How to release untrue beliefs about yourself—and cultivate self-love
My client Layla was a super sensitive kid. Growing up, she told me, she was almost always looking for affection and reassurance from her parents.
But her parents were very different from her. They were intellectuals. They lived in their heads. And they were constantly trying to talk Layla out of her feelings. “Just calm down,” they would tell her whenever she would get emotional. “You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
Throughout her childhood, the scenario would repeat itself: Layla would look for comfort and support, and her parents would either push her away or tell her she was over-reacting.
As a child, she didn’t realize her parents didn’t know how to respond to her sensitivity.
Instead, she started to believe her parents would give her what she needed—if only she were just more lovable.
So she spent her childhood trying to make herself more lovable to her parents and everyone else in her orbit.
Fast forward to adulthood. At 26, Layla was still carrying the belief that she was unlovable, and it was having a seriously negative effect on her relationships.
By the time we started to work together, most of her friendships felt unsatisfying at best and draining at worst. Her romantic partnerships were either short-lived or destructive—or both.
How did she break out of this pattern? How did Layla let go of the belief that she was unlovable and learn to truly love herself?
It started with recognizing where that negative belief came from. Like almost all the negative beliefs we hold about ourselves, it was rooted in Layla’s experiences during childhood.
How we develop negative beliefs during childhood
As kids, we don’t have the capacity to meet our own emotional needs or think in abstract terms.
In other words, in our young minds, whenever something bad or traumatic happens, it has to be someone’s fault.
It could be divorce. It could be witnessing an argument, or getting in big trouble for something we did—or didn’t—do. Whatever the experience might be, we have a choice when it comes to making sense of it: it’s either our parents’/caregivers’ fault—or it’s our own fault.
Let’s take Layla’s situation as an example. As a kid, if she decided it was her parents’ fault that she felt emotionally unsatisfied, it would have meant her parents weren’t perfect. And if her parents weren’t perfect, and she was depending on them to meet her needs, then the world must be a very scary place, because she had nowhere else to turn.
In other words, given Layla’s dependence on her parents, if they weren’t capable of meeting her emotional/physical needs, she had no idea when or how those needs would be met. This is a frightening thought for a child.
So instead of making it her parents’ fault, it was much easier for Layla to decide her unmet needs were her own fault. This way, she could go on thinking that her parents were perfect. That the world is a safe place. That all of her needs would be met—as long as she did everything right.
However, taking responsibility for her unmet needs came with two big drawbacks:
1. Layla adopted the (untrue!) belief that she was unlovable to make sure things felt balanced and make others around her feel better.
2. Her self-worth diminished because of this untrue belief.
Most of us—I’d even say 99% of us—decide it’s our own fault when our needs don’t get met as kids. And, like Layla, most of us end up carrying the negative beliefs we develop during childhood into our adult relationships. (Besides being unlovable, some of the most common negative beliefs we develop during childhood include: I’m not good enough, socially inept, lazy, oversensitive, selfish, stupid, not unique, manipulative, etc.)
So how do we go about letting go of these old beliefs and rebuilding our sense of self worth?
Self-love practice
I want to share a powerful practice I shared with Layla, which helped her 1) release the negative beliefs she was carrying from childhood and 2) learn to truly love herself.
To start off, I invite you to try out the practice for 1 week.
Before you dive in, take a few minutes to write down two things:
An old belief about yourself (For example: you’re unlovable, or lazy, or not good enough, or socially inept)
A theory about where this belief came from
Step 1: Start a notes section in your phone, or carry around a journal. Throughout the week, make a note whenever you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts about yourself.
What’s coming up? Besides the familiar old beliefs, you may discover other negative thoughts about yourself you didn’t realize you were having.
Step 2: When you catch yourself reinforcing an old belief about yourself, try to trace it back to your childhood.
How did you develop this belief? If you just stop at the belief and don’t tie it back to where it came from, it’s very hard to accept and love yourself.
Step 3: Sit with the feeling that goes with the old belief.
Where does the feeling live in your body? Put your hand there and practice saying something like, “It’s okay, you’re just that old belief leftover from childhood.
Pick a color that goes with the negative feeling.
Step 4: Now pick a color that represents love and acceptance of yourself, a color you might associate with doing one of your favorite things.
Step 5: Take a minute (or two, or however many minutes you like) to breathe love into the ick color—and breath out the ick.
Step 6: Observe how you feel. The goal is to create a subtle shift, say going from a 10 to an 8 on an anxiety/pain scale. The more aware of these subtle shifts you become, the more you trust in your power to change how you feel.
A word to the wise
You’ve probably been carrying these childhood beliefs for a while. Since they’re deeply embedded, and since they once helped you cope, you can expect your mind to resist as you build a new relationship with yourself. This is exactly what happened to Layla.
“Take the resistance as a sign that you’re on the right track,” I told her.
So she kept practicing. Sure enough, she started to feel some shifts in her emotional temperature. Besides that, she gained confidence in her ability to change her own emotional temperature.
It became easier and easier to show herself real compassion: “No wonder I felt unlovable,” she said in one of our last sessions together, “My parents didn’t have the tools to deal with all my sensitivities. But my sensitivities are a superpower.”
Little by little, the urgency to be lovable dwindled. Instead, Layla experienced more and more moments of unconditional self-love. Over time, she made new friends. Her old friends, her true friends, began to treat her with more care and respect. She started to attract romantic partners who brought out her best self.
Yes, it took a lot of practice and a lot of intention for Layla to shift into real self-love. But she’ll be the first to say it was worth it: “Every part of my life is better now. Every part!” she told me, “If I’d known what a difference it would make to love and accept myself, I would have started so much sooner.”
Want to learn more about how to love yourself and create the life you desire? I have just the course for you.
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