What I’m about to say sounds simplistic. A gift, because if you’ve lived it, it feels anything but clear or concise.
Outcome depends on Behavior depends on Emotion depends on Your core understanding of yourself vs. the world.
From the research:
Childhood maltreatment and adulthood victimization: An evidence-based model
Fatemeh Fereidooni et al
Journal of Psychiatric Research
2023
We were granted a useful model. I called it “OBEY.” Which starts at the bottom, with the Y.
Negative schemas (Y your core beliefs) elicit E Emotionality which motivates B Behavior which causes O outcomes. Consequences. Life results.
With Y (Your negative working models of the world) you can’t modify your feelings or default thoughts. Causing you to feel and behave similarly, regardless of intention.
So that you OBEY the worst of the lessons you’ve picked up from childhood and adult maltreatment. And recreate the same conditions time and again.
Perhaps, resulting in situations that consistently devalue you. Cementing that life is chaos, stress, and pain… for you… regardless of action or effort or intent.
And resulting in the cold, abusive, addictive, deficient, rollercoastering lives that we know as “trauma commonalities.”
Today! We have a very important episode. Perhaps the penultimate lesson of this podcast. The answer we’ve all been waiting for. I have been.
Let’s talk about core beliefs, emotional neglect, and the theory that worthlessness wounds underly everything we know as “CPTSD”… all the way down to the janked up nervous system… which leads to “chronically miserable living that defies logic.” The childhood trauma experience.
It’s a doozy. And we’re doing it a bit differently than usual.
Because I feel this episode is so important, it’s going to be split into two parts. Better for chewing and absorbing, not just consuming.
The final nerd version will be one whole, long-ass journey, containing some peer-reviewed excerpts. But I don’t recommend listening to that in one go, either.
So, check out part one on core beliefs, and part two on the worthiness wound underlying them all, driving all the sufferings and behaviors associated with CPTSD, at your reflective pace. If you want the long-form, you know where to get it.
And we start this mighty jaunt by touching on this little internet article, where we first talk about the Default Mode Network in a call back to episodes we did about four years ago:
https://www.liberationhealingseattle.com/blog-trauma-therapist/ptsd-core-beliefs-trauma-survivors
Common Core Beliefs of Trauma Survivors
Default Mode Network (DMN)
- Individuals who experience trauma have changes in their brain activity.
- These effects include: internal processing, self perception, emotion regulation, empathy, and learning abilities.
- These brain changes usually lean toward negative thoughts and focused on the past traumatic experiences (flashbacks, re-experiencing) until they are processed.
- From: The Importance Of The Default Mode Network (DMN) In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- DMN is a system of connected brain areas that show increased activity when a person is not focused on the outside world. In other words, it is a neurological structure which is activated when the brain is at ‘rest’.
- DMN is known to be atypically active during PTSD when an individual engages in introspective activities such as daydreaming, contemplating the past or the future, or thinking about the perspective of someone else.
- Research shows that childhood maltreatment may affect development of the DMN, which begins maturation during childhood and does not end until early adulthood (Sherman et al., 2014; for a review, see Fair et al., 2008). If the trauma(s) is repeated, the DMN will be biased towards the trauma and can re-experience or relive it as long as the trauma remains unprocessed.
This leads our conversation today because the DMN causes us to contemplate our place in the world, chronically, when the brain isn’t otherwise occupied; a unique connectivity issue seen in PTSD. And when we’re considering our standing in the universe, we end up falling back into less than sunny thoughts. Into assessments, instructions and assumptions about how the awful world works and how we even more awfully work within it.
And those foundational thoughts consistently streaming between our ears when we have a quiet moment are:
Core Beliefs
- Core beliefs are usually absolute/binary ways of thinking about ourselves, others, or the world.
- A negative core belief is a broad, negative, and generalized judgement you have made about yourself,
based on some previous negative experiences (childhood, past relationship, past work experience, life experiences) - Core beliefs can shift gradually but become more stable and stronger over time.
- Core beliefs help us to make sense of our world by organizing experiences into familiar patterns.
Survivors of trauma experience extraordinary or adverse experiences that should not occur. These experiences are violent, abusive, neglectful, and/or oppressive leaving survivors feeling terror, panic, shame, guilt, angry, grief, and sad.
In turn, unhelpful beliefs about the world can begin forming as a way to make sense of what occurred and to prevent such experiences from occurring again (defense/protective mechanism).
However, these thoughts keep survivors “stuck” in a loop of avoidance, fear, worry, anxiety, and hypervigilance.
Common characteristics of trauma thoughts are:
- All or nothing and binary thoughts - yes/no, good/bad, love/hate, always/never
- Verbal abuse - I’m so dumb, I’m stupid, I’m worthless
- Mind reading and future prediction - I already know what you’re thinking and how you’ll react, I know what will happen, I’ve done this all before
- Writing off the positives as accidental blips, only focusing on negatives as meaningful
- Catastrophic thinking – future prediction through worst case scenarios
And those habitual patterns we return to again and again tumble into behavioral choices or unconscious actions. Since they are consistent thoughts, the resulting behaviors will persistently maintain negative circumstances… or even make life worse than progenitors did.
It depends on what you believe you deserve.
And unfortunately those beliefs might be implicit rather than explicit.
From the CPTSD Foundation (.org)
Negative core beliefs work against you and are often secretive and invisible to yourself. Negative core beliefs often aren’t conscious cognitive thoughts directing you in your life; they are silent and quietly direct how you behave and carry on in the world.
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is fueled by negative core beliefs that keep you trapped in the past… it directly results from the negative thought patterns you formed in childhood and have brought into your adult life.
For instance
Your negative core beliefs will tell you that you cannot heal from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, so you should quit trying.
Also that you aren’t worthy of a better life, you can’t do it, you’re too broken, you don’t matter, nothing matters, no one even cares, “this is just how things are,” and so on.
Unresolved negative belief leads to persistent, untreatable, PTSD without the PTG (post traumatic growth) part. If, at your core, you believe you are flawed or fucked up, you cannot outgrow those self-perceptions. You cannot change behaviors that you don’t want to execute. You can only cycle back to them – first the thoughts, the resulting emotions, and then the behaviors - maintaining the PTSD symptomology that causes a misery-filled and lonely life experience.
But don’t take some free internet article words for it. Let’s hit a research based peer-reviewed article, as we do.
The impact of core belief disruption on posttraumatic growth and PTSD in healthcare workers: examining the mediating effect of rumination
Aghil Habibi Soola 1, Naser Mozaffari 1, Azam Hashemian Moghadam 2, Maryam Hashemian 1, Masoud Saeedyan 3, Alireza Mirzaei 1,✉
BMC Psychology
2025
Where they tell us that shitty-to-begin-with or shattered core beliefs are at the root of lasting PTSD. Childhood trauma gives us originally negative understandings of the world, and adult trauma disrupts or disproves previously positive ones.
In both cases, leaving our brains with no material to comfort ourselves or reframe events with. We can only have destructive feelings and thoughts because the well that we attempt to draw from has been poisoned.
This causes PTSD symptoms. Intrusive thoughts and feelings, avoidance or over-attachment, volatile moods and upsetting thoughts, hyper or hypo arousal, anxiety, depression, obsession, compulsion.
They say:
Core beliefs are fundamental, deeply held assumptions about the world, oneself, and others such as beliefs in justice, controllability of events, and the predictability and benevolence of the world and people [8]. Traumatic events can profoundly disrupt or “shatter” these core beliefs, challenging a person’s fundamental perceptions and potentially leading to significant psychological distress [8]. This can manifest as a shaken belief in a just world, a loss of perceived control, or a diminished sense of safety, which can seriously impact their mental health and damage their resilience and adaptability [10]. The process of challenging and reconstructing these disrupted core beliefs is considered necessary for the occurrence of PTG [8.]
Hypotheses and psychological theories preceding growth theory posited that the collapse or shattering of a person’s core beliefs about the world following a trauma is a key precursor to PTSD [11]. It often involves the breakdown of cognitive schemas and intrusive rumination.
According to the theory of Shattered Assumptions [10], traumatic events directly challenge fundamental beliefs about the benevolence and justice of the world, the meaningfulness of life, and personal competence. This disruption of core beliefs can be understood as the shattering of one’s foundational assumptions, resulting in a cognitive and emotional void that may facilitate the emergence of PTSD symptomatology.
Such negative adaptations occur because a person’s core beliefs shape their assumptive world, which is fractured by trauma, leading to the development and persistence of maladaptive cognitions [36].
It is this specific state of disrupted core beliefs that gives rise to negative post-traumatic cognitions, including pervasive suspicion, intolerance of uncertainty, and heightened death anxiety elements that are closely associated with post-traumatic stress pathology [37].
We learn that nothing is safe because we, ourselves and our bodies, are dangerous or undeserving of being safe… and life becomes chronically stressful from there. We trust no one, no situation, not even ourselves. The stress only ever builds; there is no respite.
And we can’t just “spot treat” a few off-color thoughts to fix the issue, because all of our cognitions are spawned by our core beliefs.
If the bases of our thoughts and feelings are the universal truths that we don’t stand a chance, life unfolds in turn. Fulfilling those negative working models, making them reality. And that’s a big problem when we get granular about what exactly those beliefs might be.
Some common core beliefs of trauma survivors are:
(Back to Liberation Healing Seattle)
Responsibility (I Am)
- I don’t deserve love
- I am a bad person
- I am terrible
- I am worthless
- I am inadequate
- I am shameful
- I am not loveable
- I am not good enough
- I deserve only bad things
- I am damaged
- There is something wrong with me
- I am ugly
- I do not deserve …
- I am dumb and stupid
- I am not important
- I am a disappointment
- I deserve to die
- I deserve to be unhappy
- I am different
- I do not belong
I think we can agree, we don’t want any of these things to come to fruition or persist. But they will, if they remain unhealed.
Which is not to say we should fall back on THESE common core beliefs from trauma histories:
Responsibility (I Did Something Wrong…)
- I should have done something…
- I did something wrong…
- I should have known better…
Safety & Vulnerability
- I cannot be trusted
- I cannot trust myself
- I cannot trust my judgement
- I cannot trust anyone
- I cannot protect myself
- I am in danger
- It’s not okay to feel my emotions
- It’s not okay to show my emotions
- I cannot stand up for myself
We can easily get “on our own cases” with trauma beliefs, taking the burden of everything that happens or doesn’t happen onto ourselves. Internalizing happenstance and even new traumas that befall us as our fault or reflections of us.
On the other hand, trauma beliefs can also be wildly externalized. We tell ourselves we’re victims of the world, getting tossed around and kicked in the teeth, because it is our place.
Some of those beliefs are:
Control & Choice
- I am not in control
- I am powerless
- I am helpless
- I am weak
- I cannot get what I want
- I am a failure
- I will fail
- I cannot succeed
- I have to be perfect
- I have to please everyone
- I cannot stand it
- I cannot trust anyone
I think we can agree, none of these sound accurate or even plausible if stated aloud by another person. But our minds can run through them on repeat, beneath our conscious awareness, manipulating us.
And that’s why we care so much about negative schema and fucked up core beliefs.
A wide variety of self-degrading sentiments can be the parting gift of trauma.
I am not good enough. I should have done something differently. I can’t do the things I need to do, others do, or I need to be capable of doing. In so many ways.
But here’s the real sticking point of today.
Underneath all of these core beliefs, though, if you think about it…. is the common denominator of feeling less-than. Somehow lacking in value. Unviable or ill-equipped. Mistake laden.
Go back about three minutes and re-listen to these common trauma thoughts.
Worth-less-ness runs through all the statements; a central characteristic of the person in question that spins out into a thousand splintered stories of brokenness.
“I uniquely cannot do X, do not deserve Y. Because I am less than I should be. Less than everyone else who CAN achieve these goals, expect these positive events, receive these rewards.”
In every core belief is the unquestioned understanding “I’m not enough.”
Causing us to ask…. is worthlessness, specifically, at the root of CPTSD?