on,

Where you weren't only not being protected,

But you were actively being harmed.

And when that happens to a child especially,

Our nervous system gets very wired for that.

We get very concerned that we're not going to survive.

And that makes complete sense when we look at it that way.

We have a survival-level need to be cared for and protected and not harmed.

And if we don't have that,

If somebody's hurting us,

Especially if it's the people who are supposed to be taking care of us,

Then we internalize that and feel like there's something wrong with us.

If a child could know all of that and they could see the impact of intergenerational trauma,

For instance,

That we might be able to see now as an adult,

We might not turn against ourselves.

We might be able to say,

Well,

You know,

I can see my mom's really struggling with depression or an addiction.

Or,

You know,

My dad is just at the end of his rope.

He gets mad and it just scares everybody,

But I can see some of the things at play.

But that's not how a child's brain works.

And that's not an excuse either.

It's a parent's job,

Which we are not always able to really do well.

It's a parent's job to take care of their children.

And when children aren't being cared for and protected and included,

Then we form these beliefs about ourselves.

If I could be smarter,

If I could be the baseball star,

If I could whatever it might be.

So notice what your response is again.

Let's come back to witnessing.

I'm not meeting their expectations.

What does that feel like?

And especially if you have memories coming up,

You might want to work with the thoughts and see it in their face,

Maybe bring up a memory of something.

You brought home a report card and that look on their face.

You came home upset that you were bullied and they seemed to blame you.

Toughen up.

You just need to stand up to them.

We have so many experiences where we're not really met in a healthy way and we turn against ourselves.

Stay really connected with your breath.

We might feel hollow.

What are the sensations in your body as you're working with this?

Sometimes we'll have a strong response,

Like a tight fist in our gut or a swirling energy somewhere in our body.

Sometimes we'll have a more of a freeze response,

Like a deadening,

Cold,

Not here,

A real disconnection.

Sometimes our body gets kind of antsy and restless.

We just want to take off somewhere.

These are all normal responses to this.

So keeping your eyes open,

Keeping yourself really present.

And if you had to sum up in a few words what your core deficiency beliefs are,

What would some of those words be?

And do you feel like that's your theme song now as well?

Do you feel like these have just continued through into your adult life?

Or do you feel like you've come a certain way in healing them,

That they don't feel as true or believable as they used to?

We're not looking for a specific answer.

Anything is fine.

We're just looking to see what's here.

We can have such a range of emotions,

Sadness,

Grief,

Anger,

Determination.

They're not going to make me feel that way anymore.

And we can feel kind of lost and alone,

Like we're really on our own.

And for a child,

If you could imagine another child,

Maybe someone that you love or care about,

That's just feeling really alone.

What comes to mind when you tune into them?

Do you feel compassion for them?

Do you blame them?

We often blame ourselves in a way that we wouldn't blame anybody else.

When you think about a child and the innocence and the lack of power that children have,

And the really difficult situations that a lot of children are in,

See if you can just cultivate some kindness and compassion.

We miss so much when we're disconnected.

So if you're a parent and you're doing this,

We're looking at it from the point of view of a child and the experience and beliefs we formed,

And we're also looking at it as a parent.

When we look at a situation where our parents were really shut down or disconnected,

They missed out on getting to know us and on having fun with us.

And a lot of people just have their heads down.

They're just trying to get through.

They're surviving perhaps,

But they're not really thriving.

They're not really living.

We can feel a huge amount of compassion for our parents as well and hopefully for ourselves too.

These are really difficult circumstances to be in.

And the beliefs that we formed from our experiences are something that now as an adult we could really have a look at and see,

Was it really true?

I experienced being on my own or I experienced some kind of harm or abuse.

And the beliefs that I formed of unworthiness or that I wasn't lovable,

They're not true.

Could I heal that belief now?

So part of that involves being able to be present with ourselves,

Feeling it in our body.

So notice if there's sensation that you might want to just see if you could sit with a little bit.

So sensations that are combined with beliefs and thoughts can have a lot of believability.

So if you were to say,

I'm not a rocket scientist,

And that's true,

Then you're not going to have a response to that in your body.

But if you say something like,

I'm not lovable,

And it feels like that might be true,

Then you're going to have some kind of a response.

It might be more thoughts,

It might be memories come in.

So take a few deep breaths.

Notice that you can stay present for yourself now in a way that you couldn't have when you were a child.

And notice that we can look at thoughts.

You could do some tapping,

Bring a couple fingers to your forehead and just tap on your forehead.

Take your attention away from the images,

The memories,

The thoughts,

Just into the sound and the sensation of tapping on your forehead.

With your eyes open,

You could put those thoughts on the other side of the room.

There's many different ways that we can stay present and not get kind of dragged back into a thought stream.

And then when we tune into the body and we sit and notice what's here,

So if I feel really sad,

For instance,

Feel like I really missed out and they missed out too,

We might be grieving the losses and grieving how we brought that into our adult life.

But whatever that is,

Notice where that's located in your body.

So if you have a heaviness in your chest,

For instance,

Sometimes we have a feeling of tightness in the throat as well.

So you could notice,

Can you still breathe through that tightness?

Sometimes the sensation feels really strong or constricting,

But then when we notice that we can still get the air through,

That helps us to settle a bit.

And we could also notice the space around the energy.

So if there's a heaviness in our body,

We could just notice where it is.

Is it right in the middle of the chest?

Is it the hole of your chest?

Does it come up into your throat,

Down into your stomach?

Notice the space around the energy.

And then see if that energy is here to tell you something.

What does it want?

Why did it show up?

This energy is associated with some memories or beliefs.

Right now we're kind of stirring the pot a little bit because we're looking at beliefs.

I wasn't lovable.

We're looking at these right now.

So it's natural that that would come up.

And sometimes we don't have a lot of specific explicit memories of childhood.

And that's very normal,

Very common,

Especially when we disconnected.

Disconnection is a strategy to keep ourselves safe.

But we might still have,

And we probably still have,

That feeling in our body.

A tightness somewhere,

A heaviness.

Let's stay with this for another minute or so.

Regret,

Chest is vibrating.

It's quite stunning sometimes to see and feel these energies and sensations in the body.

And then when we can stay with them a little bit,

We often notice that this is a response to my experiences.

And it's still here.

I still have this energy or sensation.

And when we attune to it,

We attend to it.

You could put your hand on your heart.

Notice your breath.

Loosen your shoulders.

Notice where you're holding tension and see if you could let that release a little bit on the out breath.

And then see if you could come up with a memory of a time when you did feel loved.

And it might have been an odd occurrence in your childhood.

It might have been maybe a teacher at school or a grandparent or somebody else who looked at you with interest and kindness.

And see if you could just notice that.

And it might be as an adult if you don't have memories of that as a child.

That's okay.

So what we're doing is we're just noticing that we have experiences on both sides.

We might have a very predominant experience of being alone and feeling unlovable.

And we also have some experiences,

For sure as adults,

Of feeling loved.

So if it's true that having an experience of feeling unlovable means we're unloved and unlovable,

What does it mean that we have experiences of being loved?

Does it mean that we're lovable?

So the logic doesn't really stand up.

We could have many experiences of feeling unloved and feeling loved and not form beliefs or not believe the stories that we told ourselves about that as a child.

Let's just sit with that for a moment.

Maybe some of those beliefs that I formed were childhood defense strategies.

It's very,

Very common.

If we turn against ourselves,

We have some kind of hope that we could change enough that people would pay attention,

They would love us,

They would stop hurting us,

We would be safer.

And this is really something that we can offer ourselves as an adult.

We can tune in and help ourselves to know that that feeling that there's something really wrong with us is a result of experiences.

It's not true.

Take a few deeper breaths again.

Notice if your body's gotten tight anywhere.

See if you could soften that.

Really the key to this is to be present in the adult healthier self and to let our adult selves be here in this moment.

We can be grounded through our body,

Through our breath.

We can learn practices that help to stabilize us so that we can look at something and instead of just believing it,

We can look at it and go,

Is that really true?

I had these experiences,

But is it true that that's why?

Was I really unworthy?

Was I really broken?

And then we see that in fact that wasn't true.

It was what we believed from our experiences,

Which makes sense,

And it's not true.

When we turn against ourselves,

We need to find a way back where we can be on our own side and have more kindness for ourselves.

One of the things that's really helpful too I think around parents is when we can look at it through a trauma lens,

Look at their life through a trauma lens,

We can see a lot of the stresses and pressures that they were under.

And a lot of us are not very healed,

Especially when we're younger,

When we're parents.

And to be able to look at that through a trauma lens is very helpful.

It really is about them,

And it's not that we were not lovable.

It's that there were things that were going on that they were disconnected or they were feeling a lot of pressure.

And unfortunately,

Children who are brought up in that kind of an environment where there's a predominant feeling of either abuse or fear,

That kind of thing is very hard for children's nervous systems.

But also where we just don't feel attuned to.

We don't feel like anyone really knows us and that they don't really care about us.

We feel ashamed when we have that experience.

And so it's very helpful to be able to see what was ours and what's theirs and that all of these are very normal responses to these kinds of experiences.

When we take a few minutes or learn a little bit about how this works and how we feel and be able to stay with the present moment.

So what happens generally is that we'll have some kind of feeling in our body of powerlessness or some kind of memory,

Even if it's not an explicit memory of certain circumstances.

We have it in our body,

The memory of what it felt like to be in those situations.

And that feeling can be very disconnecting.

It can bring us into a feeling of hypervigilance or fight,

Flight,

Freeze.

And so to be able to pause and feel it in our body is really important.

And we have to feel it in our body while we're aware that we're in the safety of this moment.

All of these tools of breathing and looking around the room for cues of safety and putting your hand on our heart,

All of those are meant to help us to stay present to this moment.

And here,

Where we're safe,

Then we can bring in some of those experiences and let them heal.

Really know in our heart and guts that there's nothing wrong with us.

We can be on our own side.

We can really give ourselves the attention and the love and compassion that we didn't maybe get when we were children.

And then we can heal and bring that into our life as we are now.

The one thing that I really learned from doing all of this trauma work is that it's always possible to heal.

And that what we find when we go inside isn't the unlovable one or the unworthy one.

It's the one who's whole and that's just wanting our attention and wanting our love and kindness and connection.

And that's wonderful.

It's a wonderful experience.

Reviews

This was so insightful, soothing and nurturing. Thank you so much Lynn 💞

Thank you, this was so helpful! I really fall into turning against myself. Finally I am being on my own side. Feels amazing. 🩷🩷🩷

This was such a great learning experience. Thank you Lynne.