Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy podcast. We're so glad that you're here with us today. We're going to be jumping into a new series today, and we're going to be talking about negative cognitive cognitions, which are your negative beliefs, and oftentimes these come from trauma. And if you've listened to our podcast for any length of time, you've heard us talk about negative beliefs.
So this will be just the start of a series of episodes as we talk about different negative beliefs and the categories they fit into, and a big portion of it will be giving you examples of maybe what kind of trauma these beliefs have come from, and then how they continue in your daily life. And as you're listening, if you notice that one of these negative beliefs really resonate with you.
Write it down and take some time to reflect on that and think about instances or experiences that you've had where you've really felt these negative beliefs. And when we do EMDR, these negative beliefs and identifying them are really important. And the way that I explain it is, sure, the memory is important. We want to think about what memory, what trauma, what disturbing event did we have that we really kind of want to address or work on and process through.
But really underneath that is the negative belief. And that's really important to identify because that's really what continues on through your life. The trauma or the experience might be a one-time thing, that that negative belief may come up again and again in your life. And as it does, you may not be responding to the situation at hand, but without even knowing, you may still be responding to the initial hurt or the initial disturbance that happened.
That's not always the case, but a lot of times when these negative beliefs are first experienced, they begin to get dug deeper and deeper into your neural pathways ways every time you re-experience the same belief. So when we look at negative and positive beliefs, a lot of times they'll be put into a group. And so we're going to kind of address them in these sections. And some of these episodes might be a two-parter, but the first group is responsibility.
It's this belief of I am something wrong. And there's a whole list of negative beliefs under that. The next group is also under responsibility. It's I did something wrong. The next grouping is safety and vulnerability. And the last group that we'll talk about is control and choice. And this will be over a number of episodes, so join us as we jump into today's episode.
Now, one of the things I want to emphasize before we get too far into this is the idea that you may have one of these negative beliefs, but you may not be thinking about it on a regular basis, or you may not even be consciously aware that that negative belief is affecting you. And so having an understanding that these things might be operating underneath the surface and not words or phrases that might be regularly going through your mind is important to know when listening through this.
So a better indication if this is something that's operating under the surface is when we read one of these statements and if it pokes or prods you emotionally. If that pokes or prods you emotionally, that's our clue that this is something that is actually affecting you. So the first one we're going to talk about is I don't deserve love.
Now this negative belief system is something that can be caused by growing up in a household where love and affection are conditional on achievements or behaviors. This is also something that you can develop if you grow up in an emotionally neglectful household.
And so if your parents or your guardian was somebody who constantly was hammering on you, wanting better performance, better performance, better performance, and they withheld love and affection from you because you didn't do well, or they got overly angry or agitated when you didn't do well, or they just didn't participate pay very much in your life at all. They were neglectful, whether they were in the house regularly or if they didn't live there and just hardly participated in your life.
Those things are sending messages. And they may never even say the words, you don't deserve love or I don't love you. But through their actions, you're able to infer how they feel about you or if they do love you. And a big part to note is that it doesn't necessarily matter what their intentions are, But it becomes a negative belief for you if you begin to identify with this and really feel like, oh, I don't deserve love, regardless of what the intentions are of the people around you.
And just to talk a little bit about how this negative belief can affect you in your life is, one, a lot of times what it causes you to do is dramatically lower your standards as far as finding your significant other. Because if you believe I don't deserve love, you essentially are programmed to take any kind of love that then comes your way and feel like, oh, this is better than what I deserve.
So a lot of times people who believe that they don't deserve love, they will find themselves with toxic partners, people who are going to treat them poorly, or people who might abuse them, or people who might regularly cheat on them.
And these are the people, a lot of times you see them just accepting this bad behavior over and over again, or constantly dating the same person by a different name who treats them the exact same way as their last partner because they are just so starved for the feeling of love and they want love, but they don't have the confidence to look for it in better places or the confidence to be able to tell somebody who's treating them poorly,
hey listen, this isn't working out for me. I'm going to go find somebody else. Another way that this can show up in your life is avoidance of close relationships that are healthy. So you may get into a relationship that is really great and people around you are like, man, he is such a great guy. I'm so glad you found him. And eventually you begin to sabotage this relationship. And like Tim said before, it's not necessarily this cognitive choice. I'm going to ruin this relationship.
But your feelings of not deserving love will begin to show up. And you'll start to feel uncomfortable around such a healthy relationship that does show you love because you feel like, oh, I don't deserve this. And somehow you'll back away or you'll end it in some way. And I think a lot of this can be attributed to what you're comfortable with and what you're used to. You're not comfortable to somebody loving you in the right way.
And so it feels off or wrong or too different from what you have experienced in the past. And so even though it's a good thing, that level of discomfort causes you to then want to shy away from it. Now, this isn't necessarily just something that we also develop when we're young. It is something that we can develop when we're older.
So if you go through a rough dating experience and you really treated your partner poorly, or you're married and then you end up getting a divorce because you made some really bad mistakes, then you also can still adopt this negative belief later on in life. And then it almost becomes this penance that you're constantly punishing yourself for the mistakes you had made previously.
And then that negative belief causes you to try to avoid being happy or being with somebody who treats you right because you were with somebody and then you messed it up before. The next negative belief is I am a bad person. And the examples that we're giving today is not by any means all inclusive because you'll notice that a lot of these are very similar. They're just worded differently, but they all kind of fall under that same category
of I am something wrong. There's something wrong with me. So a lot of these examples that we're giving will overlap or have very similar initial memories. So this next one of I'm a bad person could come from childhood trauma or just an upbringing where you're constantly criticized or punished harshly by parents or authority figures. And then you can see this kind of thread follow through to your current life by impacting you in ways where you're struggling with guilt and self-punishment.
You might have those same self-sabotaging behaviors in personal and professional settings things because you feel like I'm a bad person. It's very similar to the one before that I don't deserve love. And they could even be combined. I'm a bad person. I don't deserve love. But there's a lot of guilt and shame in this one. And I think when you have a negative belief like I'm a bad person, that's going to cause you to question all of your motivations.
And you're always going to give a negative bent to everything that you're doing. Even if you're trying to do something for for a good reason, you're like, well, but really my motivation is probably something selfish or something bad. And so a lot of times when you have that negative belief of I'm a bad person, even when you do good, you don't believe that that good has any value.
You believe there's still this undertone of bad that is associated with whatever your motivations and your behaviors are. So even if your behaviors come out with net positive for those who are around you, and it makes them feel good, you still don't give yourself credit for it because you're like, well, I'm a bad person. Next is I am terrible. An example of where this might develop is severe bullying or social rejection.
And so if you're in a situation where people are constantly treating you poorly, or they're making fun of you or giving you a hard time, and you can't do anything right in other people's eyes, a lot of times you might develop this negative belief system of I am terrible. And with a negative belief system like this, it's going to cause you to want
to be very avoidant. You're not going to want to put yourself in any type of position or situation where people People might be able to judge you or critique you because your assumption is going to be they're always going to judge or critique me negatively. Or even when somebody does give you a bit of positive praise, you might think to yourself, well, they don't really mean that. They're just saying that to be nice because I know what I did was terrible.
I know my performance was terrible. And so, of course, they didn't really mean that. And so it can really cause you to twist a lot of what people say and cause you not to trust what they say because you have this foregone conclusion of I am terrible and so everything I do is terrible. The next one is I am worthless or I am inadequate. And this can come from a lot of the things that were already talked about.
If your parents didn't give you the attention that you needed, there was some neglect, maybe their love and affection was conditional. But this can also come from repeated failures. And it doesn't necessarily have to be this competitive thing where you are on a Division I sports team and you just continue to mess up.
This could be you being in second grade and failing the spelling test or seeing that your best friend got an A plus and you got an A minus or any other situation where you didn't meet the standard, whether in your own eyes or in your parents' eyes, and it was met with ridicule or criticism instead of support, where it just feels in your daily life that I am inadequate, I am I'm worthless. And this can show up as low self-worth in your daily life.
It might manifest as being overly agreeable and kind of being a people pleaser, not really wanting to assert your own needs or pursue ambitions or opportunities because you feel like, well, I'm not adequate to succeed in that, or I'm not worth this opportunity. And this is one of the negative beliefs I think I see pretty frequently.
And one of the places I do see that oftentimes as a source of this does come from sibling rivalry, where you have one sibling who is maybe very naturally gifted in a specific area, and the other sibling is not so gifted in that specific area. And so then the one sibling gets a lot of praise, and the other sibling might not get criticism or might not even get compared to them.
But just looking at their sibling thrive in an area where you feel like maybe you can't thrive can definitely cause you to develop this negative belief system. And so it's not even necessarily something that has to be drilled into you from somebody meaning any ill intent. It can just be watching somebody soar and feeling like I can't do it the way that they do it.
Or the amount of work and effort I have to put in is so much more than what they have to, and then they still end up with a better outcome than I do. And a lot of these negative belief systems, they absolutely can be developed without any malice or ill intent from the other person. And one of the things I like to tell my clients all the time is, I don't care if it should hurt, all I care is does it hurt?
Because then then that means there's a wound there. It doesn't matter if logically that wasn't the scenario or it shouldn't bother you or it shouldn't hurt you. All that really matters to the idea of if there's trauma there is that it does hurt. The next one we're going to talk about is I am shameful. Now this is something that's very oftentimes associated with sexual things or intense public humiliation.
Now this can stem from sexual abuse or sexual activities that you have engaged in that you might feel embarrassed about, or just some private thing about you that has come out into the public realm, and you feel deeply ashamed or embarrassed about that thing that came out about you.
And when you develop a negative belief like I am shameful, that oftentimes causes people to become more secretive, and they want to hide aspects of themselves, and then have difficulty forming deep, meaningful, connected relationships. And one of the things we talked about in our last podcast when we talked about vulnerability, if you feel this deep sense of shame, it's hard for you to be vulnerable.
And when it's hard for you to be vulnerable, it's hard for you to create these real good healthy connections with other people. I think another area where I hear this often is in family secrets, where something happens and you tell your parents and they want to quiet it and make sure that you don't tell anyone else in the family, which then as a young child, you may not fully understand why, but it feels shameful. It feels like, oh, this part of me, I need to hide.
And this can come out later on too when you are going through puberty and maybe there's nothing wrong, but you have questions and so you ask your parents certain things and they feel uncomfortable about it. So they kind of hush you or they come at it with some kind of judgment like, oh, don't talk about that or no, don't do that. And you experience and you can feel that sense of a taboo subject. And so it becomes a source of shame.
Whereas what you really want is to have Have a safe environment for your kids to be able to ask questions about their changing bodies or ask questions about how babies are made or all of these things. You want to be able to just have an open conversation. No matter how uncomfortable it is for you, you want to be a safe space for them to come and talk to you about it. Because if they feel like they can't talk to you about it, they'll either stuff it down and feel that shame around that subject.
Or they'll go and they'll talk to somebody else and it may not be someone that you want giving your child counsel and guidance and answers. The next one is, I am not lovable. And like the others, it's a lot of enjoying of emotional abuse, consistent neglect, making you feel like you're unloved or you're unlovable. And like we've already addressed, it may not be their intention. They may just be so busy with work.
Time after time, they say, hey, can you play catch with me? Or can you do this with me? And you're like, no, not right now. and you never go back and spend time with them. Or you're consistently trying to get your parents attention and they're just too busy. And it may be good things that they're doing, but it still causes you to feel unlovable.
And I think this one is different from I don't deserve love because I am not lovable is an indication that there's no possibility because inherently in me, I am not a lovable thing or lovable person versus I don't deserve love is I don't do the right things to get love. So it's not saying that it's impossible for me to get love, it's just I don't deserve it. Versus I am not lovable is nobody can love me.
And so this can show up in your current life just by having difficulty developing intimate relationships or a tendency to push others away to avoid potential rejection or disappointment.
Disappointment it's like you have this deep belief of i'm not lovable and so in order to protect yourself from getting close to anyone you push people away so that there's not even the potential for that rejection all right guys that's about all the time that we have for today thank you so much for listening and remember. Music. Your mind is a powerful thing thank you so much for tuning Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Mr. and Mrs.
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