Music. Music. Back to the Mr. and Mrs. Therapy podcast, we're so glad that you're here with us today. We've been in a series on our negative cognitions and negative beliefs. And so we're breaking it into five different sections. The first one is responsibility or feeling like I am something wrong, like there's something wrong with me. The second was I did something wrong. We've already done those two sections.
And if you haven't already listened to that, go back and listen Listen to that and then join us today. We're going to cover the first part of safety and vulnerability and the negative cognitions and negative beliefs that come along with that. Please bear with me as I've lost my voice. So we will work through this together, but join us as we jump into today's episode. So the first one we're going to be discussing is I cannot be trusted.
Now people can oftentimes develop this if they grew up in an environment as a child where their actions were constantly in doubt or scrutinized. This can also happen if you're repeatedly being told that you're unreliable. And so this is not necessarily something where you have done things where you have proven yourself to be untrustworthy, but it's just people never giving you trust. And then it causes you to then have this negative belief system of I cannot be trusted.
And when you're struggling with a negative belief like I cannot be trusted, how this is going to play out in your life is you're going to have a lot of self-doubt and avoiding of responsibilities because you believe that nobody's going to trust your actions or your intent or they're not going to trust what the outcome is going to be. And it is a part of that fear of that scrutiny coming back your way.
Once you have completed the task or the project, you're expecting people not to be happy with it. And obviously, this isn't something where it just happens once in a while, or maybe they do the dishes, and then as a parent, you come along, you redo it, or you tell them to brush their hair, and they say, I did, and then you go and rebrush it. But it's just this consistent pattern where they just feel like whatever they're doing, it's constantly being doubted or redone.
And I think just as a side note, as parents, if there's something that you want them to do, and you're not okay with them saying no, then don't phrase it as a question where they're seeing it as, okay, I have an option and then you override their decisions every time. But if you truly are okay with them saying no to it, then go ahead and phrase it as a question. So this is even in potty training. When you want them to go and try to use the bathroom, you don't say,
hey, do you wanna go to the bathroom? Or do you wanna go potty? You say, hey, let's go potty. Do you wanna go first or you want me to go first? Or, hey, we're going to go potty. I'll race you there. And so it's not necessarily a question. The same with maybe getting dressed. If you truly don't care what they wear and it's just kind of a free day, then let them choose.
But if you have maybe a formal event or it's a nicer occasion and you want them to wear something specific, then you say, hey, I need you to wear this dress. Or if it doesn't matter to you which dress or you have a couple options, you could say, hey, which of these dresses do you want to wear? But I think that's just our verbiage as parents. We ask a question and then we override it because it really wasn't a question. It was a statement and something that you wanted them to do.
Now, a couple of things that this negative belief can do is it can cause you to have anxiety regarding choices and over-reliance on others making decisions for you. And then it can also limit your personal growth because of fear of being independent. And so you're always relying on other people and then not pushing yourself or trying new things out for yourself because you're so afraid you're not going to make the right choices and then you're going to be scrutinized by other people.
So the first four negative cognitions are going to sound very similar. And they are very similar. They're all about trust. The first one was, I can't be trusted. This next one is, I cannot trust myself. So the first one you can kind of see was maybe viewing it as other people don't trust me. Like, I cannot be trusted by others. This next one is I cannot trust myself.
And even though it's just a little tweak, when we're doing EMDR, the slight differences in these statements do make a difference because we're really trying to figure out what belief and negative cognition resonates with you the most and resonates with whatever negative experience that you've had and that we're working on. And so it may seem like it doesn't even matter, but it really does matter in the wording. So I cannot trust myself.
Some of the trauma that this can come from is just experiencing repeated failures, especially if these failures were met with ridicule or punishment, or if there was some significant error in judgment or decision that you made that had severe consequences. It was just a weighty decision that you felt like you made the wrong decision on, and there were consequences for it.
So how this can show up in your everyday life is it can cause chronic indecision because kind of like the last one, you're so afraid of making decisions that. That it can cause anxiety regarding making choices. And so then you've just put off those choices and you're just indecisive. And I think something that differentiates this one from the other one is that a lot of times people who have this negative belief are questioning their own motivation.
Am I really doing this because of this reason or is it because of this other reason over here? And so they don't even trust their own thoughts or their own conclusions that they're drawing and they're always second-guessing themselves. Right, which then leads to an over-reliance on others for decision-making. Like they always have to check in with others, even for smaller decisions that don't really matter.
And so this kind of limits you on your own personal growth and independence because now you have a reliance on others and you feel like, well, I can't trust myself, so I need to rely on others to help make good judgment calls. And this is actually kind of a funny one too, because you may even have been instructed by somebody, here's how I want you to do this. And then later you start second guessing, well, did I hear them right? Or do I understand that right?
Am I interpreting this right? And so even though you've been given very clear instructions, you don't trust your own mind, you don't trust your own conclusions, and you don't trust that you recall what they told you to do appropriately. And so this belief of I cannot trust myself, maybe it's not even just judgments, because that'll lead into the next one, but it might even be like, I cannot trust my own behaviors. I can't trust my impulses.
Maybe it wasn't a specific decision that you're making, but you allowed things to happen. You didn't make a decision to stop something. And so a good example of this would be in an affair situation where maybe cognitively you've made a decision that I don't want to do this thing, but then you're in an environment where it continues to happen and you're not removing yourself from that environment. And so you just don't trust yourself in those situations.
The next one is I cannot trust my judgment. And so you might develop this negative belief if you're in a relationship where you're constantly being manipulated or gaslit.
Gaslit and the reason why this develops this negative belief is because somebody's kind of constantly twisting you around and so you think something and then they're able to kind of trick you or deceive you into thinking that what you think is wrong as a matter of fact i don't know if you guys are aware but it's very interesting the term gaslit actually comes from a pretty old movie where the husband they had gas lights
in the house and he would turn them down and when his wife would say hey it's darker or it's dimmer in here he'd say i don't know what you're talking about. You're crazy. It's taking somebody's view on reality and then trying to say that what they're viewing or what they're seeing in reality isn't actually reality. And so if you have this negative belief of I cannot trust my judgment, you're constantly going to be second-guessing yourself.
And so if somebody's gaslit you enough, then you start gaslighting yourself. You start doubting your own grasp on reality. You start doubting your own ability to look at things and be able to make decisions or judgments on what you see or what you observe because somebody's done such a good job of convincing you, you have no idea what you're talking about. And so this can go into personal or professional relationships.
And it causes you to have a general lack of assertiveness because you struggle with believing that you can make any good judgment calls on anything. And the last one is I cannot trust anyone. And sometimes this is narrowed down to different groups. And so sometimes one of the beliefs that I hear is I cannot trust men.
And this belief of I can't trust anyone can come from different trauma, like experiencing betrayal by a trusted individual, maybe infidelity in a relationship, backstabbing by a close friend or a colleague. After having this experience, or maybe experiencing this multiple times, you begin to develop this belief of I can't trust anyone. People are unreliable. And I think this is the first one that is something that doesn't have to do directly with your own trust in yourself.
It's now a trust about those people around you. And so how this shows up in our current life is this belief often results in isolation because you don't want to be around people because you can't trust people. It causes difficulties in forming relationships or paranoia that others have ulterior motives. You're always questioning what their motives are. Or even if they say clearly what their motives are, you don't believe them and you're super skeptical of it.
And so this can lead to loneliness and social withdrawal. I was watching this reality show and they have lots of different competitions in it, but it was so interesting. They show at least parts of the conversation that had happened between this lady and this other guy. And then you can kind of just see her spiral. And I know that we're just seeing clips of it, but the clips that they're showing, it's just kind of showing this paranoia that she has about what people are saying to her.
And I know that the production company might be spinning it in a certain light, but if I'm seeing it for what it is, people are telling this lady the truth and trying to get her on their team and and be a part of their alliance. But she's just blasting them in front of people and just trying to call out their ulterior motives. And you can see a lot of her own fears being projected and her own paranoia. And so people are like, no, we really wanted her on our team.
But that paranoia blew up in their face because she felt like I can't trust anyone. So then it caused her to kind of be isolated because at that point, then people were like, well, I don't really want her on my team anymore, even though before they were trying to protect her and get her on their team. And I think what this boils down to is this idea of lack of trust versus mistrust.
And I think a lot of times people, if they haven't built up any basis of trust with somebody, they treat it as mistrust. And mistrust is this idea of somebody has shown me that they're not a trustworthy person. But somebody who you lack trust with isn't somebody that you should be mistrustful of. It's just somebody that you need time to see, are they a trustworthy person? But it sounds like this lady in the show was treating everybody with mistrust.
And then that caused her to be at odds with people versus lack of trust. It's more just, hey, this is more casual. I'm going to dip my toe in and kind of see how this relationship goes, see if I can build up some level of trust with you. But that mistrust is actively like I'm against you because I don't trust you and you're a dangerous person. And that's how she treated people. And then it sounds like it kind of blew up her relationships with people here.
Well, I like that distinction. I haven't heard that before because I think you're right when we are going into near relationships or clearly on these reality shows. It is sometimes wise to go into it slowly and take the time to get to know people. So I like just that distinction of that doesn't mean that you mistrust them. It just means that you're taking that time to develop that trust in that relationship.
So you can see in the four negative beliefs and negative cognitions that we talked about today, that they're all dealing with trust and they are all very similar, but they have very specific differences as well. And as we're trying to figure out what your negative cognitions are and the things that you've experienced in your life, just even those slight tweaks of, I cannot be trusted, I cannot trust myself, I cannot trust my judgment, or I cannot trust anyone. one?
Which one resonates with you the most? All right, guys, that's about all the time that we have for today. We're going to continue on the next episode. We're going to continue talking about safety. The next ones we're going to be discussing are I cannot protect myself. I am in danger. It's not okay to feel or show my emotions. I cannot stand up for myself and I cannot let it out.
If any of these that we've discussed in this episode are kind of getting under your skin and making you feel uncomfortable, what that means that you have some damage in that area. You have some hurt and some wounding that has happened. And if you'd like to get working on it, or if you'd like to get a little bit more information about EMDR and the process that we take you through, we have a link in the description below where you can get a free 15-minute consultation.
Or we can just set up an appointment and get started. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. And remember, your mind is a powerful thing. Music.