How did you change your core beliefs?

[how]

I have some really ingrained core beliefs that really mess up my life. I think I am frustrated now because I have always been such a strong person...kinda messed up, but strong. I guess I just kept plugging along til I couldn't anymore. Have overcome some big obstacles in my life, but never really dealt with anything. I am feeling laid down now by the amount of trauma in my life...it has all caught up to me. I have great insight into all of it, yet feel helpless and overwhelmed. The core beliefs come from childhood, but I did not know that til now. I am blown away by how much they have affected me and my life. I just keep getting more and more depressed and isolate more and more. In the last year I have really gotten much worse. I do not seem to have a self anymore. Talking about the trauma does not seem to help...how do you build yourself back up?
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[NewBeginnings]

For me it is starting with awareness of what those beliefs are. Therapy has helped, reality checking with others and this forum have helped too...

 

[ILoveLife]

A good therapist, a lot of sessions only to deal with cognition, not giving up.

 

[KerriJ]

I'm working through some workbooks (The PTSD workbook, and The Courage To Heal) and working with a trauma T. I also started DBT group and go to Codependents Anonymous (since a lot of my distortions are relationship based)

They are helping me recognize and change (Slowly) the distorted cognitions.

 

[Tornadic Thoughts]

Seeing and feeling the cumulative effects of continuing to believe all that shit was all it took for me, after several decades of falling for it hook, line, and sinker. It took a while to recover from realizing just how much we will allow ourselves to be influenced just because someone in a place of some type of authority says so, or supposedly said so.

Most of what I'd been conditioned to believe are many of the same exact things that took me down in some form or another through the years, then worked to complicate the issues even more rather than helping, especially once I started reaching out for help, leaving me worse off than when I started, adding insult to injury along every step of the way.

I think all of that somehow sparked some deep felt anger and rage after having seen it being done to my older sister, as well, that thankfully fueled my ongoing desire and momentum to find out my own damn truth rather than continuing to rely on the twisted script I'd been taught to follow.

It required a willingness to unlearn all I thought I knew and to open my mind and eyes to much of what I'd been taught to ignore and look at as not being valuable.

It also required a total change in my environment and consumption habits. It's all still very much a work in progress, as I imagine it always will be. Shift happens.

 

[EveHarrington]

My therapist is hella-blunt. She keeps it real. I believe her when she tells me things and incorporate it into my world view. (Not easy-----understatement!)

 

[ms spock]

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What I did may have no relevance to you at all, or it could be useful, we all have to find our own ways.
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Starting really, really, really small and doing just one thing for 1 minute per day or 2 minutes per day.
Self Compassion Break and exercises the audio is free to download off the Kristin Neff website.
Trauma trained psychiatrist.
The David Burns book "Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy" was really good as was the workbook.
Medication
Mindfulness (the 8 week course) doing it for the fourth time now.
DBT the dbtselfhelp website is really useful, and organised in a way that my brain understands.
Challenges with other members here.
Exercise - walking, swimming, pilates, yoga, Mindful movement
Nutrition/Diet
Finding a safe place to live.
The Happiness Challenges on this forum.
Reading and researching.
Stopping being so gullible.
Working in a dedicated manner on my recovery and healing.
Finding a purpose
Sleep hygiene.
Routines
Listening to audiobooks "The Mindful Way Through Depression" and "The Mindful Way Through Anxiety"
Name that distorted cognition (thought/perception)