"I'm not good enough" - Where do your unhelpful beliefs come from?
Suzie Grazier 
A look behind the scenes of how our unhelpful beliefs are formed and how to change them for a more fulfilled life.
Have you noticed that when you tell yourself something, even something really mean, that you believe it without question?
If somebody else told you that you weren't good enough you would perhaps get quite angry and even if you don't challenge them directly you would think to yourself "how dare you?", "what right have they got to say that?" or "you don't know anything about me".
Yet, if we tell ourselves things like "I'm not good enough" we just take it on the chin and change our behaviour to accommodate this belief.
This is one of the most common core beliefs that I come across in my work with children and young people. But where exactly does this belief, and others like it, come from?
Children in the early years take in and process an enormous amount of information through their senses. From everything that they hear, see and feel they begin to form opinions about themselves, others and the world around them. But, they do so through the filter of their immature brain which means these opinions are often faulty.
By the age of around 7 years old, we have already developed a set of core beliefs that we have adopted as our real life view of the world, who we are and how we fit in.
Unless we find appropriate strategies to challenge these, our brain sets about in the task of trying to protect us by searching out information that confirms these beliefs. As a result we become oblivious to anything that contradicts them and they get stronger and stronger. By the time we are adults we live our life in a way that is dictated by these strongly held beliefs.
Everything we do will be influenced by thoughts of not being good enough or worrying about what others might think of us. This can lead to self sabotaging behaviours such as procrastination, people pleasing and avoiding situations that we find too uncomfortable.
We generally think of procrastination and people pleasing as adult traits but actually I see much of this in young people. For example, when we were in lockdown and I was homeschooling my 8 year old, she would become a master of procrastination and would try to distract us with anything, rather than do certain tasks. It turned out that she found the work in that particular subject hard and worried about getting it wrong (and me and her teacher being angry and disappointed). Instead, she would prefer not to do it at all and would do anything to put it off as long as she possibly could.
As much as we try as parents to fill our children full of confidence and self belief we can sometimes, inadvertently, send mixed messages which leads to some of these unhelpful beliefs being formed.
For example, every time our child worries, if we rush in with reassurance and tell them everything will be ok, telling them what they need to do, they will learn that they need you to help them when they worry. When this happens repeatedly over a period of time they learn that they can't cope without you so they must be rubbish at dealing with this stuff and it becomes super scary.
The good news is that our brains are really adaptable and whatever we have learned we can change and learn something new. We have a choice to accept what our brain is telling us or not.
So when you are next telling yourself that you aren't good enough, or you see these traits in your child, argue back with that little anxiety gremlin who has planted those unhelpful beliefs.
Find evidence that proves it to be untrue to create doubt and then replace it with something more helpful. When you tell yourself something often enough your brain will eventually believe it and in time that will become your new belief.
Next time your child is worried, rather than rushing in to reassure and tell them what to do, take a step back and encourage them to think things through and find their own solutions.
For more information on strategies to help your child successfully manage unhelpful beliefs and anxiety checkout my Introduction to Anxiety for Parents course.