A “Core Belief “is a lens or filter through which you interpret all the information you receive from other people and the world around you.
We form our core beliefs as a child, to help us make sense of our childhood experiences and hence, we may never evaluate whether those core beliefs are the best way to make sense of our experiences, in the here and now – as adults.
As an adult, we may continue to think, feel and act as though the core beliefs we formed in childhood are still 100% accurate.
Core beliefs also give rise to – assumptions, rules (i.e. should and musts) and demands which in turn produce automatic thoughts – these are the thoughts that pop into our head when we are confronted with a situation.
Let us explore dis-empowering core beliefs they come in 3 categories:
- Beliefs about yourself – negative core beliefs about yourself often have roots in early – life experiences that were damaging. These include being bullied at school, being physically/emotionally being neglected at home, experiencing physical/verbal abuse, harsh criticism from care givers/siblings/teachers, all of this can influence the way in which you understand yourself.
- Beliefs about others – Negative core beliefs about others often develop as a result of either traumatic incidents involving other people or repeated negative experiences with parents and teachers.
- Beliefs about the world – People who survived in harmful, insecure, and unpredictable environments are prone to forming negative core beliefs about the world.
We are all mostly aware of our negative automatic thoughts (NAT) than we are of our core beliefs.
A good way to get to the core of your core beliefs is to look for themes in your automatic thoughts. To evaluate whether your core beliefs are positive or negative, you need to pay attention to your corresponding behaviours. Unhealthy core beliefs typically lead to problematic behaviours.
A negative core belief acts as a filter through which all our experiences are interpreted.
Generating alternatives to our unhealthy core beliefs is not about positive thinking but about generating less absolute, more accurate, more realistic views.
Experiences that you had earlier in life, were given a meaning by you - at that time. Now, as an adult you are in the fortunate position of being able to reassess the meanings you originally gave certain events and to assign more in-depth complex meanings, where appropriate.
A child’s early experiences and relationships influence his or her sense of self, outlook, and view of the world in general. Children are primed to believe the adults in their lives like parents, teachers, friends. However, abusive adults can give messages that leave a child confused, insecure, and self-critical. It is a child’s nature to understand painful and frightening experiences as well as they can, but without the guidance of “concerned” adults – their conclusions can be biased. Often children assume that if bad things happen, it is because of them. Children tend to see themselves as helpless and without reassurance, the child will develop core beliefs like others will hurt me, something terrible will happen, I must always please others so that they don’t grow to dislike and reject me.
We develop our self-concept over the course of childhood and adolescence. When we see pride on our parents faces after a piano recital, it is validation that we played well. As children we are like computers, taking in feedback from the environment, storing it in memory, combining that feedback and developing a cohesive idea of our skills, talent, deficits, and shortcomings. We take in this data from our parents, teachers, peers, siblings, friends – but the most important data with the strongest impact come from our parents.
When this process goes right, it results in a balanced, realistic self-concept, which contributes to healthy self-esteem. In the absence of attention and constructive feedback from our parents, our sense of self is incompletely developed.
When children are given the message from their parents that their feelings are a burden, excessive, or simply wrong – kids will often feel guilt and shame for having them. When a child’s emotions are not acknowledged or validated by his parents, he can grow up to be unable to do so for himself. The natural human experience of having feelings becomes a source of shame and this causes a young child to develop a negative core belief – something is wrong with me.
A common a negative core belief that take shape if we grew up in an emotionally neglectful home is – what is wrong with me? You begin to have this carefully guarded feeling of being different or flawed. Some children who grew up in emotionally neglectful homes develop “alexithymia “. Alexithymia denotes a person’s deficiency in knowledge about and awareness of his or her emotions. In its extreme form, alexithymic is a person for whom feelings are indecipherable both their own and that of others. Many people with alexithymia tend to be irritable and to snap at others for seemingly no reason. This happens because emotions that are not acknowledged or expressed tend to jumble together and emerge as anger.
Here are 4 most common types of emotionally neglectful parents that are the source to one developing negative core beliefs:
- Narcissistic Parent – when narcissists become parents, they demand perfection or at the very least no embarrassment. When their children make mistakes that are visible to others – no matter how much the child may need their parents help at that time – narcissists take it personally and make their children pay. These parents do not recognize their children as separate from them. The needs of the child are defined by the needs of the parent, and the child who tries to express his needs is often accused of being selfish or inconsiderate. A narcissistic parents love is always conditional and comes with strings attached.
- The Authoritarian Parent – these are parents who are rule bound, restrictive, punitive, and raising their children based on very inflexible and unbending demands. These parents hold such views as – children are meant to be seen and not heard, spare the rod, and spoil the child. These parents expect their children to follow rules without questioning them and these parents do not explain the reasons behind their rules. Many authoritarian parents tend to equate the child’s obedience with love. If the child questions the parents demand, the parent feels disrespected and rejected. Authoritarian parents are more likely to punish rather than they are to discuss a problem or concern with their child.
- The Achievement/Perfection focused parent – this type of parent is seldom satisfied. If his child comes home with straight A’s he will say - next time I will expect A+. A lot of narcissistic parents are perfection focused, because they want their child to reflect well on them.
- The Sociopathic Parent – A sociopath can say or do anything he or she wants and not feel bad about it the next day. Along with a lack of guilt comes a profound lack of empathy. For the sociopath, others’ feelings are meaningless. Having no conscience, frees up the sociopath to use any underhanded means to get his way. They can be verbally ruthless, twist others’ words to his own purposes, blame shift when things go wrong. For a sociopathic parent raising a child is like everything else - it is all about power and control. Children of sociopathic parents desperately try to make sense of their parents behaviour and thus become very creative in trying to explain the unexplainable.