I had no concept of mistaken beliefs ( the term I prefer to use ) when I began therapy. It was something I grew to understand as I grew to understand myself better. Over time, I realized how damaging those mistaken beliefs were to my life and of course I knew my thinking had to change fundamentally about myself if my life was going to improve. Of course it was a choice. I'm an adult now, no longer at the whim of the abusers who caused me to buy in to those mistaken beliefs in the first place. No one, ever, in this life will ever have that kind of power over my beliefs about myself again. I'm much stronger and much more intuitive about myself now than I was as a very impressionable, malleable child.