What we Believe Creates Our Reality: How Unconscious Beliefs Can Sabotage Your Life

Unconscious beliefs hold incredible power over a person's life. They have the power to alter perception and direct action without knowing they even exist. They can create a powerful barrier to the life you want.

The interesting thing about trauma is that it’s not always the event itself that creates trauma. Two people can experience the same thing, but the meaning they make and the quality of support they have through and after the event can separate a difficult or painful experience from a traumatic experience.

When it comes to painful dynamics in childhood, children tend to take responsibility for the problem and blame themself. If an adult doesn’t come alongside of them to help them make another meaning of it, it leads to faulty and disempowering beliefs about themself. These stories become a subtle life narrative: It’s my fault, I’m stupid, I’m a burden, etc. Without a single traumatic event, a child can internalize all of the blame or responsibility for a parent's emotional immaturity or dysfunction. It’s cliché, but so many a person's lifelong struggles really do stem from what feel like benign or minor early childhood events and family dynamics.

These stories become the lens through which the child perceives themself and the events that take place around them. They unconsciously guide actions to avoid these indictments of self from becoming reality: 

If I am perfect no one can blame me

If I work hard enough no one will know I don’t belong

I’ll take care of everyone else so no one will feel bothered by me.

The belief isn’t conscious. But the behaviors become habitual. The child grows into an adult with the same underlying beliefs running the show and the same strategies to avoid being found out.

More than anything external, these beliefs sabotage a person’s efforts to grow or build a better life. Even though they may not resonate with the beliefs consciously, there is usually a quiet part of them that is stuck in time, grieving and afraid. When the inner belief system is in conflict with a person's desires, they will struggle to make headway. It is a lack of coherence.

While we can sometimes reframe a situation, the real work isn’t a matter of trying to change our beliefs. In this case we can’t fake it till we make it. The pain from these hurtful moments needs to be witnessed, met with compassion, and the meaning that was made needs to be expanded into something more wholesome and true. 

This is where depth therapy comes in. Insight into the dynamic isn't enough to change it, it needs to be felt and transformed. Liberation comes when we can bring lovingkindness to the parts that carry pain. We support them in creating new meaning and letting go of the fear and pain that keep the nervous system in conflict.

Embodied change comes when we can develop the capacity to be present with the darkest parts of ourselves and extend love to them.