» Limiting Core Beliefs are inevitable. But what are they, and how do we heal from them? «
What are Limiting Core Beliefs?
At some point in my life, likely within days of coming into this life, I learnt that it's easier not to cry, not to get my hopes up that someone was going to come to meet my need for... food, warmth, connection, essentially the basics.
I was a prem. incubator baby born at a time when mothers were expected to abandon their instincts to nurture, and rather, place their baby on a schedule. We were, afterall, liberating women into the workforce at this time, equality and 'girls can do anything' was the catch-cry of our culture.
It's a common story, nothing extraordinary, yet it created a consistent distortion within the nervous system of the baby. It was so common in mine and previous generations, to be neglected as a baby as to have gone unquestioned for decades, and considered 'normal' (ah yes, the myth of normal as Gabor Mate puts it).
When a developmental need is consistently unmet, we experience developmental trauma. Without the attunement and connection of an-other, the baby was learning that her needs do not matter. Over time, this became her reality, and embedded into her bodymind was the oblique knowing of I don't matter.
We humans are an adaptable species, and when the conditions are not wholesome, we develop a maladaptive response; a belief forms about our worth and lovability that makes sense to us at the time. We adopt this belief as a mechanism to carry on in the absence of safety, inclusion, love and feeling valued.
I, and many like me, grew up with an invisible thread of shame knitted into my psyche. I don't matter, translated as I'm somehow bad, I'm wrong. My particular strategy to avoid feeling this was to be pleasing, appeasing, good and helpful. If I behaved in an acceptable way, then I would matter. Be accepted. Loved. Then I wouldn't feel wrong which at the body level, was conflated with unwanted.
This gave me a pretty narrow bandwidth of what I perceived as ok, and when entering any new situation, my personality formed as one who watched and waited, who didn't step forward until the 'rules' were known. To do otherwise held great risk... 'getting it wrong' felt life-threatening. My nervous system would panic. It wasn't worth it.
Such was the wallpaper of my growing up years. I had no way of knowing that I was capable of living as differently and as vibrantly as any other person I'd admired for their colourful life.
An unquestioned core belief is experienced as 'that's just the way it is'. It is experienced as reality.
Yet Life has a way of wanting to express and live more fully. And to do that, it must disrupt the certainty within which we 'see' as our reality.
Step One - Notice what's here
So as I see it, the first and most foundational step needed to dissolve our limiting core beliefs is to recognise that there is in fact a belief in place that is informing our perception of reality, and consequently, limiting our ability to live life optimally in some way.
As we go about our life, we are given exactly what we expect to see. The core belief is self-reinforcing. (You can read more here on this)
Until, that is, something disrupts our 'normal'. We experience something new.
Step Two - Discover the 'missing experience'
In Hakomi Mindful-Somatic Psychotherapy, there is a way of very gently disrupting the wallpaper of perception, or the core belief, so as to open up a new opportunity. It's aptly named the Missing Experience.
It is only when we experience the opposite of our 'normal', that we have the opportunity to notice that there is a possibility of something else, something more expansive.
This missing experience is a mindfully held and acknowledged moment that we can experience and explore in therapy.
The one moment can, when held compassionately, illuminate where we are committed to, and willing to collude with a version of reality that actually hurts or impedes us; this distortion has afterall, long since been coloured into our reality, and has served us in some way. We honour the service of the part that is holding that core belief.
This one moment often generates grief, the type of bitter sweet grief that recognises all the times our needs and desires didn't get met.
This one moment is felt as a contrast to our 'normal' reality; often felt as old, known, familiar, and has no sense of expansion in it. The new moment has a multitude of ways of showing up; excitement, fear, joy... We get curious
Step Three - Immerse into the new
We need to disrupt our 'normal' long enough to study it. Hakomi Mindful-Somatic Psychotherapy utilises mindfulness of our bodymind, and cultivating a presence of kindness towards our experience.
Kindness is a key quality that sits behind our experiences, but this quality often needs the therapeutic container to quieten the other signals in our bodymind.
Often the signals to not feel something (ever again!) are so loud and consuming of our attention, that the process towards healing is thwarted. And for good reason. There are some strong protector parts that have been charged with protecting a tender or painful part of our experience. And these parts have been working damn hard on our behalf.
Step Four - Acknowledge, Honour, Accept
As in life when one comes to retirement age, there is a celebration of one's contribution to the wider organisation. So it is also with our Parts.
Our protector parts showed up when we had very little agency or options at our disposal for safety or belonging, and found a strategy that worked at the time. This adaptive strategy worked in-so-much-as we survived, and therefore we employed this part again and again, throughout our lifetime whenever a threat was perceived.
Each part contains within its own psyche and biography a core belief that served our emotional and/or physical survival. The creative and adaptive solution this part came up with needs honouring, and an acknowledgement of how long and hard this part has been working on behalf of the whole.
When we do that, something relaxes. There's a possibility now for a new story to be written.
Step Five - The field of Forgiveness
Forgiveness isn't a word I hear very often in society nowadays. It seems to have fallen out of favour. I think, in part, we are in the collective process of bringing a much needed authenticity to our work and lives, and in that, there is (finally) the space to name our vulnerability and be supported in this. That's fantastic.
And yet, the pendulum swing of this into the shadowlands means we can get stuck in a kind of woundology and fiercely defend our story and rigidity of our rightness. What calcifies around this consciousness is a program called "victim" that is both powerfully seductive and disempowering.
Sadly, healing of our limiting core beliefs doesn't happen here. It's certainly the lands we have to traverse through on our way towards healing, but it is not the destination.
"We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds — the strength to overcome them and the lessons that we are meant to receive through them.” ~ Caroline Myss, Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can
So here's what I am playing with (because I've hung out in my wounds longer than was beneficial). I wonder, what can take us beyond our own victim story? And I wonder also, is there a power or force that can lift us to a version of our Self that is empowered, co-creative and has the potential to move towards self sovereignty?
I believe this energy field is called Forgiveness.
While there is a perception that forgiveness lets someone else off the hook, it is in fact allowing your self to no longer bite the hook (as Pema puts it), and in that, there is a kindness towards our Self.
I believe forgiveness can be entirely self-serving, and that, I think, is a Very Good Thing.
Forgiveness honours our survival, courage, strength and tenacity.
Forgiveness unlocks bound up energy within our own system.
Forgiveness creates creative expression.
Forgiveness reminds us we are part of a much larger soul story.
Forgiveness begets wisdom.
Forgiveness teaches us radical self acceptance.
Forgiveness places us in the driver's seat, the co-creator of our life.
It is forgiveness that disrupts the old story and creates the opportunity for a new story for us to grow. Expand. Ultimately, radiate and shine.
The road towards Forgiveness sets the table for our 'unwanted guests' as Rumi puts it...
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all
even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture.
Still treat each guest honorably.
She may be cleaning you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi
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