Replacing Maladaptive Belief Systems: A Guided Exercise

Welcome to this talk on identifying maladaptive belief systems and replacing them with healthier and more appropriate ones.

I'm psychologist Dr.

Tracey Moreno.

Belief systems are our beliefs about nearly everything in life.

What we believe to be true about ourselves and others,

About the world,

About our morals,

Values,

Our own personal philosophies.

These beliefs drive our behavior and affect nearly every decision we make in life,

No matter how big or small.

They influence what we say,

How we say it,

And what we choose to do or not do.

Most of our beliefs are created on an unconscious level,

Either verbally or non-verbally,

And are not actively thought about when making decisions.

They continually operate on autopilot in the back of our mind,

Kind of like how cell phone apps run and update themselves in the background,

Even when we're not actively using them.

The problem is most of our belief systems are unconsciously created as children,

And we end up living out our adult life based on these beliefs.

Now think about that for a moment.

An adult making not only day-to-day decisions,

But also life-changing ones,

All based on beliefs of a child.

Does that sound like good decision-making?

It would be like consulting with a child when we decide how we want to live as an adult,

Asking that child to determine our priorities in life,

Or determine what type of person we date or marry,

Or how to parent.

It seems pretty absurd when we think about it this way,

And yet given its enormous impact on us,

We usually aren't even aware of these beliefs,

But we need to be.

We have a responsibility to ourselves to assess our beliefs as adults and rework or replace any that are irrational,

Not true,

And not congruent with how we want to live our life currently.

As children,

We have no choice but to live with the beliefs of our parents or caregivers,

Because we can't make our own choices to determine on our own what we choose to believe or what we don't.

But as adults,

We do have this choice.

It's like being raised with a certain religion or following your parents' political ideology or the importance of higher education,

Establishing a work ethic,

Or how to manage money.

Our beliefs can also be created as adults.

They can be created at any point in our life.

They can be created with each new success or failure,

With each new experience or tragedy.

We can believe that marriage is forever and divorce is a sin.

However,

If one day you find yourself in a toxic marriage,

You may change that belief.

Or we may believe that,

Not believe in someone being gay.

However,

If one day one of our children comes out as being gay to us,

We may change that belief.

A frequent problem in therapy is people's general satisfaction with their life.

They wanted something different,

And now they may find themselves middle-aged and wondering how the heck they got here.

Well,

It's usually because their priorities are different than the priorities that they were raised with,

But they've continued with those priorities that they were raised with.

Most of us don't even realize this problem because we just go through life and do what we're taught to do,

And we usually don't give it much thought.

I've had clients who've said they got married and had kids because that's what they thought they were supposed to do.

Or people who went to college because that's what was expected of them.

I've had many clients stay married because they had to for religious reasons.

Or people who put work first even when they say family is their number one priority.

There are really endless examples of this.

So let's assess some of your beliefs and make sure they're consistent with what you truly believe.

Go ahead and grab pen and paper,

And I will guide you through this exercise.

If you need some time to get that pen and paper,

Just pause this recording and come back when you're ready.

And if you need more time to answer any of the questions that I'm going to ask you,

You can also pause the recording and continue whenever you're ready.

So let's first look at our priorities in life.

I want you to list them in order of importance.

Include family,

Spouse,

Kids,

Work,

Friends or social life,

Hobbies,

You,

Your self-care,

And anything else that you find important.

Now think about how you actually live your life.

Write down how those same priorities are really prioritized in your day-to-day life.

Like the example of wanting family to be your number one priority,

But in reality,

Work really is.

Now take a look at the two lists.

Are they consistent?

Are you living your day-to-day life consistent with your real priorities?

If not,

Think about what beliefs influence your decisions that lead to you choosing the wrong priorities.

For example,

If family is your priority,

But you tend to choose work first,

The belief could be regarding your work ethic or your financial stability or maybe success in your career.

For each priority that is not consistent,

I want you to think about that and write down where you think this belief could be coming from.

Now,

Let's rework any maladaptive beliefs and write a new belief that's consistent with what you want your priorities to be.

Using the same example with work and family,

The new belief could be nothing is more important than family.

I need to choose them first because I'll never get this time back with them.

Now,

It's important to note that this is not an all or nothing rule.

Nothing is.

There may be times when work really does have to come first,

But this should be temporary,

Like when we're working on a project or trying to meet a deadline.

But this shouldn't be a problem if we normally put family first.

To correct these belief systems,

Write down some ways that you can live life more consistently with the first list you wrote of your true priorities.

Think about what changes you can make in your day-to-day life.

For example,

For putting family first,

This could be being home for dinner each night and not taking work home with you.

Maybe spending more quality time with your spouse or kids.

Now,

We're going to talk about belief systems that could be causing us some problems in life.

But first,

I want you to just write down some of the biggest problems in your life.

Just make a list of them and write a brief description of each problem.

This could just be very simple in just a couple words.

For each problem,

Are there any beliefs that are making these problems worse or preventing you from fixing them?

For instance,

You may hate your job and want to start your own business but believe you're not good enough or smart enough to succeed.

Or you may suffer from anxiety or depression but won't go to therapy because you believe you should handle your problems by yourself or that talking about your problems is a waste of time.

Go ahead and try to figure out what beliefs could be worsening the problems you wrote down and write down those answers.

Now,

Write down where you think these beliefs came from.

For each problem or belief,

Write where it came from.

It could be a parent,

Maybe a grandparent,

A spouse,

A coach,

A teacher,

Or maybe it came from you.

Now,

Write down whether you agree or disagree with this belief and to help you answer this,

Ask yourself,

Is it congruent with your beliefs now?

Does it fit into your life and how you want to live it?

Now write down whether you believe these beliefs are rational or irrational.

To help you answer this question,

Ask yourself,

Do they make sense in your life now?

They could have made sense in the past as a child,

As a teen,

But do they make sense now?

Now,

Let's rework the beliefs that you really don't believe in or that are irrational.

We're going to write a new belief for each one of these.

For example,

You can believe you are not a good parent because you didn't have a good parent to be a good role model for you.

You realize now this belief came from maybe your mom and you determine this belief is irrational and that it's actually a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You could be sabotaging yourself to make poor decisions as a mom to unconsciously confirm your belief system.

The new belief that will replace this old and maladaptive one could be,

The type of mom I am has nothing to do with my mom.

I can be a good mom regardless of how I was raised.

Go ahead and write a new belief system that actually makes more sense in your life.

Now,

Write down what changes you can make.

Using the previous example of being a better mom,

You would need to assess what a good mom looks like.

If you believe a good mom is someone that makes sure you have family dinners every night together or tucks their kids into bed at night and reads to them or maybe a good mom is more affectionate.

If being a good mom is one of your top priorities,

Then we'll have to shift some things around in your day-to-day life to make these things happen.

It can be hard at first,

But just remember why you're doing this.

The reward is living a life consistent with our beliefs and knowing that we did our best to achieve it.

Go ahead and write what behavioral changes you can make and what changes you can make in your thoughts as well to help you live up to these new belief systems.

Every time a belief system is created,

We unconsciously search out ways to prove we're right and to validate the belief.

Anything that challenges or contradicts the belief,

We can ignore it or explain it away.

For example,

I have a fear of abandonment,

Let's say.

I create the belief that I'm not enough and everyone will leave me.

Then throughout my life,

Every time someone leaves,

I say,

See,

I was right.

I knew it.

They left just like everyone else.

I must not be good enough or they would have stayed.

But every time someone stayed,

We ignored it or we disregarded it.

Oh,

Well,

My mom stays,

She doesn't count.

She has to love me.

Or if they did leave but left for reasons that had nothing to do with me,

I probably wouldn't believe there are other reasons or I would think it doesn't matter because if they loved me enough,

They would have stayed no matter what the reason.

This maladaptive thinking occurs because our brain has a need to be right.

It's a hit to our ego when we're wrong and it makes us feel badly or uncomfortable in some way.

It's a no-win situation though.

But if we really stop to think this through,

Our brain is wrong if we're believing something that's not only not true but hurtful to us.

Our ego would rather go through life believing things that can be so painful to us that they're correct when they're really wrong.

That's the power of our mind and our ego.

For your therapy homework,

I want you to search out situations that validate the new belief systems that you've just created and acknowledge situations that challenge the old belief.

Using the previous example,

My new belief could be people come in and out of our life.

We all have our own reasons for leaving that usually aren't because of me.

If someone does leave because they think I'm not good enough,

Then I don't want them in my life anyway.

So I will acknowledge each time someone stays or when they leave for reasons that have nothing to do with me.

I will also look within and recognize when and why I go in and out of someone's life.

If we can have a better awareness and make these beliefs more conscious,

Then we can process them logically and intellectually to see for ourselves just how wrong they are or maybe how right they are.

Hopefully this can help you live a more satisfying and authentic life that's congruent with what you believe in what you want.

Life is just way too short to live by someone else's belief systems and beliefs that we no longer believe.

So good luck to you and thank you for listening.