What you believe feels 100 per cent true. But, as I said before, it isn’t. For me, uncovering my hidden beliefs was the missing piece of the puzzle. It was only when I saw clearly the thought patterns holding me back that I truly made progress in reducing my anxiety and increasing my confidence levels.
Thinking about where our beliefs come from can feel tricky. It’s easy to cop out, as I did at first, and say, ‘This is just the way I am,’ to dismiss the reasons why you hold the beliefs you do. It can be painful to delve into the past and go back to where these ideas originated. If you love your parents, you probably can’t bear the thought of them being responsible for your present unhappiness. Or perhaps you recognize you had a difficult time growing up and there’s part of you that doesn’t want to think about it. Either way, I promise getting clear on where these negative, old ideas came from will be empowering and ultimately hugely positive. Awareness is the first step to change. The more you understand yourself, the more you can use that information to get better.
Did your negative belief that you are not good enough come from something that happened to you in childhood? Was your belief that you should stay quiet and wait to be spoken to originally learned from your parents? From school? From a difficult experience in your work or social life?
As a child I was a mixture of hyperactive and chatty with shy and nervous. I was emotional and sensitive, prone to outbursts, tantrums and hysteria. One minute I’d be happily chatting, the next I’d be dramatically rolling around on the floor.
I was fond of expressing my extreme emotions in public places with lots of kicking and screaming. My dad, an extraordinarily calm and patient man, famed for his laid-back approach to parenting, would eventually reach the end of his tether. Exasperated, he would get down to my level and hiss, ‘Stop showing me up!’
Now, up until the age of about seven or eight, our developing brains are very much in download mode. We absorb stuff. We absorb what we’re told, what we see other people doing and what we hear them saying. This is a very useful ability indeed, helping us to learn how to walk, talk, feed ourselves (and say our first swear words).
Where this ability lets us down is that, at that young age, we don’t have discernment or context. We take things literally. As an hysterical five-year-old, I didn’t understand Dad was doing his best. He was stressed, tired and trying to wrestle his daughter out of the frozen food aisle of Asda in one piece in time for Neighbours. At that moment, I didn’t understand I was loved, accepted and treasured, and Dad was only acting out of his own frustration and shame. The message my young brain absorbed from this experience was: ‘I am an embarrassment.’
This (and other similar experiences) meant my brain hung on to the belief I was somebody to be ashamed of. That I was ‘bad’, ‘embarrassing’, ‘unworthy’. Having a young, receptive brain and no context for the fact that my dad was just tired and stressed, these messages became embedded in my subconscious.
But why on earth do people take on board beliefs that are so clearly unhelpful? The answer is again: survival. The human brain isn’t designed to make you happy, its job is to keep you alive. The rapid absorption of information in childhood is to help us learn as much as possible about how to survive in the big, bad world. If a child is repeatedly told to shut up and be quiet by an angry parent, the message they receive is that being quiet is necessary for survival. If you’re left waiting at the school gates for your no-show alcoholic mother to pick you up and take you back to your chaotic home, being on high alert for danger makes sense. Its role is to potentially keep you safe. And as anything involved with survival gets wired into the brain, it’s no wonder this stuff can be so hard to shake in adulthood.
If the idea of blaming your parents makes you uncomfortable, know that you’re not doing this exercise to blame but to recognize where your beliefs stem from. No parent is perfect and while some are certainly less perfect than others, they did their best with what they knew and the resources they had at the time. Your parents got their conditioning from their imperfect parents who got theirs from their parents … and so the long line of parents messing up kids continues. We are all just humans trying to do our best.
That said, negative beliefs originating in childhood are often at the root of us feeling lacking and unworthy of anything other than playing small. I’m going to call them ‘unhelpful stories’; the stories that we tell ourselves that are out of date and hold us back. And these same beliefs will often show up time and time again in your life. Which ones in the list below sound familiar to you?
My client Cara grew up with a father who was a workaholic. He would frequently get home from work after she’d gone to bed, and leave for work before she was up. He’d take long work trips, often for weeks at a time. Then, when Cara was twelve, her father announced he’d met someone else and left the family home. Although he was still in her life, the message she received was this: the people you love will leave you.
In an unconscious attempt to protect herself against being abandoned again, Cara learned to please others and to keep them on side by putting her own needs behind anyone else’s. The result was, time and time again, she got walked all over, both at work and in relationships. She seemed to attract people who took advantage and left her feeling exhausted, needy and unworthy.
Maybe your life has a more extreme version of Cara’s situation? Perhaps you were adopted or put into care or a parent died? Or perhaps your version is less obvious, such as being the middle child who didn’t get as much attention as your other siblings. Whether it was a massive deal or seemingly minor, an abandonment story can have a lasting impact.
From the girl gang that stonewalled you for a week in Year 7, to the boy you fell in love with in Year 9 who only wanted to be friends, to getting fired from your first job – all rejection can leave an imprint and make us warier. We take rejection personally, make it mean something about us, that we’re unworthy or unlovable.
If your mind constantly plays you a story that you always get passed up, you will find yourself gravitating towards situations to fit that narrative. A rejection story could mean you’re attracted to the bad boys or girls, or else you’ve taken yourself out of the love game completely, to ensure you’ll never even have a chance to be rejected. Perhaps you were rejected a few times in the past but now, if you’re honest, you are putting yourself down first before anyone else has a chance to.
The truth is, often the original rejection probably had little to do with us and much more to do with the other person’s preferences, issues or stress. But now our brain, always trying to keep us safe and protect us, is hyper-aware of any sign of rejection.
My client Andrea told me, ‘My mum was often sad. I’d get home to find her crying at the kitchen table. Sometimes she wouldn’t get out of bed for days. I thought if I could be a really good girl, maybe Mum would be happier.
‘I worked hard to be the perfect child, to get the best marks at school, look after my younger brothers and try to help wherever I could. Even so, Mum stayed depressed. Nothing I did made a difference. I now know her depression was not my fault, but at the time I believed it was, and never felt I was doing enough.’
Maybe you had a critical parent for whom nothing was ever up to standard, or your family prized achievement above all and you always felt you were failing? Ali, twenty-three, an ex-drama school student, credits the competitive environment there for her adult belief that she’s always falling short. Students were pitted against each other and the competition to be the prettiest, the slimmest and the most charismatic was ever present. Even though Ali has left the acting world behind, she has retained the unhelpful story that she could never be good enough.
Many people have a deep fear that they don’t fit in. As I said before, a sense of belonging is essential to us as human beings and not fitting in can feel like life or death, especially in our early and teenage years. In fact, in the key psychological theory, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ‘love and belonging’ is the third most important level, coming right after ‘physical needs’ and ‘safety’.
If you feel you don’t fit in, question where that belief may have come from. For me, it was about having a different accent to everyone at school. My parents were from the south of England and I went to school in the north. On top of that, my nickname was ‘hippy’ or ‘freak’ because my family was veggie. For you, your belief may have come from the fact you preferred books growing up while others liked TV, or you were a different ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion to the majority around you. You might have been singled out or judged. Perhaps you were told you were different and you have never shaken off that label.
It might be that you genuinely are different to many of the people around you, due to the colour of your skin or your sexual orientation. Or there might be smaller differences that still seem like a big deal to you: the fact that you love tarot cards while most of your peers love Netflix and beer, or you love R& B while most of your mates listen to EDM. Your job is to realize that that is OK. While you can’t control what other people think of you, you can control your own sense of belonging and start to decondition the negative programming you have received in your life. Can you start to label your differences as unique and special features instead? Because the truth is that we all do belong.
In this exercise, start to uncover all the old stories and beliefs that have held you back. Think of situations that affected you. What meaning were you giving each situation? What story are you telling yourself? Can you think of another possible explanation that can become your new story? For example:
| What happened | Old story | New story |
|---|---|---|
| My dad left when I was twelve. | I made it mean that I am unlovable and will be abandoned. It means I developed a pattern of neediness and of people pleasing. | Dad left for his own reasons that have nothing to do with me or how much he loved me. Many other people love me and have stuck around. |
Think about yourself as made up of different parts, with one of them the part that feels they don’t belong, aren’t good enough or will be abandoned. It can be helpful to think of this part as a separate character or person.
Step 1: Imagine the part of you that’s responsible for the feeling of being rejected as a character or version of you. What does she look like? How does she act? What does she want? How is she trying to help you?
For example, I have a part of me that feels separate, left out and that doesn’t belong. She looks like me aged fourteen – tall and skinny, with glasses and braces. She’s awkward, shy and ashamed. She’s desperately trying to help me fit in, by being accommodating, meek and keeping quiet so she doesn’t stand out. She’s trying to keep me safe from feeling embarrassed or getting rejected.
Step 2: Thank this part for what she’s been trying to do. Let her know how grateful you are that she’s been trying to keep you safe for so long. Then explain to her that what she’s doing isn’t needed any more. Tell her that she’s operating on old information, that she’s not in secondary school (or wherever is relevant) any more. Tell her everything you love about her. Give her a big hug and some words of reassurance.
Step 3: Next imagine another part of you. This part is strong, confident and knows her worth. I like to imagine mine mixed with a dash of Beyoncé and a hint of Wonder Woman. She’s standing tall, holding her head up high and exuding confidence and self-esteem. Now imagine the old part merging into your new part and the whole becoming even more empowered. Let this new part take over and imagine acting, thinking and speaking from a place of confidence.
★ Your beliefs often have their roots in childhood. In the present, they impact your thoughts and feelings.
★ The first step is to identify the belief – then you can start to write a new story for yourself.