Pervasive negative beliefs are deeply held core ideas that influence thinking patterns, interpretations of events, and behavioral responses. When activated, these ideas trigger unhelpful response mechanisms and mood or anxiety symptoms. One type of pervasive beliefs that occur in anxiety and depressive disorders is negative core beliefs. Think about these beliefs like goggles. They are filters through which you interpret reality.

Negative core beliefs typically fall into three broad categories:

● Helplessness (There’s nothing I can do to make this better.)

● Hopelessness (This is never going to get better.)

● Worthlessness (I am unworthy of love or acceptance. I am bad.)

Content typically includes:

● Beliefs about self (I am unlovable and unworthy.)

● Beliefs about others (People are uncaring and judgmental.)

● Beliefs about the world (The world is a dangerous place.)

● Beliefs about the future (Things will not get better.)

Negative Core Beliefs are to Depression like Second Fear is to Anxiety Disorders.

Second fear turns an anxiety state into an anxiety disorder because the fear of the fear creates resistance that creates more fear (and more resistance and more fear).

Negative core beliefs turn a feeling into a depressive state because the interpretation of that feeling is that it means the person is helpless, hopeless, or worthless.

Without a negative core belief, you can label and allow a feeling and then use the feeling as information about how you’d like to act next. So, for instance, if you feel lonely and you don’t add a negative core belief to it, you can use it as information that you should call someone. You will likely feel less lonely.

If a negative core belief is triggered, you are likely to ignore and suppress the feeling and then get stuck in your beliefs about being helpless, hopeless, or worthless. Using the same example, feeling lonely might make you believe that you are so hopeless and worthless that you become less likely to call and connect with someone. You will likely feel more lonely.

Getting through core beliefs can be more challenging than second fear, because anxious sensations and thoughts are easier to identify once you know what to observe. Core beliefs also feel very personal, making it difficult to clearly see what’s happening. Daily journaling can help you notice what you feel on a daily basis and how your core beliefs connect to your feelings.

As you get educated about your emotional disorder, you’ll start observing what’s happening, rather than criticizing yourself, analyzing what’s happening, or trying to fix it. You’ll get curious about your triggers and be able to predict what you’ll think and feel. Your sensations will get predictable and maybe even boring. You might still get anxious, but the anxiety will peak and pass. It won’t stick around or get in the way of your life. It won’t cause you suffering.

As you observe your emotional experience, you’ll hopefully start wondering about the beliefs that create, maintain, and intensify your emotions. For instance, you might start to think, I know this trigger. I know what I think and feel around this trigger and I don’t avoid it anymore. I wonder why I still get anxious. Good observation! You aren’t avoiding the situation. You might not even be avoiding your thoughts or your feelings. You probably have a belief that maintains your suffering.

We all have beliefs about how we think and feel, why we think and feel, and what we should think and feel. You might not be able to consciously identify what you believe about thoughts and feelings. If you are curious, you can use your suffering as a map to guide you to your beliefs. Once you understand what your beliefs are, you can challenge those that create suffering for you.

Here are some examples of types of thoughts and feelings and some beliefs that people have about those thoughts and feelings. Try to get curious about the ones with which you identify. If you identify with a lot of these beliefs, it should help understand why, despite a lot of work, you still get stuck. You’ll get more and more relief as you change these beliefs.

Those that are sensitive to uncertainty often believe:

• Uncertainty means something bad.

• Uncertainty is unfair and spoils everything. I shouldn’t feel it.

Those that are sensitive to embarrassment, rejection, and judgment often believe:

• It’s hard to be part of the group and easy to get kicked out of it.

• Making a social mistake is worse than not trying at all.

• When people like something about me, it means more pressure to keep it up.

Those who worry often believe:

• Worry helps me problem solve.

• Worry keeps me motivated.

• Worry protects me from feeling bad if something bad happens.

• Worrying will protect me from bad things happening.

• Worrying means I care.

Those with perfectionistic thoughts often believe:

• Things must be done a certain way.

• Everything is equally important.

• If I start, I must complete it up to my standard.

• Good enough is not good enough.

• I can’t tolerate how it feels to make a mistake.

Those with inflated responsibility often believe:

• Having a thought is as bad as the thought being true.

• Feelings that arrive with thoughts make that thought meaningful.

• If I have the feeling of guilt, I must have done something wrong.

• If I can do something about it, I must do something about it.

As long as you hold onto any of these beliefs, you’ll feel distress when something triggers them. Try journaling about them in everyday life and seeing where you have an opportunity to challenge them.

It’s hard for many parents to accurately assess the skills, talents, interests, and potential within their children and provide the appropriate scaffolding to support growth without adding their own projections about who they want their child to be. As a result, many children grow up with unattainable, elusive criteria for worthiness. What you were taught about who you can be may not fit your actual potential and/or was a projection from one or both of your parents.

The actual criteria for worthiness is much looser in adulthood than it is in childhood. There are many subcultures to try out and many in which you will fit in. There are many places to enjoy living, many people with whom to fall in love, and many types of job possibilities. Someone who starts from a place of worthiness about love, friendship, and work experiences excitement about the discovery of what to do and with whom.

If you feel worthless, consider that it might not be the truth about you. It might be an environmental stressor, like a breakup or a job transition, that is stressing your sense of self-worth. As we work together to frame your situation differently, you may find it easier to act from a place of worthiness until you feel worthy. And, if you persistently feel worthless, it is even less likely to be true about you and more likely to be an environment that makes you feel worthless plus behaviors that reinforce that feeling. Get curious about the messages you have received about worthiness and see how you can challenge them.

Another word for helpfulness is efficacy. Efficacy, mastery, and control over the environment are all markers of wellbeing in adults. I don’t mean control behaviors run by OCD. I mean actually having choice over and control of everyday life, including what to eat, drink, wear, and buy, what you do for work, what you learn, with whom you associate and socialize, and what you do in your leisure time.

Childhood is a prolonged period of helplessness. In the best of circumstances, I hope the adults around you didn’t make you too painfully aware of it. Both physical and emotional abuse and neglect create traumatic feelings of helplessness. A traumatic memory is an emotional-laden memory that gets stuck in time and space. Despite being an efficacious adult, certain combinations of triggers, thoughts, feelings, and sensations, may send you right back to the helplessness of when you were 5 or 15 years old. Their helplessness is a traumatic memory.

You don’t need more efficiency via rules and perfectionism in an attempt to prevent this feeling. Use curiosity to observe your triggers and your consequences. It will be less intense and less threatening next time if you learn from it this time and offer yourself healing compassion. Feeling helpless doesn’t mean that you are. Oftentimes you don’t need more problem solving to get out of helplessness. You may just need to acknowledge it, show yourself compassion, and come back into your present life.