Upgrading Negative Subconsicous Beliefs - When Your Body Doesn't Believe Your Mind

One of the hardest parts about healing after childhood trauma, narcissistic abuse and/or cptsd was the fact that after breaking out of the mental fog, confusion, disbelief and pain; and after detoxifying my life from all toxic people that seemed to make it their mission for me to believe about myself what they projected onto me... the beliefs that were planted by the abuse and emotional trauma did NOT update easily.

Childhood trauma, whether it stems from narcissistic abuse, emotionally unavailable parents, parents with addictions, emotional neglect - regardless of the cause, all of these dynamics create beliefs at a time in our lives where the templates for who we will become are being formed. 

While an infant is born ready and able to give and receive love - the environment it is born into will create adaptations designed to keep that baby safe in a hostile environment.

As we continue growing in a hostile environment as toddlers, we learn by observing our external environment and how that environment makes us FEEL. The feelings we have when around our caretakers are registered deep within our subconscious mind and dictate what we believe about our world.

Some of the beliefs formed due to narcissistic abuse, emotionally unavailable parents, emotional neglect or any other type of childhood trauma are:

People aren't safe.

If I show my emotional something bad will happen

It's my job to make sure others are happy so that I can be connected and safe,

I'm not allowed to be authentic,

I can't trust my perceptions. 

As an adult we may cognitively get to that place where we realize just how wrong and awful it was to be made to feel that way; we may even cognitively disagree with those old beliefs but.... our body seems unwilling to update and let go. 

The reason our body struggles to let go is because as young children, our critical and rational thinking was not developed yet, as a result we accepted all that we learned in childhood as truth. This truth, we can call our emotional learning or subconscious beliefs. Our emotional beliefs do not get updated by our cognitive words - thus the struggle to update painful beliefs that were formed in the past, that are no longer true and that are currently maladaptively sabotaging our adult life.

Since our subconscious mind is like the hard drive of a computer, trying to update subconscious beliefs with our words and thoughts is like trying to tell my computer to run a program that it does not currently have downloaded.

When I fully understood this, I was able to grant myself some grace and compassion as I worked through updating my beliefs.

I learned through trial and error that when I was doing nothing but letting time pass, the negative beliefs that were deeply entrenched in my subconscious mind were simply strengthened.

I also realized that working at them consciously - was not enough since our life is operated 95% of the time from our subconscious and only 5% of the time from our conscious mind.

At one point, I was so exhausted from playing this internal game of tug of war with my body... my mind was constantly pulling me toward positive beliefs while my body constantly pulled me towards the negative, limiting ones that had become my self-image; but I refused to quit on myself... I refused to abandon myself! 

I won't lie - healing was hard! I thought going through the abuse and trauma was bad enough, I had no idea that healing from it would be so challenging.... at least when you don't have the tools and understanding as to how to work through this type of emotional and psychological abuse.

For example - my mind knew that I was lovable, but my body felt as if it had marinated in shame that the feelings of unworthiness seemed to be a stench stemming from my very own DNA that I was sure everyone around me could smell.

My mind knew that it wasn't my fault, but guilt reverberated from my body like an echo that was swallowing me whole.

My mind knew I deserved to be happy, but my body seemed programmed to sabotage every and anything that could make me feel that emotion.

The abuse had ended, but the inner turmoil that came from it felt insurmountable and overwhelming.

Thankfully, I was able to work through the side effects of this type of trauma, and slowly learn how to come back home into my body. It wasn't overnight, it wasn't easy, but it was sooo worth it.

And that's why I created the School of Transformation to help others to not only learn but to also embody these upgraded beliefs!!

In May 2024 our monthly theme in the School of Transformation will be Building Capacity for Joy. 

Emotional trauma causes us to stop living with joy, passion and/or creativity. We are left only surviving with a hypervigilance that only seems to continually keep us stuck in the trauma. If you feel as if you no longer feel safe to be you, to feel happy, worthy, deserving.... come join us in our live meetings!