I was sitting on our couch talking to Cassidy and Gabe. They were basically comparing notes about counseling resources because they both see Jay. They were chatting about the different and similar tools they'd been given, how they've been applying them, what kind of successes they've had, etc. Cassidy mentioned that she and Jay were beginning to investigate what her "core belief" might be.
"What is that?" I asked.
"It's a deep-held, usually negative belief that you hold, sometimes without even knowing it, that shapes how you view the world," Cassidy said. "Like maybe 'I'm not worthy,' 'I'm a bad person,' 'I don't deserve love,' that kind of thing."
She gave me a Core Belief sheet with a chart that shows how a core belief acts as a lens that shapes the messages you get from your circumstances and interactions. For example, if you think about asking someone for coffee and your core belief is "I'm not worthy," then the message you hear from yourself is "Why would this person ever go out with me?" and so you don't ask him/her.
"Did you figure out what your core belief is?" I asked.
"Not really, not yet," she said. "He suggested a few for me to think about, like 'I'm not worthy,' or 'something bad is going to happen to me,' but none of them completely fit."
She and Gabe continued having a conversation, but I was having a Phoebe Moment.
Something bad is going to happen to me. That was it. That was my core belief.
I always think something bad is going to happen to me, and not because bad things happen, quite the opposite, in fact. I've led an extremely blessed life. I have amazing luck. My life has been one happy coincidence/fluke after another. The world seems to go out of its way to defy the laws of probability and bring me good things.
And yet every second of every day, I am deeply convinced that something bad is on the horizon for me. Every twinge is probably the beginning stages of cancer. Every late arrival is probably my husband dead in a car crash.
When "bad" things do happen to me, I feel vindicated. "See?! I knew it. I told you it was too good to be true/wouldn't work/would fall through."
I told Cassidy and Gabe my thoughts: "I feel my life has been so good that all the bad stuff must be waiting for me, like I've used up all the good and now comes the bad, or like now I 'deserve' bad stuff to even out the good."
"That's not how life—or God—works," Gabe said. "People make the same mistakes about dice rolling, thinking that if a die has rolled bad numbers a bunch, it has to start rolling better soon. But the probability is the exact same every time you roll."
"Yeah," I admitted. "And I know that, but I just know that the time I let my guard down or expect good things is gonna be the time it all goes bad."
"And that's like the Eight's worst nightmare," Cassidy pointed out. "Being blindsided."
The thing is, as we went on to discuss, my brand of anticipating the worst has no effect on reality. I don't plan for the worst. I do absolutely nothing differently in my life. Now that I'm thinking it through, it is actually pretty ridiculous (and a sore trial to Gabe). I soldier on the exact same way, taking zero precautions and preparing none at all for the worst I feel looming on the horizon.
I considered changing my perspective. I mentally feigned taking off my armor of cynicism to see what that would feel like.
I felt totally exposed. I resisted the urge to physically cross my arms. I felt exactly like I always had: like if I let my guard down, THAT'S gonna be the end of me. THAT'S the moment the universe has been waiting for and it's going to slit my throat and throw me in a blender.
I cannot explain this. I know that that's not how life works. I know that the only thing I'm doing is making myself stressed and worried and miserable for absolutely no reason. I know that if I were to stop believing that bad things are going to happen to me, the main effects would be more happiness and more peace.
I experimented in a concrete way when I got a massage a few weeks ago. I enjoy getting massages, but there's always a part of me that believes the therapist is going to ruin my body, that she's going to rub a muscle the wrong way and it's going to snap out of alignment and my body will never, ever recover. (Yes, I know I'm insane.) I tried actually relaxing and trusting the therapist. It was terrifying and I could only do it in tiny bursts before I went back to my safety blanket of "You're probably going to ruin me."
It was a very interesting experiment to me. I'm going to keep trying this whenever I feel like I can. I need to replace the core belief of "something bad is going to happen to me" with "God loves me and I can ultimately trust him," or something.
What is your core belief?
~Stephanie
No comments:
Post a Comment