Written by: Janet Philbin, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Have you ever taken time to pause and look at what motivates you to think the way you do about yourself? Have you paused long enough to ask yourself why you behaved in a certain way or made a decision that was out of alignment with how you really feel? These are just a few questions to begin to ask yourself on the road to feel more in control. When you were young you developed specific thoughts about who you were. If these thoughts were not positive ones, they may have become limiting beliefs about yourself. These beliefs stay with you and inform who you have become and who you are today. All paths to heal start with you and begin within you.
What is a limiting belief? A limiting belief is a thought that you hold true about yourself. The beliefs show up in the way you think and talk about yourself. You base the decisions you make in your life from the perspective of these beliefs. These beliefs, because they are limiting, are not positive ones. They hold you back, cause you pain, prevent you from growing and healing. Some examples of a limiting belief are I am not good enough, love hurts me, I don’t do anything the right way, I must be perfect to be loved, life is always hard for me, I am not smart enough, I always make the wrong choice, I am not worthy.
One of the most important things for you to remember as you begin to identify the limiting beliefs you carry is that at one point and time in your life these thoughts served a purpose. You developed these thoughts and beliefs because you needed them at the age you were to survive. I like to think about limiting beliefs as survival skills. They helped you get to where you are today. The problem is not in the fact that you developed these survival skills, the problem is that you have outgrown them, but your unconscious mind does not know that important piece of information. The unconscious mind does not know that you have grown up or that years have passed since the development of that survival skill. The unconscious mind has no sense of time. You still use that skill to function and cope in your daily life now. Therefore, it limits you; and is why the beliefs are limiting. The beliefs did not limit you at the time you came up with them, they helped you in some way. However, now in your life they: limit you, hold you back, keep you stuck, keep you small, create depression, anger, fear, or anxiety.
When you are in survival mode you are in a fight or flight response. This means that the sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system is activated, and you are on alert. You are functioning out of reaction and from the part of your brain that is on the defense. In essence, your autonomic nervous system is not regulated.
As a clinician and as a hypnotherapist I understand this with a unique perspective. First, through the lens of Polyvagal Theory and second through the lens of the unconscious mind. Polyvagal theory takes us through the experience of the autonomic nervous system and its three predictable pathways of response. These are Ventral Vagal, Sympathetic and Dorsal Vagal.
Each pathway has unique adaptive responses to help us survive. We interpret these responses through neuroception. Neuroception is our ability to detect what is going on in our environment, this happens without conscious awareness, just like we are not consciously aware of how often we blink, blinking just happens. When we are detecting what is happening in our environment, we are always assessing cues of safety and cues of danger. Based on our interpretation of the cue, either safety or danger, we respond from one of the three pathways of the autonomic nervous system. When we are in Ventral Vagal, we are experiencing safety and connection. When we are in Sympathetic, we are in a mobilized fight-flight state. When we are in Dorsal Vagal, we are in a state of immobilization, conserving our energy and resources.
The autonomic nervous system reacts, “in service of survival.” When the sympathetic pathway is activated, you look for a way “out” to survive in that moment. If you cannot find that way out then you move into a lower branch of your autonomic nervous system, dorsal vagal. In the dorsal state you freeze, shut down, hide, feel numb, dissociate, and completely disconnect to protect the self. Living in either sympathetic or dorsal is not what your autonomic nervous system is seeking. The autonomic nervous system is seeking regulation. To be in regulation, we must be in the other pathway of the parasympathetic branch, ventral vagal. When you are in ventral vagal you are safe, present, connected, and calm. This is the goal. This is when you feel good about yourself, who you are in the world and where you are in the world. From this place you can function and cope well in your life.
It is important, in learning to understand yourself, to know that the limiting beliefs you hold about yourself, when activated, are not acting alone. When those beliefs are triggered, or as I like to say, poked or woken up, then your autonomic nervous system goes into action bringing you into one of these two survival states, fight/flight, or freeze. To begin to get to know yourself and the impact of your limiting beliefs you need to develop an awareness of how your nervous systems respond. Do you shut down and hide or do you react and fight or try to flee? You will feel these reactions and responses in your physical body. Some examples of a physical response you may notice are racing heart, an upset stomach, low back pain, experiencing digestive issues that become activated with stress and worry, or headaches.
The limiting beliefs you hold in your unconscious mind are felt in your body and therefore your autonomic nervous system responds when these beliefs are activated within you. Again, this happens without your conscious awareness, and you react out of instinct or a learned behavior you have employed for a long time. When you react, it is like letting off steam and once released you feel a shift, but usually when you let off that steam it looks like anger, self-deprecation, anxiety, fear and is not helpful. You are just projecting your inner pain outward which does not solve problems it only perpetuates them or creates new ones. The way to begin to heal is to bring the unconscious to the conscious. You can do this. The first step is to slow down, pause and breathe each time you get poked, activated, or triggered. You create space for you.
Here are some steps you can take to come into autonomic regulation and understand the limiting beliefs which have been controlling your reactions.
Purposefully pause and breathe. Take a shorter inhale and a longer exhale and do that for two to three times.
Write down the limiting beliefs you hold about yourself. When you see them on paper you can begin to be objective.
Next to each belief write down how long you have had that thought or feeling about yourself or write the age you were when it began.
Write down what was going on in your life at that time that led you to develop that belief.
More than one belief can begin at the same time. Look at your list and see if any of them are connected to another.
Identify for yourself where you feel a reaction in your body when you have this thought.
Ask yourself what can you do to take care of you to help release this physical response? Do you need to exercise, meditate, journal, take more breaths?
Write down the opposite of the limiting belief, changing the negative thought into a positive one.
Say the positive thought out loud and experience how your body now responds.
Imagine a situation in the future where the negative belief would have appeared and see yourself using your new skill of regulating breathing, tuning into your body, doing what you need to do to shift the physical response and using the new positive thought. Imagine all the details and allow yourself to see, feel and experience the improvements.
If the difficult feelings and emotions, you struggle with each day were birthed from limiting thoughts and beliefs that means you can heal them. You can improve your mood, learn new coping skills, and put real, actionable changes into your life. You can shift the belief systems from the old faulty ones to new healthy ones that make sense for you in your life now. Learning to understand your autonomic nervous system, paying attention to the limiting thoughts and beliefs and being in tune with your physical responses allows you to affect positive change in your life. You get to take back control, you no longer have to be a victim to your own emotional hijacking and questioning,” what just happened?” “Why did I have that reaction?” Instead, you learn to purposefully pause, tune in to your body, recognize your thoughts, and take a few regulating breaths and once you feel calm then you can respond to the situation in a calm and connected way which will leave you feeling empowered and proud of yourself.
Janet Philbin, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Janet is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Hypnotherapist, and Certified Conscious Parenting Coach. Janet helps adults heal from the emotional pain and trauma of their past. She is the owner of Janet Philbin, ACSW, private psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy practice. For 21 years, Janet has been successfully helping people recover from their emotional wounds and change their lives with the power of transformational healing and hypnotherapy.
She’s the author of, Show Up For Yourself: A Guide to Inner Awareness and Growth. Her book offers readers a framework to heal their emotional wounds and become emotionally whole once again. Show Up For Yourself hit Amazon’s bestseller status and won as a finalist in the 2020 Readers Favorite book contest. She works closely with Dr. Shefali Tsabary, NY Times best-selling author and Oprah’s favorite parenting expert, as an ambassador in her Conscious Parenting Coaching Method Institute.
