Changing core beliefs???

So my T responded to my email about SH, how she had let me down etc.
And what she said tore me up at first, and then I realized she was right.
She said " I DO love you. But I don't think anything I do will ever satisfy you. You NEED to believe you are unlovable. So whatever I do or say, you see it as evidence that I don't care. It's not about what I am doing its about how you perceive the world because of your core belief that you are unlovable"

Ouch.

But I realized she is right. I'm so.convinced that no one can love me that I tear apart, redact, edit out.etc all the loving stuff. We have talked a lot about core beliefs and core shame and how they are formed in early childhood and are powerful and difficult to overcome. I think up until I read her message I think.part of me believed that if someone just loved me ENOUGH I'd feel differently. Except I won't because my core belief is that I .fundamentally damaged and unlovable.

I had a short but emotional phone conversation with my T today and I am kind of scared and confused.

Has anyone here ever changed a deep core belief like that? ? If so how did you do it???

Thank you

I could have written this myself. My T hasn't said any of those things, but I'm sure she's thought them. Kudos for your T being honest. That is a sign that she cares right there.

I haven't (yet). I have those kind of core beliefs you're talking about. I'm working with my T on this. We use CBT and also talk about it. I think it's going to be a long and difficult road. It's isn't easy. To me, somtimes it looks impossible. But appearantly it can be done and you can change your core beliefs.

I am sorry..
I am right there with you with a similar core belief.
I'm not sure how to work it out, either.

Hmm. My core belief is/was that while i AM a terrific person, THEY will never see it, therefore i will never be loved. I think the past seven years with t, and 3 years with PC, have helped me change that belief to: while i am a somewhat interesting and able person, SOME people will respond to me sometimes, and we will both get something out of it sometimes.

And my lunch just got here!

I've been on both ends of this issue.

For me, one of my mistaken core beliefs was that I was broken and fundamentally flawed. It affected my level of confidence, my ability to advocate for myself, my ability to even see that life could ever be different for me. I did learn to finally reject that core belief as in itself flawed, the responsibility of the people who had caused me so much damage very early on in my life. I had to reframe my understanding of my history as what it was -- history. Yes, I had suffered great damage in childhood, but I am not irreparable. I am resiliant, capable of healing, and able to move away from that history, leaving it where it needs to stay -- in the past.

My husband sounds very much as your T described you. I realized finally that he has gaping holes in his life that I will never personally be able to fill, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much he wants me to fill them up. He has to heal the cracks in the bottom of that hole on his own so that what he receives from others doesn't just drain out the bottom. I can't do that for him. He's finally getting there. He's realized that until he changes his belief that no one will ever really love him, he won't truly accept or fully trust in anyone's love for him, no matter how clear the evidence is. He's learning to slow his thinking down. To stop those negative thought spirals that have become habitual for him, and to challenge his own thinking against reality and evidence. He's gotten so much calmer internally, his depression has greatly lifted, his blood pressure has stabilized, etc., and he's learned to relax and enjoy the beauty of relationships instead of defaulting to his old thinking that was so distrustful and almost paranoid. It can be done, but it takes setting boundaries on your own thinking in a way.

I'm dealing with the same thing ("I hate myself and I don't deserve to be cared about by myself or anyone else"). We are starting to work on it in therapy just so far by talking about where these ideas came from. There is a website with exercises and CBT type stuff, she printed off a booklet for me to read and answer the questions. I'll look for the address at work tonight. Hugs, that's so hard.

I believe I am fundamentally flawed and impossible to love. And like you said with your husband I can't hold on to anything ...it bleeds away so fast..i have to slow down my thinking.....

I'm also having trouble believing my T still likes me now after what she said

It's very hard. It took over a year of therapy for me to even admit that it might perhaps be problematic that I loathed myself so much. I have changed, but it takes time and the changes are generally rather small - not insignificant, certainly not unimportant, but not any huge, complete changes either. Only last week I recognised a rather important change that had taken place, in how I experienced T's attitude to me.

I guess I'm dealing with something similar now--my belief that if I'm open and honest with people about my thoughts and feelings, they'll abandon/reject me. I'm in a place where I can be honest with people, but then I need reassurance from them that they aren't going anywhere. Repeated reassurance. The issue is, if people (in this case, specifically my T and marriage counselor) keep giving me that reassurance, then I'll never learn to trust that other people aren't going anywhere (or if they do abandon me, that they weren't worth having around).

I should mention my T did say "we're going to start working on this, and fixing broken self esteem is a huge thing to work on"

My toxic core beliefs are similar. On some level I believe that I don't deserve to be loved like everyone else. I think that I have to work very hard and open myself up to all sorts of use and abuse to have any sort of old bone thrown at me. Like I have to pay back every small kindness tenfold or the other person will abandon me. Of course the opposite is true - the other person is made to feel uncomfortable and distances themselves and I end up believing that I didn't do enough and so the spiral continues.
I'm working on it. The first step is awareness.

I want to belief that recognizing it is something at least

T and i were talking about this last week re the first mr hankster and his being selfish in bed. But also why was i so "giving"? Read controlling?

An my other thing about the transitional object, when t gave me a coffee mug. An all i could think was, when do i have to give it back? That was pure transference. Where did that feeling come from? The feeling that nothing was mine. I dont think im done with that one yet.

That's interesting about your mug, hankster. When a former therapist asked me if I still had X that she'd given me. I told her that she'd handed it to me, but it hadn't been clear she was giving it to me, so I'd looked at it and put it down. It was still in her office somewhere. Partly, tho, I think she needed to be more clear.

As for changing core beliefs, it's a long process. First, I try to be awake to them. My therapist has pointed out that my intensity of feeling does not equal truth, so that's what I try to tackle/question whenever I get into the death grip of a belief about myself. I don't look to other people to fill a void, though, so being able to even seek reassurance would be a big deal for me right now.

(((ruh roh))) yeah it was definitely one of those buzzy this isnt really happening moments.

I have not read through all the responses yet, but I can totally relate to feeling fundamentally flawed. I often feel like that black ooze in the TNG episode that contaminated everyone it touched...
I recently came to a realization though; I have never associated being loved or lovable with safety. I need and want those closest to me to hate me because I don't want to believe they would hurt me. Much of my abuse was done in the name of "love". I was exhaulted and praised while others were put down. Then I was told I was loved and the best daughter while some pretty ****** stuff was done to me. To be "loved" and "worthy" meant being hurt...
I'm not sure how to change that belief other than to tackle it in therapy. Maybe being able to say that "hearing I am loved makes me afraid you will hurt me" will help...? I dunno. It's not that everyone that loved me has hurt me, it's just that the most vocal person (the one who said I was valuable and worthy and lovable) was also a person who really hurt me... :/
Changing core beliefs is hard. It takes a complete re-framing and re-structuring of everything we "know" to be "true"...
I've also got a belief down there somewhere that if I were to admit that I am lovable, worthy, & not at fault, someone will die. I know it's an irrational fear, but it's one I've had forever...
How do you change what you've believed all your life?

Same way you eat an elephant. its been 7 years since i left my mother - i never thought that would EVER happen.

I am not convinced my core beliefs need to be changed. I don't think I am particularly unlovable- not more unlovable than I think most people are and I don't dislike me for the most part. I may be a bit odd in thought or approach but not really that much in action - I get up, brush my teeth, drink coffee, live in a house, sleep in a bed, hold a job, pay my bills and so forth - so although I sometimes feel alien to the approach it seems a lot of others just take for granted as being something people would want (hugging for example) will be the correct approach - I don't want to change more than I want to not be an alien if that makes sense.

How does one decide which core beliefs they want to change and which ones they are okay with or believe are accurate?

perhaps ones that cause you enough discomfort in life to prompt a change.

You pick a spot on the pain meter. Core beliefs lower than cutoff criterion are keepers.

Eta - t.w.o. - jinx you owe me a coke!

It's more than something - it's vital. Without understanding what's happening you can't change anything.

I don't think the therapist has ever used the term core belief. I am trying to remember if the second ever has - if either has it would be the second one.

I would think deciding there was one a person wanted to change would at least be a concrete sort of thing to have decided. Not easy to do - but a decision or goal. Which is something.

I'm going to go out on a limb here Stopdog and suggest that on some level you may be fighting a 'core belief' that believing yourself okay in your differences is not okay (gods that's convoluted). Unconscious core beliefs (my T doesn't use that term either, but it's useful...) are a bugger. I ran into some thoroughly unexpected ones there recently... That's why awareness is so important.