The belief system

16 March 2011 AH yes the belief system! We all have our own belief system and when I first was considering my belief system I assumed that, with general thoughts eg. ‘ I do like a bacon roll, or I know I need to loose a bit of weight’ I was incorrectly assuming that most people may think like that. Of course that is not the case. We are complex individuals with our own beliefs, limitations and behaviour patterns. It is strongly accepted that a large element of our belief system has been in place since before we were 6 years old. I had a bit of a problem with that. Then when I was doing my learning in Counselling, Freud I think blamed a lot on mothers. I am being ‘tongue in cheek’ a little here, for purists reading. That got me cross. Subsequently, in my learning of EFT, I was then informed that teachers are also fairly often blamed for peoples’ limiting beliefs. Well when I heard that, I realised that I may have to tell my clients that fundamentally people like me, a mother and a teacher, are guilty of hellish sins on the human race. But back to the more serious stuff. Think of the phrases- ‘I’m not good enough because…..’ ‘I must be stupid because I heard it often enough………..’ I can’t expect to be more successful than I am because……………’ (I may delete this next bit at some point because it’s fairly harsh) But the point is, those beliefs need changed, altered, removed, to be gone. They are most probably no longer reliable to individuals because they are out of date. They serve no good purpose. They hold us back from being the best we can be. They cause stress when we try to fight what we want because the ‘trigger statements’ rush in to screw us up. It could be said that these limiting beliefs keep us safe, but safe from what? I have been doing a fair amount self-work recently, and just for the record, quite a few therapists are fantastic at helping others but can be guilty of neglecting themselves. I realised that a belief, which I was aware, was holding me back, needed to be removed, certainly helped on it’s way. I needed that particular belief, THEN, to keep me safe, strong and protected. It serves me, I believe, very little good now. Times have changed and I do not need the protective layer. But surprisingly I held onto it, sub-consciously I probably knew that it would be upsetting, hard or a challenge, to let it go. My ‘echo’ had held it well for me! The beliefs I may have held were that I did not deserve the peace to be free, or the luxury of casting those beliefs aside.

The question an EFT therapist may ask a client could be, ‘why are you holding on to that belief?’ ‘what good does it serve you?’ The answers to these are rich and varied and difficult to answer because the answer will involve a whole set of changes and challenges.

So interesting.