When people you care about have been unkind, abusive or critical when you’re young, you can develop self-limiting beliefs that inhibit your confidence and motivation to excel. It might be scary to move forward with our goals. It might dampen your motivation, or in extreme cases, contribute to depression.
Some of these limiting beliefs are just internalized messages you got from those around us. Other times they are self-made decisions about who you are and what you’re capable of.
It’s very sad when working wonderful, gifted, beautiful clients tell me that they’re fat, ugly, incompetent, losers, etc. I ask them, “Where do you come up with this? Who told you this?” Sometimes it is based on comparisons to what you see in the media as the ideal woman or man. You look at the unrealistic standards and say, “I can never match that, so I must be defective.”
Other times it’s directly related to what other people told you, maybe because your caregivers, teachers or peers were unhappy and insecure. Perhaps you are from a group of people that is marginalized by society, like BIPOC or LGBTQ+. Sometimes people are jealous of you because of your talent, beauty, or the beautiful spirit inside you. Whatever the reason, it’s hard as a young person to see the poisonous motives of hateful people, especially when it’s someone you love and depend on for survival.
How can you work with your self-limiting beliefs?
I propose a three-pronged approach to changing your self-limiting beliefs. This involves questioning your beliefs; revising what you tell yourself; and filtering what other people tell you.
Question your self-limiting beliefs and the feelings that go with them.
Questioning your beliefs means that when you notice yourself feeling sad, angry, tired or frightened, you ask yourself “what just happened?” If there are no outside events that triggered this, chances are that the feeling came from within. What conclusion about yourself arises from how you feel now? If your emotions didn’t arise from physical needs, like for food, rest or sex, they might arise from something mental you’re saying to yourself.
EMDR therapy asks a lot about how you think about yourself, especially in response to negative experiences like past abuse or other traumas. We can use EMDR therapy and clinical hypnosis to work with self-limiting beliefs to change the way you feel in relation to yourself, and how you think about yourself as well. You might have internalized something terrible that someone told you, or you felt responsible for someone else’s mistreatment. Clinical hypnosis can help you revise your attitude about yourself by bypassing the usual script that you play in your head.
If the mind has the power to make you miserable, it also has the power to make you feel happy, empowered and competent. You might ask, “what was I thinking to make me feel this way?” and once you have the thought, then ask “what evidence do I have for this? what evidence contradicts it?” This can loosen up the death grip you might have to your current belief system and allow you to think other things.
Challenge the self-limiting beliefs when they arise.
Once you have an idea of what you’re telling yourself and you’ve established it’s not making you feel good, then you can start to correct it when it comes up. Instead of saying, “I’ll never get that job I want”, you can say instead “I haven’t gotten the job I want yet, but I haven’t tried everything I possibly can. What’s next on my list of possible approaches?” This is more realistic and hopeful. There’s always hope as long as you’re breathing and alive.
Assert yourself and/or ditch people who are unnecessarily critical.
Finally, surround yourself with people who are supportive and kind, but realistic too. Realistic, considerate feedback helps you change in a positive way if you take it as a helpful intervention. If, however, you are being criticized for something you can’t help, or harshly criticized and shamed, then you may want to find new friends.
If you’re stuck dealing with people who do this to you, you’ll need to learn to filter what other people say so as not to damage your self-esteem. Sometimes in frustration, anger or self-involvement, people say hurtful things to us. There may be a grain of truth in what they say, but the message is conveyed so hurtfully that you block it out completely.
Instead of building concrete brick walls around ourselves, try cyclone fencing. That way some of the good can come through, like the truth in what others say, while still protecting you from invasion. If the people who are shaming you are your employer or coworkers, you can look for employment elsewhere. If the shamers are in your family, it might be time to either find other housing or ask them to leave (if they won’t stop mistreating you). You can learn to be assertive so you’re not constantly reinfected with self-limiting beliefs from others.
If you have questions or want to discuss these issues further, please feel free to call me at 661-233-6771.
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