A story about Negative Core Beliefs 

A lot of my life coaching work is about changing your negative core beliefs. I use a system refined by John Nutting along with  voice dialogue work and various other practices such as meditation.   

John uses an example of how negative core beliefs control ones life by using the old Jack and Jill.

Since I was a big fan of the ladybird books when I was four I will in this case give a real life example and call the couple Peter and Jane.

Jane is a likeable woman, although one of her core beliefs is that she is a bit plain and not really that attractive. She has grown up in a household where she she believes she is far less attractive than her other siblings. Her father John has a negative core belief where he says to himself "I am fat is ugly" as he was very fat as a child. Her siblings are quite thin but Jane has suffered sexual abuse and often children cover it with their weight because they are unhappy.  Her parents dont notice that and as Janes weight fluctuates her father projects his own negative core beliefs about his weight onto Jane.

Jane starts to feel even more unattractive. It becomes a bit of an obsession and Jane tries to manage her underlying negative core belief by going on various sponsored diets. Her mum reinforces her fathers negative core belief and its further reinforced when the doctor prescribes slimming pills at a time when twiggy was the best thing since slided bread. Because a negative core belief is not usually true she has to keep reinforcing it and it culminates into years of yo yo dieting and taking slimming pills. As she grows up into womanhood her image of herself becomes quite distorted.  She doesn't realised the dangers of slimming pills until she is well into womanhood and the damage has already been done

She has a few other underlying core beliefs. Her mother is a depressive and a bit of a doormat. Jane watches as her womanising father has numerous affairs and her mother always plays the victim. Although Jane realises there is something wrong in the family her mother tries really to cover things up. Jane starts to think that its all her imagination. Her mother often uses her daughter as an emotional crutch but will not leave her father saying its only only because of the children that she stays with them even though she is deeply unhappy.

Jane then begins to spend a lot of time being a parent to her very unhappy mother and she starts to blame herself for her families problems when in fact as a child she is emotionally incapable of fixing them. Hence as she grows up Jane now has a few more negative core beliefs to carry into adulthood. Her negative core beliefs are “its all her fault” “she is crazy” and her mother who appears to be extremely naive about her fathers affairs and starts to project her own negative core beliefs on her daughter Jane is that “Jane is also naive”.

Jane carries ALL these NEGATIVE core beliefs into adulthood. On the surface Jane is a very capable woman. She is creative and reasonably attractive, she is also very adaptable in difficult situations. She is assertive but she struggles when it comes to forming close relationships with men. She attracts dysfunctional relationships which start off very well in the beginning and then form a pattern of emotional abuse. She often plays second best to the men she has relationships with.

Having no boundaries and sense of self she becomes a bit of a doormat like her mother although she doesn't accept a man that will have affairs she allows them to emotionally abuse her.

She finally meets a man that she thinks is her knight in shining armour. Lets call him Peter. There is one slight problem. Peter is married. They have a very strong connection. As friends Peter appears to resonate with her and they have many things in common. Jane sees something in Peter that she wants to fix up and its not long before they are having a proper relationship.

Peter sees something in Jane that he likes and starts to confuse sexual attraction with intimacy because he is lacking in it in his own relationship with his wife. Peter makes all kinds of promises he is unable to keep about leaving his family. Peter grew up without a father figure that was there often and has an unhealthy negative core belief that people should stay in unhappy relationship for the sake of the children because his own father had packed him off to boarding school and was never around. Peter too has a negative core belief that its all his fault. Peter also has an unhealthy disregard for women thinking that all women are hostile and reject him having been packed off to boarding school at four and married a very strong overbearing woman like his mother that reject him too.  Underneath he has a strong desire to be with women but cannot appear to form a healthy emotional bond

He appears to have come from an very unhappy childhood like Jane only she has no idea what negative core beliefs are when she first meets him. One thing she first notices about Peter is how handsome he is - yet one of his negative core beliefs is that he is fat an ugly. He is a large well built man but he is very charismatic and attractive. He too has been in a few dysfunctional relationships where he has been emotionally abused. Like Jane they have both had covert and sexual abuse in their past so they really understand each other. This forms a very strong emotional bond between the pair of them.

Peter has a few issues about having a more successful sibling and finds it difficult to keep down a regular job. So he reinforces his negative core belief about not being successful by job hopping and not paying attention to detail and doing things like having affairs that will risk him losing his job.

He admits to Jane that he has had sexual abuse in the past but says he has dealt with it.  Jane can relate to this as she has been abused and tries to get closer to Peter.  However, as the relationship progresses Peter becomes more and more emotionally withdrawn. It becomes clear to Jane that she has some issues and because she thinks its all her fault the Peter has not left his wife she starts to do work on herself to try and fix herself up. 

Jane lavishes lots of healthy attention on Peter when they first have a relationship however as Peter has an underlying issue about healthy bonding he starts to emotional withdraw feeling that its unsafe to have too much of an attachment

However as she uncovers some of her own negative core beliefs she starts to realise that Peter may not be the person that she thought he was and that he may have a few negative core beliefs of his own.

As she starts to work through her negative core beliefs one by one she starts to confront Peter with some of the things that he has told her during the relationships that didn't appear to be right at the time. Remember that one of Jane's negative core beliefs is that she is naïve and she doesn't know anything. Peter gets very defensive implying that he is hiding something. Jane's intuition is now working properly and she starts to see a bigger picture and realises that he may have been lying. The relationship is now starting to get more and more complex and difficult and the more Jane works on her negative core beliefs the more Peter is unable or not willing to work on his.

Jane has always believed that Peter was scared of intimacy and commitment however he had always denied that by telling Jane that he loved her and was going to leave his wife. When Jane confronted Peter he would get angry and nasty.  Often Peter uses Passive Aggressive behaviour which Jane found very threatening.  Jane has been bullied in the past in relationships with men and one of her deep seated core beliefs is that she is totally powerless to men as a result of her past abuse. 

However she perseveres with working through all her negative core beliefs and discovers Peter is quite a bully underneath but also realises she is quite capable of dealing with his unhealthy anger.  Jane works through all of her other negative core beliefs and she discovered that she is not naive at all and that Peter has not only been having an affair with her and has not dealt with his sexual abuse.  Peter has also been having unhealthy sexual liaisons with various people on the internet and had obviously not dealt with his sexual abuse issues at all because of the type of activies he is doing. Jane is mortified that her own health had been put at risk by Peter and gets angry because not only with Peter but herself realising that one of her negative core beliefs is that she has never really been allowed to be angry anything.

Peter on the other hand is still re-enacting a number of his negative core beliefs that no one loves him because Jane of course has already ended the relationship. He reinforces his own belief that he is unattractive and worthless and needs to participate in unhealthy liaisons that will damage his self esteem, rather than healthy loving relationships. He further reinforces his negative core beliefs that its not safe to have an emotional attachment and reinforces his negative core belief by becoming more and more emotionally detached and in denial.   And of course he continues to reinforces his negative core belief that all women will reject him because his behaviour has caused Jane to finish with him like other women he has loved before.

If he continues to pursue such dangerous practices his job will become in jeapardy reinforcing his core belief that he cannot hold down a job because as he had already lost one before as a result of his affair with Jane.

Ultimately he will probably continue to stay in his dysfunctional relationship and continue to recreate situation after situation that reinforces his negative core beliefs until such time as a major life crisis may force him into counselling.

 Jamie geddes

This story is a prime example of how strongly negative core beliefs can impact not only on a persons emotional life but affect their work and family life too.

Needless to say Peter and Jane are no longer together but this story gives you an idea how our powerful our negative core beliefs are and how they control our lives.  How they enable us to attract different types of people and situations into our lives and create dysfunction.

Sadly Peter did not look at ANY of his negative core beliefs and its only a matter of time before his behaviour catches up with him and creates a devastating effect on not only himself but his family.

However Jane balanced her negative core beliefts.  By working systematically through each of her negative core beliefs Jane heals herself of her totally dysfunctional relationships with Peter and finally moves on.

More importantly, Jane realises as a result of all the work she had done on herself why she was attracting such dysfunctional relationships in the first place because of her negative core beliefs.  Jane is now happy and has a successful relationship with a normal healthy partner for the first time in many years.

We cannot ever get rid of negative core beliefs but we can balance them.   If we try to overcome them with too many positive beliefs when a life crisis comes along one of our negative core beliefs will tip us off balance and cause put us into a crisis situation.

When properly balanced not only will we NOT attract those types of people anymore,  we end up being able to look at the situation with different eyes.

As a result we can have successful, happy relationships and functional lives.