Beliefs. As a Psychotherapist who belongs to an existential school of psychotherapy, I know that our beliefs are what run our lives. I believe this cognitively and intellectually, I teach it in all of my courses and, until this weekend I would have said that I lived it, too…
Consider how your thoughts affect your feelings… when you are worried about something (thought), it creates feelings of anxiety in your body; when you are engrossed in an exciting film (thought) then your body will feel the corresponding adrenaline rush. So our thoughts create feelings, and our thoughts arise through what we believe about ourselves and the world around us. What we choose to believe has a direct effect on our biology; what our mind believes, our body will follow, and we live our lives in the feelings created by our thoughts…
A belief is not necessarily something that is true – it is just an idea which we have ceased to question; a presupposition of a truth. Our beliefs are part of the “filters” of our mind; what we believe has a direct effect on how we perceive the world. We see our world “as if” our beliefs are true, and we look for evidence to support the “facts” that we believe – and we will delete information and distort our perception of reality in order to prove to ourselves (often unconsciously) that our beliefs are true. And, usually, we don’t question them…
Our beliefs can empower us, or limit us. For example, if we have an empowering belief about ourselves such as, “I am good at my job”, then we will look for evidence to support that, and we will find it when we look at the work we’ve done, and in the positive things others say; this will help to reinforce our belief and we will continue to feel good about ourselves. If people say negative things about us we are more likely to ignore them, because they do not fit with our “reality”.
If, on the other hand, we have a limiting belief about ourselves such as, “I’m not good enough”, then we will look for evidence to support that, and we will reinforce our limiting belief every time we accidentally do something we judge to be ‘wrong’, or if we feel we don’t understand something. Even if somebody tells us we’ve done something well we will probably not really believe them, because it goes against our concept of what we believe to be real.
These sort of limiting beliefs are frequently the basis of what clients come to see me about, and we will work through things, bringing the unconscious thinking into the light, and working through it. I’ve done lots of this work for myself over the years, and I can tell you the value of it is profound and life-changing… Just as the quote at the top of the page says, every single problem we have exists in our minds, and it is how we are processing it – the story we are telling ourselves about it – that is what creates the problem for us. the philosopher Epictetus said much the same thing 2,000 years ago – “We are disturbed not by things, but the views which we take of them.”
But this weekend I discovered it on a whole other level. There’s a book that I’ve had on my shelf for years; I picked it up in a second-hand bookshop and it’s been in my ‘reading queue’ for probably the best part of ten years. The book is, ‘Loving What Is’ by the author Byron Katie, and I would say I wish I had read it sooner, but for the fact that I am reading it now, so clearly now is when I am supposed to read it.
In the book she talks about what she calls ‘The Work’, which is self-inquiry – my favourite thing to do and to teach – and I know the things we love to teach are the things about which we also have the most to learn… self-inquiry is wonderful, because of course there is no end to it; we just keep uncovering another layer, and another layer and so on, provided that we are open to it and accepting of what we uncover. And for whatever we uncover, there is no judgement – we were just doing the best we could with the learnings we had at the time, and now we have new learnings… which is why I say that self-inquiry is wonderful.
One of the things that Byron Katie says in her book is that we judge things according to three departments of life – our own business, someone else’s business, or the business of the Universe. The only one of these which it is our business to judge is our own business – everything else is not ours to judge, to worry about or to try to influence or feel responsible for in any way.
Now, again, this I know to be true; I encourage my clients to see it, I encourage my supervisees to see it – everybody is just a soul on their own journey after all. Frequently we take on too much responsibility for someone else’s behaviours or try to change them, and it can be incredibly liberating to discover that it’s not our job at all. I remember when I first qualified as a Clinical Hypnotherapist back in 2006, my then supervisor helped me to see I was taking on too much responsibility for a particular client’s change, and it was a revelation!
But what this book has really brought home to me is just how much moralistic judgement we do in our heads, in the minutiae of our daily thought processes… I began to witness my own thoughts, and goodness – what a lot of stress I put onto myself! In amongst all of these ‘should’ and ‘ought to’ thoughts and inferences, I discovered the following examples (amongst many)… the gardener who hasn’t trimmed my trees and hedges yet, even though I asked him weeks ago; the neighbouring property who keep burning green garden waste, the smell from which blows into our garden; Winnie, my beautiful little dog who barks ‘too much’; my lovely husband, who leaves lights on and drawers open, is on his phone ‘all the time’, and who still doesn’t know how to fill the dishwasher ‘properly’ – the list goes on…
For someone who believes herself to be fairly ‘non-judgemental’ there is a heck of a lot of judgement going on at a low-grade leve, and all of these tiny things cause me stress… the full-on realisation of the fact that it’s the way I’m thinking about them that creates the stress is what I really, truly realised this weekend. All of these tiny stories I’m telling myself – what if they are not true? What if some of them are not even my business to think about? I had learned to do this with the big things over the years, but it had never before entered my realisation that I need to do this on everything. Every uncomfortable thought and situation – bring inquiry to it… what’s that about? Is it true? Is it my business? What would happen if I didn’t have this belief? And, most telling of all, how is this a reflection of me…?
We project onto others whatever needs healing in ourselves, so, as Carl Jung penetratingly observed, whatever irritates us in others gives us the opportunity to learn something about ourselves… So – are there things I have been “too busy” to get round to? (Yes) Is there some way in which I am “polluting” someone else’s experience? (When I express an opinion, it may be that I am negating another’s experience.) How am I “barking too much”? (Every time I am not peaceful.) And how am I expecting others to behave contrary to their nature, to suit my own values and beliefs about what ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be…? (Every time I make a moralistic judgement.)
So, in the words of Epictetus (to whose observations we are still learning to listen), “When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.” Oh, and do the work…
