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 “PTSD”… 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.
DMN
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.
Core beliefs
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.
Implicit trauma beliefs
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.
Beliefs x post traumatic growth
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.
Belief Examples
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.
One main core belief
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 PTSD?
The maltreatment -> FUCB -> untreatable PTSD path.
From childhood, we’re taught we aren’t worthy of attention, care, consideration, safety by the people who raise and surround us.
Our thoughts don’t matter. We’re told to shut the fuck up and stop bothering them.
Our feelings don’t matter. They’re inconvenient and need to be shut out.
Our experiences don’t matter. We need to be happy with what we’re getting, because no one else is.
Since we aren’t worth hearing, connecting with, or protecting, we must not have value to the people who brought us into this world.
This is exacerbated if they, themselves, are miserable. Because we “should” make them feel better with our childlike wonder and reflections of themselves within us, right? But if we can’t fix the primary parent, then we must not be high value children.
If we don’t have value… we are worth-less than others as a steady state… then we’re innately burdens for existing. We don’t offer, we only cost them.
If we’re burdens, that means life is filled with urgency. Because we always need to be proving ourselves. Running on other people’s timelines. Taking care of everything so that we aren’t BIGGER burdens by neglecting responsibility or causing a bigger problem.
That means life is stress. Vigilance, deprivation, and self-policing to stay out of the way. Chronic awareness and behavioral management. Emotional repression and self-abandonment often come into the picture.
Meanwhile, we feel inclined to be low maintenance. If you’re already burdensome, don’t ask for more than you require. Instead, change what you realize you require so that you don’t ask for anything.
Which means… disassociate. If you can’t feel your emotions or deprivations, then they aren’t problems for you (or more importantly, for others).
We can easily take these three behaviors - functioning under urgency, being low maintenance, and disassociating for everyone’s convenience – and misconstrue them as being “highly adaptive” for the rest of our lives.
We can mesh with any environment. Nothing is too much or too little for us. Every bed and bowl of porridge must be “just right enough” because we don’t dare have preferences or needs. We don’t even recognize we have bodies.
Don’t worry about us. We don’t. We aren’t worth it. We’ve been told for a long time now.
And in this way, we might consider ourselves highly resilient… so capable of rolling with the punches and still being “okay enough”… when we’re actually living through the lens of childhood abuse and neglect. Perpetuating it. Treating ourselves and our wellness as inconsequential, just like others did.
It’s not worth the effort of caring for ourselves, and if we did we would be punished.
So we wind up in trauma-typical lives of abandoning ourselves, letting unfair treatment continue, living in ramshackle surroundings, accepting the bare minimum of life… and treating the pain on the other side with whatever means are available. Scrolling, drinking, human escapism.
In this way, starting with a sense of worthlessness:
We pony up and support others, however they might need, but rarely ourselves.
We repress our emotions and our bodily sensations.
We cope through nasty situations, leaning on behaviors that temporarily numb some pain, but ultimately hurt us more.
We cause ourselves mental, spiritual, and physical damage.
And whatever outcome we end up with? Abusive relationships, work places, substandard living circumstances, addictions, diseases, pains, chronic discomforts?
We assess as “correct.” Fitting well with our sense of value.
What, would we expect a better life for someone with as little worth as we have? That would be wild. Egoic. Unwise. It’s been a long time now, we know the ways of the world and how we fit into it.
So we continue eating the shit sandwiches we’re served and then accidentally throw them together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner once we’ve learned the recipe.
And so, I posit that underneath chronic, unresponsive, CPTSD – yes - might be nervous system disorder and emotional dysregulation…
But driving both of those issues is the ongoing fucked up core belief that we’re simply worth-less than others are. That’s our place in life. That’s how we have to behave. And we’d best not challenge it or there will be negative consequences.
With this one thought, “I am worth less than other humans,” we can’t emotionally balance ourselves. Trying to think our way out of a negative feeling only reminds us that this is what we deserve, and worse. Our feelings seem inevitable and “right.”
So, again, in response, we can only disassociate.
We engage in unconscious behaviors which are comforting in the moment, but harmful over time. We leave our meat, we treat medicate ourselves in our preferred methods, and it is taken advantage of by others. Our bodies absorb the impact of our stress and unmet needs.
So that eventually we CAN’T function in the most worthwhile way. In relationships, at work, in our bodies, in the world.
So that our core belief that we’re lacking in value, burdensome, a problem that breaths to the chagrin of everyone we encounter… becomes material reality. We prove to ourselves that we don’t matter.
CPTSD topics that erupt
Hence, from an unworthiness wound, we get issues like the ones we’ve spoken about for the last several years:
Revictimization – we leave our bodies, people sense it and prey on us, we lose our emotional wisdom to recognize it’s happening.
Social anxiety – we believe we aren’t good enough, so every social encounter is bound to crumble.
Rejection sensitive dysphoria – when they crumble, it throws us back into our core beliefs of unworth, where we generalize the idea and suffer.
Extreme impression management and facades of conformity – to try to avoid these things happening, we try extra hard to be “normal and good,” which ultimately leads to inauthenticity and dissatisfaction.
Wonky egos that tend to flip into grandiose narcissism or the exact opposite – but never find a stable, solid, center, because we only have fleetingly positive, socially mediated senses of self.
Immature self-defensive strategies - behaviors like black and white thinking and passive aggression, because we can’t sit with nuance and don’t think we’re worthy of setting healthy boundaries or directly speaking up for ourselves.
Chronically unmet needs – we aren’t deserving of satisfaction or equipped to ask for what we need, since we’re already burdens to everyone we know.
Addiction and substance use issues – from the pains of deprivation and inability to express our will, we try to feel differently and get through life via chemical means.
Abusive relationships with self and other – continual deprivation causes resentment, sense of helplessness makes us try to control whatever we can, sense of unworth causes impulsive social behaviors, and constant pain increases expression of anger… at others and also internally.
Depression-PTSD symptomology back and forths – the stunting of our desires and experiences in disappointment result in depression and traumatic thinking.
Chronically dysregulated nervous systems – constant hypervigilance trying to be good enough and stave off punishments we believe we’re fated to experience creates hyperarousal… which tends to become hypoarousal when the body can’t sustain the elevated activation.
Unmanaged and intrusive emotions – since we can’t manage our thoughts with more positive ones, we also can’t manage our emotions, and they pop up without invitation.
Rumination and obsession – we try to figure out how to escape this afore-described prison or make meaning of our unique position in it, without coming to solutions. So the brain ticks away, trying endlessly to understand.
Suicidality – altogether, it’s a hellish existence that we can’t find a way out of. Tortured by our brains and feelings and circumstances, a mind determines that the only option is to get out of it all.
In other words, worth-less-ness underscores the trauma typical outcomes that fill prisons and mental institutions, abusive or chronically lonely residences, hospitals and homeless shelters, even morgues.
Bottom-up life dictation
All because of the OBEY model.
When we can’t come to a central, safe, thought station.. when our core beliefs are negatively slanted towards the one situation we can’t alter (being ourself), we can’t help ourselves regulate anything. Our feelings, our judgments, our nervous systems, our behaviors. We act against ourselves, even when we try to act for ourselves, because we largely only know how to detach from ourselves as a form of self-care. We can only spiral downward, internally.
And everything spirals in response, outside of us.
As above so below. We build the lives we know we don’t want.
But maybe feel deep down that we deserve.
We can’t identify what’s going wrong or how to fix any of these issues. Because it doesn’t appear as though there is “A” thing to fix, with so many diverse problems that crop up. And because we don’t identify “low self worth” as a problem or a thought disruption. It’s merely a reality. The one that we’re uniquely trapped within.
One that we’re actively surviving against. Which is why the stress never stops.
And, while that definitely is enough to chew on for a few weeks, looking at how childhood events created the brain that led to these results…
Here comes the societal trauma talk.
Soceital worth-less-ness
Those same ideas have been confirmed all around us.
Sexism, racism, ablism, sexual-orientation-ism, classism… have always told us that some people are more than others.
But I in today’s (2026) world? Worth is diminished for most. There is much more “surviving” taking place than before, as a default condition.
Now we can’t “fake it to feel worthy by following the designated path,” even.
A 9-5 doesn’t mean you’re housed or health-accessible. The rules seem to be mutable, inconsistent, and getting harder all the time.
There are more societal assertions than ever, more widely publicized than ever, that you are in the position you’re in, you deserve to be there, and it’s unsafe to be you. The economic, race, sexuality, ablist, and gender disparities are in our faces, propagandized and leveraged against us, from the top-down, across all platforms.
Who is worth what? Who deserves care? Protection? Thought?
Many of us have been told “not us.” A confirmation of what we were informed shortly after birth.
It’s hard to feel worth-ful in 2026. And a history of abuse or neglect makes it even harder.
Then, after COVID the message was spit louder than ever as we were shamed back to office work and the wealth disparity became cavernous.
However much you’re working? Is not enough. Everything only costs more than you can bring home. And here are your peers, making a quarter mil a year, to prove that it’s a “you problem.”
(read: it is not. It is an originating circumstance problem where we didn’t all begin running from the same starting line.)
On a very material level, worth is apparent, reiterating what we already thought about ourselves.
But we’ve all been told we can overcome our original circumstances. So just try harder, right?
One might suggest that achievements and accomplishments disprove worthlessness. But that’s the thing when we run it through human psychology. Actually, DESPITE everything one can do that fly in the face of a difficult upbringing, the sad fact is, without social capital, the accomplishments often don’t snowball into reward. They lead to… surviving. Getting by. Without extraneous comforts.
Because of being worth-less and compensated-less. The material outcome of those negative core beliefs.
And those beliefs have been repeated by anyone who profits off them. Every work place, government mandate, personal relationship formed in the larger capsule of capitalism.
So we can work and work and work some more. Living in a state of self- and society-created deprivation.
OR, give up on working, since it never pays off anyways, and fall into a comfortable early coffin.
When you don’t believe you have worth, you drive yourself past the breaking point. Then keep driving anyways. Until the wheels fall off. And you stop moving at all.
And behave however you have to survive, throughout. To numb some pain or self-pity. Leading to new negative events and repeats of previous patterns. Which all starts with emotional neglect. Which causes worthlessness wounds.
If your feelings, thoughts, and experiences don’t matter… you learn that you don’t matter.
We lose our voice because as children we didn’t receive verbal support or comfort.
We need to feel like our safety is of concern to our family or we’ll be unconcerned with it, ourselves.
Our social needs have to be considered and cared for or we end up poorly connected.
We learn to detach from our feelings as inconveniences when they’ve been treated as such, so we detach from our emotional centers, so our wellness and mobility are affected.
We’re treated poorly by the systems we’re surrounded by. First, families, then the rest of the world.
And the way we’re treated causes us to treat ourselves the same.
Internalizing the lesson, the self-talk, and the self-punishment that go along with emotional maltreatment. Keeping ourselves in a looped track of abuse and unhappiness and unwellness.
And so, I urge you to discover your worth-less beliefs, perhaps hiding beneath all your other negative self beliefs.
And see the ways they drive behaviors that – not to be dramatic – torture you and ruin your life.
For example: Overworking, underworking, socially withdrawing, socially escaping with unsafe people, living in squalor, chronically self-deprivating, compulsively self-overindulging, health obsession, health avoidance, abusive relationships – from both ends.
And when you find them?
I recommend you speak to them with people you can process with.
Rewiring worth-less-ness
Returning to the article:
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
A large body of research suggests a positive relationship between exposure to traumatic events, intrusive rumination, and PTSD [13].
Intrusive rumination refers to involuntary, repetitive, and distressing thoughts about the trauma and its consequences [9]. Deliberate rumination is a voluntary, purposeful cognitive engagement with posttraumatic thoughts and emotions, often involving a struggle to find meaning and make sense of the trauma [9, 15].
These two forms of rumination are related; research shows that intrusive rumination occurring shortly after a trauma can strongly trigger deliberate rumination, which in turn can facilitate growth [16]. A fundamental re-examination of core beliefs is often initiated through deliberate rumination. This voluntary engagement with posttraumatic thoughts and cognitions usually involves struggling to extract meaning from the trauma [15].
Both forms of rumination can underlie both PTG and PTSD, but deliberate rumination is more strongly associated with PTG, while intrusive (automatic) rumination is more associated with PTSD [8, 17].
We probably have learned that PTSD and rumination are fond butt buddies. But there are different types of ruminatory thinking: intrusive (accidental) and deliberate. Core beliefs are often created by intrusive post-traumatic thinking, whereas they can be rewritten by deliberate rumination that produces positive meaning from the negative event. Deliberate rumination, therefore, is a requirement for post-traumatic growth rather than ongoing symptomology.
Sounds nice, but if you’ve lived through it, you might realize that intrusive and deliberate rumination can be hard to separate. Deliberate attempts are often corrupted by those intrusions, because both thought pathways are coming out of the same brain, using the same wires.
So is there a way out of the intrusive rumination station that creates and doubles-down on negative core beliefs?
…Individuals who can share their experiences with others and engage in verbal communication are more likely to experience PTG [4]. It is hypothesized that when health personnel actively provide each other with social support, they often find meaning and identify many positive aspects or insights (“positive points”) during verbal communication with others, which facilitates growth [18]. These social support opportunities may facilitate the cognitive and emotional processes necessary for growth [16].
Yes.
Social support may foster creation of more positive beliefs after a traumatic event. People can re-affirm your worth and re-right the shattered cognitions caused by the negative happening. They can correct your thoughts, reminding you that you aren’t specially doomed. Having access to their core beliefs can help reset yours.
OR… a broadly negative social environment might help to substantiate them.
If connection isn’t available. If the negative event is downplayed. OR if the trauma is given too much attention, in a negatively slanted way… the worthlessness and fear can be supported – confirmed - rather than reframed.
So, remember, don’t wade through your fucked up core beliefs alone.
Or they might only become rumination traps that make the beliefs even bigger or appear more evidenced in your life.
Healthy social connections and communications are the solution to redrafting fucked up core beliefs. Tapping into outside perspectives, rather than cycling through the worst of yours.
Self-worth treatment
And, at the same time, recognizing that you aren’t separate from the species.
To believe that you’re the worst or the worthlessiest? Is to believe that you’re distant and distinct from everyone else. Counter to common understanding, it’s indicative of a large ego.
To have a healthy ego, actually, is to recognize worth-equal-ness with mankind.
Which means talking to and treating yourself the way others treat themselves.
Not expecting too much or too little from yourself.
Cutting yourself slack but also holding yourself to your own standards.
Listening to what you feel and need.
Taking on what makes sense for you; saying “no” to what does not.
Holding others to your agreements, and upholding them yourself.
Experiencing joy.
Having comforts.
Tending to the body – physically and in those stupid goddamn emotions.
Accepting dishes you can and want to eat… rather than scarfing down shit sandwiches, just because that’s what arrives with the dinner bell after a long life of self-neglect.
And so, because there’s never a better time to start, I invite you to challenge yourself and your self worth this summer. Through talking about it, questioning core beliefs of self-disparagement, leaning on what feels like delusionally positive self-regard (but is really just reflection of lived experience) when your feelings get hard, and changing rutted behaviors that normally arise from default thoughts and emotions… to see what better outcomes might (shockingly) occur.
And remember. When times get harder, it’s more important than ever to see yourself as deserving of care. That’s how you don’t abandon yourself. Don’t leave the house empty to be pillaged by anyone walking by. Don’t allow your nervous system to be untethered from reality.
You tend to it.
Be the caregiver you always needed.
Be your own priority, for once.
And see that all the years you treated yourself like shit clearly didn’t prevent misfortune. You didn’t spare yourself suffering by aligning your behaviors with how these systems seemed to want you to value yourself. By being unburdensome or holding it together for everyone or passively staying out of the way of the world… there haven’t been rewards or reliefs.
That’s the old way of doing it. And the results have been consistently negative.
So maybe it’s time to try a new approach, despite everything in you insisting that it’s not possible or allowed. Following those instructions hasn’t panned out yet, don’t you want to try something else?
Challenge the worth-less beliefs that might be acting like superstitions, forcing you to relive the careless environment from which you came.
And find out what can happen if you lived outside of the shadow of abuse.
It’s time to prove it to yourself through behavioral change, not thinking about what’s stopping you from doing it.
You are worth-more than you know. And there’s only one way to find out the truth. Bravely behaving like it.
Thanks for being here for this message.
May you OBEY a new internal working model and create a new world experience for yourself in the process.
And I’ll talk to you soon.