Negative Core Belief

Bring it into the Light and offer yourself Kindness

You’ll find the recording for my latest Substack post here.

There’s one more piece I’d like to ponder on arising out of the conversation with my friend, and what I said in the last post that I put out about noticing stuff. The mindful self-compassion approach acknowledges that, somewhere, deep down, we’ve probably got some sort of negative core belief.

There’s a process in the course for finding that negative core belief that gets buried deep down. When therapy gets to work, therapy is having a good old look around at what that might be, these shadows or dark aspects of ourselves. We’re not trying to do that here, we’re not trying to do a deep therapy session here, far from it, but it is important to notice stuff that’s going on. So, this process allows us to dig down a little bit, and find a negative core belief that he’s probably having an effect on us.

Now what I talked about in the previous posting about “I’m better than you. I could do this better than you” well, that becomes a negative core belief for me because it’s not especially clean or clear. I guess if I had a core belief that I’m better than anybody else, and I threw in a bit of narcissism, and a bit too much pride, well, I can think of a politician or two that fit that bill. Mine is a negative core belief about being better than you that then comes out sideways, as I called it, and works away and has a negative impact on me and my behaviour.

And what I was pondering on recently was that having identified it, I can then shine a light on it. It’s the same with the negative core belief. Any negative core belief, we need to sort of dig it out, not in a deep ruminating, worrying way, but in a mindful way. Okay, I see, that’s what’s going on. And that gives us a chance to name it, and then to do something about it. And the main thing to do about it is to be kind. These negative core beliefs on the whole have come from an earlier, probably childhood experience, about this, that or the other. Quite likely it was about you as a little child who didn’t have the opportunity to do anything about it then. And then it got stuck as something you’ve believed from way back.

It’s got stuck, and so you need to be kind to yourself and kind to that little child who maybe didn’t experience kindness when he or she was a child. So, there’s a chance now to put your hand on your heart space, and really acknowledge that little child in you, how they’re still struggling with this negative core belief, but not doing it very consciously. So we get it out in the light, and we’re kind.

The short version of finding that is something like this. Is there something, some recent behaviour of yours that you’re aware of, that you’re not very proud of. And if there is a behaviour like that, that you’re not very proud of, take a bit of time with it, and ask yourself this: what is it that I don’t want other people to know is going on inside me? What does this behaviour represent about me that I really do not want other people to know that’s going on inside me? What is it? What is the secret here? What is the shame here around something I’m believing about myself, something I’m believing about myself that makes me into, or I believe makes me into a wrong person, a bad person or whatever it might be. Have a look at that and see what comes up and with mindfulness acknowledge it. The common humanity piece here is that we’ve all got them, and this is a chance for us to learn and share with each other and get this stuff out.

And then be kind, have that kind relationship, probably with that little child who didn’t get the kindness they deserved when they were a little child. And bring in compassion. And see what happens next.