Core Belief System 
By Sarah Paulson, LPCC

Many individuals who seek mental health treatment in adulthood for Emotional Distress (i.e. Anxiety, Depression, Substance use, Panic Attacks or Relationship problems) have experienced emotional or physical neglect during their early development. Early emotional experiences of nurturance and protection are encoded in our brain’s limbic area (the emotional center). Over time, these repeated encoded experiences from our early developmental years become our internal working models and lenses for everything in our world (core beliefs about our self, our self in relation to others, and the world in general). Interestingly, research has shown that emotional neglect from one’s primary caregiver during childhood can lead to greater adverse consequences in emotional, mental and behavioral distress in adulthood than physical abuse can as the former can severely damage our self-image of our worth. If early neglect is identified in your history, counseling should be aimed at helping you change your negative core belief system, which developed in your early years and now runs your world view in ways that you may not be aware of.

In counseling, you will learn how to tolerate distressing emotional states instead of acting on them in ways that have led to negative consequences for you. You will also learn how to notice how your core beliefs have/are contributing to these distressing emotional states as they have fostered life-long patterns of behaviors that make things worse in your life.

Treatment in this area includes helping you change your core attachment capabilities. Safety (physical and emotional) is first/TOP priority: One must feel safe currently in order to begin the healing process. In the absence of safety, love cannot be truly enjoyed and can even feel threatening. With safety in place, a bridge develops across which love can flow and self-empowerment can begin to develop and ultimately thrive.

If you believe you may have experienced neglect in your developmental years, you may want to start journaling when you experience intense interpersonal emotional distress by answering the following questions:

• What is the feeling I am experiencing?
• What is my thought about my world or myself as I experience this feeling?
• When have I experienced this feeling or thought in my past?
• What was my world like at that earlier time?
• Did I feel safe? Did I feel Loved? Did I feel worthy?
• What were my core beliefs about the greater world and myself at that earlier time?​

This exercise may be emotionally painful and evocative and thus, doing so while enrolled in psychotherapy is ideal so that you have someone to process the powerful experience and feelings that may be dug up and/or awakened. This exercise will give you a small window into understanding how these earlier experiences may have impacted your current thoughts, feelings and behaviors and can be explored with your therapist. By gaining this insight and understand your core belief system, you will gain tools of enlightenment and empowerment that can allow you to grow into the best version of yourself!