#1
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Changing beliefs
For those that have, how have you changed your 'anxious' beliefs? It's something I've been thinking about a lot and half of my beliefs are driving me crazy with SA recently. It's hard trying to dissolve them. Some have slowly changed, but they were more general negative beliefs than anxious ones.
Any ideas? |
#2
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Re: Changing beliefs
i think its something you have to tackle in layers pboy. its like you scratch the surface and you find that you express your negative beliefs in certain ways a lot of the time. and so you start challenging these beliefs, and tweaking the corresponding behaviours, and you are successful to a degree. but the way it seems to work for me is that as soon as i have one of these pesky little demons reasonably under control, another bigger more deeply buried one seems to pop up and challenge me. i think i've read about this phenomenon once and it was described as a 'belief hierarchy', which made sense to me - you need to get to the core or root beliefs for the real profound changes to start taking place. if you only tackle the more suface beliefs, then any repercussions in your life are also going to be more limited (although you should still notice important changes). it is important to remember you are making progress all the time you are tackling the smaller doubts too. so maybe you're a bit like me and haven't quite got to the real biggies yet. but if its any consolation i think a lot of non-SA people never really tackle their basic fundamental doubts/negative beliefs either - they just express them in different ways, and so aren't so obviously socially limited. some people never want to or are required to go that deep. but i don't really ever expect there to come a point in my life where i say 'right - that's it, i've tackled all my negative beliefs and i'm 100% satisfied now' because it seems that discovering what you want out of life, and what is holding you back is an ongoing process (or that's the way i see it). its what keeps things challenging. that's why it is important to stop and do a progress check sometimes to remind yourself of some of the challenges you have successfully been able to meet.
i think it really is just a question of tackling these beliefs in stages pboy, and not getting too impatient with yourself. keep identifying the problem beliefs, and keep taking risks to test them out, while also remembering to give yourself credit for taking those risks so that you can get some satisfaction out of your achievements. negative beliefs are very stubborn - we are attached to them because we believe they protect us. that's why it is so hard to let them go. i think what you have to keep doing is accepting them and not viewing them as enemies, but as survival mechanisms which have maybe served a function in the past, but which you now want to attempt to let go of. if you fight them, it only seems to reinforce them. Quote:
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#3
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Re: Changing beliefs
iI agree very much with Threadbare .
Plus I think its being brave enough to experiment with positive beliefs in our minds. Often we don't dare because it would be so dissapointing if it was untrue. but experimentally thinking about positive possibilities does gradually have the right effect. |
#4
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Re: Changing beliefs
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