Belief and Fear

I have been thinking a lot about old beliefs and how they feed my fears. Yes, old childhood stuff—beliefs that I am not loveable, will be abandoned, am defective and must subjugate myself to redress all of the above. The schema—as they are called in cognitive therapy—do scheme. They conspire and work together. The fear of being unlovable is built on the belief of being defective, so how could you love me? Therefore you’ll abandon me. To try to prevent that I subjugate myself and then I get mad at you and at me. A merry-go-round of bad beliefs and bad feelings.

To break the cycle I have to have new beliefs. We say “old tapes” but now I know they are so deeply imbedded that they are closer to subliminal messages. I do the work of catching and changing those messages when I am aware of them but so often I seem to “come to” in the middle of being convinced of one of the fear thoughts: “he doesn’t love me” or “they want to fire me” or “I’ll be alone and broke”.

There is so much that I can do about this but after that it really is God’s work. I think that’s what steps six and seven are about…do what I can to change these underlying beliefs—they are after all what leads to lying, cheating, gossiping and being mean.

But I also need God to help me and heal me and that is my ongoing prayer.