Self limiting beliefs

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Hi family,

Over the years I've spent a lot of time delving into the personal growth arena and taken courses, attended webinars from experts in various fields, and have tons of content, literature and scribble packed notebooks at home.

One of the topics that frequently arose was around self limiting beliefs and our subconscious mind.  In short, messages that we receive from our FOO, influencing individuals (school teachers, our community) and our environment as children can stick in our unconscious mind and drive or at least influence a lot of our behaviours/attitudes in life.  These messages aren't necessarily forced upon us, may not be intentional or even outwardly negative in their nature.  Even with the best of intentions as parents, we can shape our child's thought patterns in a way that has a less than desirable effect for them in the future.  The messages we receive early in life, whether verbally or visually, can affect our belief system and that can in turn affect us as individuals and how we approach things. 

One such belief might be that you must work hard and do long hours in order to earn a living.  I bought into that one, for example, and followed in the footsteps of my father until I decided it didn't serve me, re examined where that belief arose from, it's validity to me, and considered that there are alternative ways to generate revenue which don't require running myself into the ground much as he did.  Another was 'waste not want not'.  This affected me to a ridiculous degree.  For years I couldn't hand back an unclean plate in a restaurant or throw away food from my fridge.  Thank goodness food recycling commenced, or I'd still be as neurotic about insisting my partner finish my mean or palming off unwanted or out of date goods on anyone who visited rather than waste these! 

I spent one of my counselling sessions exploring some of the self limiting beliefs I recognise I hold (they can be hard to weed out) some months ago and recently a new revelation came to mind so I thought I'd share.  The revelation was around values and beliefs that I have which are very important to me and I believed were only positive.  It seems that some of the things I have stuck rigidly to throughout my life, never considering the way that they don't actually always serve me, and have done me considerable harm in the way that I've approached dysfunctional relationships.
 
Here are a couple of the statements I absorbed as a child (which I can now identify as self limiting beliefs - at least some of the time) that I feel have fed into my cycle of destructive codependent relationships:

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated

2 If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

3 If you're going to do something, do it properly

It's pretty clear to me now that the first one has led me into situations where I was unable to imagine walking away from someone who clearly needed help - whether they were to prepared to accept that fact or not.  In my mind I believed that if I were in such a situation I would want someone who loved me to stay by my side and try to help me come to terms with my issues and give me the support I needed to tackle these head on.  Wanting to help people stems from my own inner child crying out for help and feeling unimportant.  Volunteering myself to help others work through their problems came to me as naturally as breathing, as deep down I knew that is what I would want someone to do for me. 

The second one reflects my grit and determination, both in a professional sense and a personal one to never be beaten or give up.  No matter what.  Always looking for different approaches and never accepting defeat.  No matter the cost to myself.  So many years of my life in this self destructive dedication to always trying and refusing to walk away... .

The third speaks to me about my commitment to something or someone.  The speed at which I allowed things to progress without considering the option to ask for things to slow down, taking on more than I felt comfortable doing and putting it down to part of doing it properly, going for it, immersing myself.  Very all or nothing I guess.  I'm fully in or I'm fully out.  My grandparents were married for 52 years before my grandfather died and my parents have been together all my life.  It seems that when I think I have met 'the one' I am prepared to commit fully to the good the bad and the ugly as a 'real' relationship is a lasting one.  I need to rethink this.  As someone said in another thread, better a happy fulfilling and healthy relationship for a couple of years than a toxic one for a lifetime. 

Just thought I'd share my thoughts and see if there are any self limiting beliefs that anyone else here can recognise that have specifically influenced their decisions in relationships?

Love and light x

   

[Harley Quinn]

Hi family,

Over the years I've spent a lot of time delving into the personal growth arena and taken courses, attended webinars from experts in various fields, and have tons of content, literature and scribble packed notebooks at home.

One of the topics that frequently arose was around self limiting beliefs and our subconscious mind.  In short, messages that we receive from our FOO, influencing individuals (school teachers, our community) and our environment as children can stick in our unconscious mind and drive or at least influence a lot of our behaviours/attitudes in life.  These messages aren't necessarily forced upon us, may not be intentional or even outwardly negative in their nature.  Even with the best of intentions as parents, we can shape our child's thought patterns in a way that has a less than desirable effect for them in the future.  The messages we receive early in life, whether verbally or visually, can affect our belief system and that can in turn affect us as individuals and how we approach things. 

One such belief might be that you must work hard and do long hours in order to earn a living.  I bought into that one, for example, and followed in the footsteps of my father until I decided it didn't serve me, re examined where that belief arose from, it's validity to me, and considered that there are alternative ways to generate revenue which don't require running myself into the ground much as he did.  Another was 'waste not want not'.  This affected me to a ridiculous degree.  For years I couldn't hand back an unclean plate in a restaurant or throw away food from my fridge.  Thank goodness food recycling commenced, or I'd still be as neurotic about insisting my partner finish my mean or palming off unwanted or out of date goods on anyone who visited rather than waste these! 

I spent one of my counselling sessions exploring some of the self limiting beliefs I recognise I hold (they can be hard to weed out) some months ago and recently a new revelation came to mind so I thought I'd share.  The revelation was around values and beliefs that I have which are very important to me and I believed were only positive.  It seems that some of the things I have stuck rigidly to throughout my life, never considering the way that they don't actually always serve me, and have done me considerable harm in the way that I've approached dysfunctional relationships.
 
Here are a couple of the statements I absorbed as a child (which I can now identify as self limiting beliefs - at least some of the time) that I feel have fed into my cycle of destructive codependent relationships:

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated

2 If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

3 If you're going to do something, do it properly

It's pretty clear to me now that the first one has led me into situations where I was unable to imagine walking away from someone who clearly needed help - whether they were to prepared to accept that fact or not.  In my mind I believed that if I were in such a situation I would want someone who loved me to stay by my side and try to help me come to terms with my issues and give me the support I needed to tackle these head on.  Wanting to help people stems from my own inner child crying out for help and feeling unimportant.  Volunteering myself to help others work through their problems came to me as naturally as breathing, as deep down I knew that is what I would want someone to do for me. 

The second one reflects my grit and determination, both in a professional sense and a personal one to never be beaten or give up.  No matter what.  Always looking for different approaches and never accepting defeat.  No matter the cost to myself.  So many years of my life in this self destructive dedication to always trying and refusing to walk away... .

The third speaks to me about my commitment to something or someone.  The speed at which I allowed things to progress without considering the option to ask for things to slow down, taking on more than I felt comfortable doing and putting it down to part of doing it properly, going for it, immersing myself.  Very all or nothing I guess.  I'm fully in or I'm fully out.  My grandparents were married for 52 years before my grandfather died and my parents have been together all my life.  It seems that when I think I have met 'the one' I am prepared to commit fully to the good the bad and the ugly as a 'real' relationship is a lasting one.  I need to rethink this.  As someone said in another thread, better a happy fulfilling and healthy relationship for a couple of years than a toxic one for a lifetime. 

Just thought I'd share my thoughts and see if there are any self limiting beliefs that anyone else here can recognise that have specifically influenced their decisions in relationships?

Love and light x

   

[heartandwhole]

Hi HQ,

Well I'm 3 for 3 with you. I can relate very much to what you've written. I think you make a good point that any belief can become distorted, or be taken to a level that is unhealthy. As we grow and evolve, I think it's important to revisit our beliefs and values to check in and see if they are serving, if they match the person we are becoming, and if they are adding joy to our lives. Kudos to you for making the effort to examine yourself and your values/beliefs and get honest about them.

I know one belief that I picked up from my dad came from a statement he made that just stuck in my head. It was basically "Nobody cares." In various forms, such as "no one is interested in other people really; they are interested in themselves."

On the one hand, that ingrained message keeps me humble and able to do what I want to do without worrying about "what the neighbors think." I tend not to really care what others think about what I'm up to.    On the other hand, so many times I have assumed that what I feel and think and do doesn't interest anyone else. Even people close to me. Even people who could become close to me. I'm sure I've missed opportunities to reach out to people because I assumed they wouldn't care about or be interested in me or my issues.

So, I just try to do as much as I can myself. And sometimes it's great and other time it's exhausting and lonely.   I can't "sell" myself, either. When I work freelance, I give my 100% best and often have success, but when it comes to letting people know I exist and have something to offer, I fail miserably. It's not that I'm not confident in my abilities; I just assume no one cares/they're not interested. That's my default assumption.

This is a limiting belief that I'd like to change. But I like the part of it that "lives and lets live." So it's freeing in a way, too. Anyway, the part I'd like to change requires me to be more vulnerable, which is something I'm working on.

Thanks for letting me share.

heartandwhole

[takingandsending]

Hi HQ. 

I think we have a whole host of self limiting beliefs, but my experience is that they distill down into core basic assumptions we hold about ourselves -  beliefs that arise out of meanings we gave to life events that happened when we were young (mostly) and fitted to future events to reinforce their validity. And it is often the case that nobody necessarily told us these basic assumptions but we ourselves began to tell ourselves these things based on the meanings we attributed to events in relation to ourselves.

I don't know that I hold those values that you shared as negative, in and of themselves. It is the addition of the core basic assumptions that we hold about ourselves that can turn otherwise benign truisms into self harming beliefs. FWIW, mine are:

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated

2 If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything [guess that's where that boundary around civil speech came from]

3 If you want something done properly, do it yourself

I have a basic assumption that I am weak and that I am undeserving. These are core assumptions that a facilitator helped me identify that I carry. So when I add these assumptions about myself to the above truisms that are often imparted as wisdom, they look more like:

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself, in the hope that you won't be run over or bullied

2 If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything because making waves may cause you to get hurt and draw attention to your own deficiencies

3 If you want something done properly, do it yourself because you should be able to do it on your own and asking for help is a sign of weakness

So, I ask you, are the truisms self limiting, or is it the beliefs that I held about myself? I don't think anyone intentionally was telling me this stuff hoping I'd build the conditional statements that I did. I did that myself. I told myself that. And I did it because of the early on assumptions I made about who I was and how the world saw me. And if you are anything like me, you may have spent a whole lot of your life trying to disprove those assumptions you hold in secret. I have created a whole other persona and career as someone competent, self confident, self reliant and compassionate.

So my challenge to you (and me). Can you find the good in your beliefs? Might they look something like?

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated, and treat yourself as you treat others

2 If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything but look for something nice in yourself and express that

3 If you want something done properly, do it yourself with the help of others for the joy of doing

Hope I haven't derailed this conversation. I like the topics you bring forward. They have a lot of meaning for me.

[takingandsending]

On the other hand, so many times I have assumed that what I feel and think and do doesn't interest anyone else. Even people close to me. Even people who could become close to me. I'm sure I've missed opportunities to reach out to people because I assumed they wouldn't care about or be interested in me or my issues.

Hi Heart. This one is me, in a nutshell. Think I've missed many opportunities, too. Truth told, my fear of being rejected stunts my ability to reach out to people. And I hold that core belief that I am not deserving of their interest.

And I agree that being vulnerable is the path into and out of the fear of rejection, the fear that no one cares. So somehow, self care creates the conditions for others caring. And self care involves being vulnerable enough to enter into a relationship with our raw center so that we don't always close it when threatened but somehow develop the bravery to remain open to ourselves as we relate with others. Does that make any sense?

[heartandwhole]

And self care involves being vulnerable enough to enter into a relationship with our raw center so that we don't always close it when threatened but somehow develop the bravery to remain open to ourselves as we relate with others. Does that make any sense?

It sure does, takingandsending.  How are you managing the dance between self-protection and allowing yourself to be vulnerable with others?

[takingandsending]

Still figuring out how to be open with myself, make friends with myself. Being vulnerable to others before that happens looks a lot like not having appropriate boundaries, which I tried with my xw. Did not turn out well.

Mostly, right now, I am trying to get to know me in the areas I have been avoiding and just sort of watch my thoughts/emotions and when I try to shut them down. Usually, that's a trail worth following to open up to pain I sort of carry on the down low.

[Torched]

I am also 3 for 3 with you here, or at least, I was.  Identifying these traits in myself (which developed from family beliefs as a young child) during counseling allowed me to come to terms with the fact that I had to change my relationship behaviors.  Understanding them also led me to discover that my ex spouse's behaviors were textbook BPD.  It was strange because I felt I should always treat her with love and respect regardless of her horribly inappropriate emotional abuses, I felt like it was my responsibility and only mine to fix her, and that I shouldn't do or say anything that hurt her.

This to me is a common behavioral factor for those of us on this board who spent more than two years (some decades; me 18 years) with a BPD partner.  People who don't have these core beliefs/tendencies don't put up with it more than a year or two.

In the end, I changed my tendencies in "the right" ways... .but I felt bitter, angry, and horribly cheated and could not overcome it even though she tried to improve herself.  Here's to starting over again after learning "the right ways" to live and relate to myself and other people.

[Panda39]

My department at work did the "Strength Finders" quiz.  It's a quiz that comes up with your 5 biggest strengths.

Number One on Panda's list "Responsibility" this is my double edged sword. You can count on me, I will get it done, I will own it, makes me an excellent employee (it actually saved my job during a period of layoffs at work), I do what I say I will and I won't let you down.

But I've also realized that I can take responsibility for things that aren't mine to own, that I can use responsibility to hide behind when I'm uncomfortable, that I experience awful conflict when put in the position to take responsibility for something I don't want to do, and struggle when I have too many responsibilities and can't do them all.  It was also part of my co-dependence in my marriage to an alcoholic husband.  We all get things out of that co-dependent dance and for me it was a self-esteem boost.  I was "better" than my ex, I "had it together", I met my responsibilities and he didn't.

The real underlying self limiting belief is that I am not good enough.

So I'm adding "being responsible" to the list that can sound good on the surface but can also go in an unhealthy direction.

Panda39

[Harley Quinn]

Hi Panda39,

The real underlying self limiting belief is that I am not good enough.

So I'm adding "being responsible" to the list that can sound good on the surface but can also go in an unhealthy direction.

This is a great example and also resonates with me.  Your descriptions of the ways it can affect you made sense to me as I've felt this way too.  

Thanks for sharing and adding to the list.  It's great that you have noticed this and with that awareness comes the opportunity for us to claim back our power over those situations that our positive beliefs can trip us up.

Love and light x

[Harley Quinn]

Hi heart,

This is a limiting belief that I'd like to change. But I like the part of it that "lives and lets live." So it's freeing in a way, too. Anyway, the part I'd like to change requires me to be more vulnerable, which is something I'm working on.

It's great to hear that you've identified what your actions need to be.  How do you approach the vulnerability?

The difficult part for me is knowing when these beliefs are not serving us and having the ability to put them to one side.  As you said about your dad's words, they can be so deeply ingrained that they run on continuously and I'm hopeful that I can be aware enough in the moment to recognise when they are taking the lead, and to intervene by effectively pressing pause when it is healthier to.  Because they also have positive aspects, they are not things I'd want to dispel altogether either.

Love and light x

[Harley Quinn]

Hi Torched,

Thanks for your reply. 

In the end, I changed my tendencies in "the right" ways... .but I felt bitter, angry, and horribly cheated and could not overcome it even though she tried to improve herself.  Here's to starting over again after learning "the right ways" to live and relate to myself and other people.

I'm curious to know if there were any suggestions that your counselor made around these beliefs which you found particularly helpful?  Could you share how you changed your tendencies in order to better relate to yourself and others?  Are these subtle shifts, for example or do you feel you've made more dramatic alterations?  This is very interesting and I'm pleased to hear you've managed to achieve such positive steps for yourself so that you can have a future which allows you to reap what you've sown.  That's fantastic.

Love and light x

[Harley Quinn]

Hi HQ. 

I think we have a whole host of self limiting beliefs, but my experience is that they distill down into core basic assumptions we hold about ourselves -  beliefs that arise out of meanings we gave to life events that happened when we were young (mostly) and fitted to future events to reinforce their validity. And it is often the case that nobody necessarily told us these basic assumptions but we ourselves began to tell ourselves these things based on the meanings we attributed to events in relation to ourselves.

I don't know that I hold those values that you shared as negative, in and of themselves. It is the addition of the core basic assumptions that we hold about ourselves that can turn otherwise benign truisms into self harming beliefs. FWIW, mine are:

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated

2 If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything [guess that's where that boundary around civil speech came from]

3 If you want something done properly, do it yourself

I have a basic assumption that I am weak and that I am undeserving. These are core assumptions that a facilitator helped me identify that I carry. So when I add these assumptions about myself to the above truisms that are often imparted as wisdom, they look more like:

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself, in the hope that you won't be run over or bullied

2 If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything because making waves may cause you to get hurt and draw attention to your own deficiencies

3 If you want something done properly, do it yourself because you should be able to do it on your own and asking for help is a sign of weakness

So, I ask you, are the truisms self limiting, or is it the beliefs that I held about myself? I don't think anyone intentionally was telling me this stuff hoping I'd build the conditional statements that I did. I did that myself. I told myself that. And I did it because of the early on assumptions I made about who I was and how the world saw me. And if you are anything like me, you may have spent a whole lot of your life trying to disprove those assumptions you hold in secret. I have created a whole other persona and career as someone competent, self confident, self reliant and compassionate.

So my challenge to you (and me). Can you find the good in your beliefs? Might they look something like?

1 Treat others as you would like to be treated, and treat yourself as you treat others

2 If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything but look for something nice in yourself and express that

3 If you want something done properly, do it yourself with the help of others for the joy of doing

Hope I haven't derailed this conversation. I like the topics you bring forward. They have a lot of meaning for me.

Hi t&s,

Thanks for your reply.  You haven't derailed at all!  This is exactly the type of discussion I was hoping for.  I appreciate you sharing your own examples of these types of beliefs and I can relate to the additional ones too as I was told these things also.  You're right, we have a host of them and the three I chose were the ones I suddenly realised had led a lot of my behaviour in the last relationship (that and others that haven't been positive for me).  My core assumption is that I'm not good enough and I don't matter.  You're right in that I've developed a persona and a life which attempts to cover for these assumptions. 

It's because of my awareness of these things that affect us, that I'm extremely conscious of the messages I am sending my son.  It's my ultimate goal that he will be unburdened by unconscious actions by myself that can damage his self belief later in life.  One of the things I teach him is that 'It's important to be kind, and that starts with being kind to ourselves.'  Another is 'You can do anything; you just have to find a way - and that way may be to ask for help.'

Your new slant on your beliefs is wonderful and I think you have hit the nail on the head here, in that putting aside the beliefs is difficult, however elaborating on them and giving them a more enlightened approach sounds very wise indeed.  I'm going to have a good think about all of my major self limiting beliefs and see how I can adopt this approach.  Watch this space... .Thank you t&s!

Love and light x   

[Torched]

Hi Torched,

Thanks for your reply. 

I'm curious to know if there were any suggestions that your counselor made around these beliefs which you found particularly helpful?  Could you share how you changed your tendencies in order to better relate to yourself and others?  Are these subtle shifts, for example or do you feel you've made more dramatic alterations?  This is very interesting and I'm pleased to hear you've managed to achieve such positive steps for yourself so that you can have a future which allows you to reap what you've sown.  That's fantastic.

Love and light x

Actually the counselor didn't make any suggestions.  He helped guide me to what parts of me were causing me problems.  In my case, being Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Fix-it, saddled with the other self-limiting beliefs mentioned here created and continued to maintain my bad relationship with my BPD partner.  I was SO good to her... .it got so bad in the first year that I learned just to let it go and let her do her thing.  Never any resolution; half the time she raged about nothing at all--just because she knew I was doing something with family or a friend or traveling for work.

I think me changing and getting better with boundary making was key.  I tried to enforce boundaries with her when I was young, but she was a very strong and stubborn personality who punished me very effectively with cold shoulder/non-communication.

Boundary making in the beginning would have resulted in us breaking up before marriage... .because I would have never made it past her first inappropriate rage.

The key to my future with relationships is to set boundaries and enforce them religiously.  That will keep me out of an unhealthy relationship.

[heartandwhole]

It's great to hear that you've identified what your actions need to be.  How do you approach the vulnerability?

As you could probably tell from my question to takingandsending, I don't approach it much 

I would like to change that. I think having been burned enough time when I've opened up, I tend to get into a resigned state of mind, which leaves me doing the self-sufficient dance and looking like I don't need anybody. But I really do. And what I want to work on is demonstrating that, in a healthy way, boundaries intact.

I can say that when I've managed to be vulnerable with people I didn't expect to be present for me, I was wrong—and pleasantly surprised. So, that is good news. I just have to be consistently brave and trust myself. 

heartandwhole

[takingandsending]

I can say that when I've managed to be vulnerable with people I didn't expect to be present for me, I was wrong—and pleasantly surprised. So, that is good news. I just have to be consistently brave and trust myself. 

   This makes me happy. We just have been in such twisted, relationships. The bravery/trust muscles need to be strengthened.

[Harley Quinn]

I can say that when I've managed to be vulnerable with people I didn't expect to be present for me, I was wrong—and pleasantly surprised. So, that is good news. I just have to be consistently brave and trust myself.  love

Hi heart,

This makes me happy too!  That's some great positive reinforcement for you.  It's quite possibly exactly what we could all use.  The initial bravery to put ourselves out there with our values in tact and to be open to what comes.  I have faith that people in general are good and that positive reception can be there for us if we can be courageous.  Good on you!  Sounds like your instincts are worthy of your trust. 

Love and light x

[Harley Quinn]

Hi Torched,

The key to my future with relationships is to set boundaries and enforce them religiously.  That will keep me out of an unhealthy relationship.

Have you thought about what your core values are?  Can you commit to these and uphold these no matter the situation?  I recognise this as an issue for myself in the past and feel it's time to sit down and actually write these out.  Our boundaries are the ways that we respect our core values and communicate to others how we wish to have these respected also.  It's a good starting point to consider them before entering another relationship so that we can be clear and align these values at the onset if we're a good match.  Something I wish I'd done long ago... .

Recognising beliefs that may conflict at times with our core values being respected by ourselves or others is also one way to learn how to adapt the belief so that this can't happen, as takingandsending describes well earlier in the thread.

Love and light x

[Harley Quinn]

Not trying to bump this thread, however I've been having more lightbulb moments recently and decided to capture these new insights for my own record.  As I think of more phrases that were drummed into me at an early age that I feel affected my beliefs, I will note them here in a list.

Memories that have crept out from the dark recesses include:

Children should be seen not heard = I am unimportant/unworthy/have no voice
Speak when you're spoken to = Other people's thoughts and feelings are more important than mine
A place for everything and everything in it's place = Monica Geller complex... .

Love and light x

[takingandsending]

Hey HQ.

That second one has been running through my brain lately. I've been wondering how many kids come away with that conclusion/assumption when they interrupt a parent's adult conversation and are told, "Can you see that I am talking? Don't interrupt - it's rude. Say 'Excuse me when you have something to say.'"

My BPDx was a big one for that, said the kids would never learn manners, etc. "You/your thoughts and feelings are not important" seems like an easy takeaway from all of that. I guess it depends on how it's delivered. If it's with patience, loving kindness and a bit gentle, hopefully the little person can leave with their dignity and self respect in tact. That should be the aim of any negotiations with a child, find a way that both adult and child get to keep their dignity and self worth. That's why children of BPD parents have such a hard time - their parent's self worth is so fragile that the kids never have a chance to have their own.