Episode #152

Core Fears & CBT

Our core fears and beliefs shape how we think and feel about ourselves and our place in the world. When our core beliefs are not accurate it can cause us fear and anxiety that can easily impact your relationships and enjoyment of life.

How can you identify your core fears and beliefs?

How can you know what’s accurate and what’s not?

And how can you use CBT tools to help you adjust your core beliefs to be healthy and balanced?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you the CBT tools and some great suggestions from anxiety coach, Dr Todd Pressman, to help you identify and balance out your core fears.

Click to listen now!

 
 

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, it's Dr. Julie. Welcome to My CBT Podcast. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

Thanks for joining me. I hope you're all doing well. I'm going to start out with a great email that I received from one of my listeners. As always, I like hearing from you guys.

So it says,

“Hello, Dr. Julie. I found your podcast on Spotify last month, and it's been so, so helpful for me. I'm a big the Overthinker, struggling with anxiety, ADHD, depression, and social anxiety. I've tried counseling in the past, and a couple of years ago saw a psychiatrist and tried a few different medications. I didn't notice a measurable change that justified the expense, so I stopped. I've listened and relistened to dozens of your podcasts, and I felt more peace in my thoughts over the last couple of weeks than I've ever in my adult life, and I'm in my mid-30s for context. I've noticed over the last couple of years, my 10-year-old son has anxiety, mostly related to school and friendships. He thinks no one wants to be his friend and is overly concerned about being embarrassed.

Do you have any CBT resources or tools that would be helpful for children?

Thank you,

Mary.”

So thanks, Mary. I appreciate you being a listener. I'm glad the podcast has made a big difference. For those of you wondering, because I don't work with children, I just gave for the resource I give you guys all the time, which is thefeelinggoodinstitute. Com. That's a website that all of us trained Feeling Good Institute are on, that you can find a CBT therapist anywhere in the world, children, adolescents, adults. So that's what I recommended for her. And also there's some books you can Google CBT for Kids that you and share with your children if that's something they're going through as well. So that was my response in case you guys wanted to know. And again, please send your emails. I love getting them and giving me ideas for podcasts. So let's get going. So today I'm I'm pretty excited to share with you some new things, some new insights I've also had for myself. So to give you a little context, I have to do continuing education units for my license every couple of years. So I did one recently with a doctor.

His name is Dr. Todd Pressman. You can look him up, and he was doing one on anxiety. So I thought, Oh, that's really interesting. So I'm going to listen to that. So even though his was on anxiety, I'm going to use that information, but I want to talk more about core beliefs. So I have an original podcast on core beliefs that shares really my story and how I figured out my core belief and how it was pretty destructive in my life and how I was able to change that and go forward. It's a podcast a lot of people listen to and found it really helpful. But I'm going to dig a little deeper into the core beliefs today. I think you're going to find this really helpful because I did, too. I'll share with you my moment as I listen to his podcast. Let me give you a couple stats, just interesting stuff, and then we'll dive in. Just to let you know what Dr. Pressman shared, because I want to give him credit, on his training was saying that if you are listening and you're in America, that our country is five times more anxious than any other country, which is pretty crazy, and that But what's really interesting because anxiety is all about the future and uncertainty, and that's why it's so difficult because we never have answers.

It's a lot of what-if thinking, right? And he was sharing some statistics that 91 0. 6% of problems that we all worry about never actually come true. And 8. 4%, something does actually occur, but it's pretty ordinary. And the fear will go away after you start dealing your problem. But that's the whole thing with anxiety is we're always trying to get some certain answer. What's going to happen? What's my future look like? How am I going to die? Are things going to work out in my life? These are questions I hear all the time from clients, and then they're trying to control their life so bad things don't happen, or they think that they'll be ready when it happens, and you never get there. So it's just this ongoing uncertainty and anxiety and angst until we work on really dealing with these underlying fears, which is where I want to talk about the core beliefs. So one other thing that he put into perspective that I want to share is that there's five main underlying fears that all of us have. So the five main fears are fear of abandonment, fear of losing your identity, fear of losing meaning in your life, fear of losing a purpose, and fear of death.

Those are your five core fears that he talks about. And so what I'm going to talk about, the core fears are the core beliefs, right? We just use different words And I talk about with our core beliefs, we have behavioral strategies. So behavioral strategies are the things we do so we don't have to really look at our core belief, our negative core belief, because we don't want to, because that's painful, right? And Let me give you a little definition, just if you haven't listened to my Core Belief podcast yet. So core beliefs are at the root of who we are, right? They're at our core. And I always use an analogy of a tree. So the core beliefs are like a tree's roots that you can't see, they hold up the tree. Then the trunk are the assumptions we make about ourselves and others in our life. Then all the leaves and branches are our hot thoughts, the thoughts that aren't 100% true. Our hot thoughts are coming from our core. When we can change our negative core beliefs because we got positive ones also, then those hot thoughts and those assumptions just go away.

It's life-changing when you can change your core belief. The behavioral strategies are, again, things that we do, so I don't really have to deal with that. What I've shared, again, in my podcast before is my core belief has been a fear that I was bound to be abandoned, which started when my mom and my parents divorced when I was eight and my mom left the state. I I saw her once a year, but that became my core fear. I didn't really realize that until later in life, but it really wrecked havoc, and I really had to address it. My behavioral strategy was when I started dating people, I was the greatest girlfriend you could ever have because then you wouldn't leave me. That was coming from my fear of abandonment. But obviously, I picked unhealthy people because I wasn't coming from a good place, and all those people abandoned me because that was just what I was going to create until I figured it out and really was struggling. I went to therapy and somebody helped me identify it and then make changes, which I'm really grateful for. But other behavioral strategies, just to give you guys some ideas, maybe you can connect a little bit, is If you're a perfectionist, hoarding can be a behavioral strategy.

If you're a people pleaser, being a narcissist, anger can also be a strategy, thinking that's keeping you safe. Being judgmental, and then even just depression, being agitated, all that stuff. So what I have my aha moment, I'll share with you first so you can see where I'm going with this, is that, okay, yes, I know that my core belief has been this fear of abandonment. And I was thinking about how has that shown itself? Because when you When you really understand these core fears, you can see how... I think of an octopus's tentacles, that it's like it just comes out everywhere in your life. It's not just relationships, it's how you work, how you manage your life, all different relationships that you're in, how you care for yourself. A lot of people may have a core belief of, say, I'm not good enough. And I've been working with a lot of people like, Oh, that's a really common core belief. And now I'm like, Okay, but what's underneath that? What's the core of the core? And that might be that I'm afraid that I'll be abandoned. If I'm not good enough, then people will leave me.

If I'm not good enough, then I will lose a job. So my moment was that. So it's interesting because as a little kid, when my parents were married, my memory, my siblings' memory, you can ask any of us. My parents were really happy. We had a great family life. It was super fun, and the divorce was really shocking to us. But my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she was completely dependent on my dad financially. And when she left, she had met somebody new. Nice person, but it was for a person that helped her get out because financially, she was stuck there. We're talking about 1970s, a lot of people weren't even divorced back then. So Somewhere I processed that, that she was very dependent on him financially. So I have lived my life that I would never be dependent financially on another person. That's a hard truth for me. That is just part of who I am. And even though I've worked on a lot of my issues and I don't have that fear of being abandoned anymore, there's that part of me that I can still hold on to. So I was like, okay, a lot of people are like, oh, that's good.

And I don't want to be financially dependent I'm not anybody. I raise my kids like that. You want to be self-sufficient. All of that's true. But what part of that played a role regarding my core belief? And I was like, oh, if I'm dependent on somebody and I'm abandoned, then what? So I realized that was my aha moment I had the other day when I was doing this course of part of me add to a fault of always being the breadwinner in my relationships and always knowing I could support myself 100 % and my family. There's a connection there, that tentacle I was talking about, that there's a part of that because if I don't have enough and I'm abandoned, then what? And I was like, Oh, that is so interesting. So since I've thought about these underlying core fears and been sharing them with my clients as well as myself, and I've been just really mulling over this for days, it's been really interesting for me of I never really thought about because it's very easy on the surface to be positive, again, that there's good things that can come out of negative situations.

There's some strengths that I have because of this fear of abandonment, but there's some things that aren't my strengths, my weaknesses, because of it as well. So it's not... Again, it's shades of gray. We're not talking all or nothing, but it's important. Sometimes we don't really identify like, Oh, that's where that's coming from, because we can rationalize our behavior and other people might even admire it. But is it really coming from a good place for you? That's what I want you to think about. That's what I want you to think about. So I have a lot of clients who have health anxiety. 66 million people in the United States have health anxiety, so you're not alone. And that comes from this underlying core of fear of death, right? I know somebody that I know. I work with many people that have families now. They have children, and now they're like, Oh, my God, I die. I got to be here for my kids. And when you really have health anxiety, what are you doing? You're always running around trying to find certainty. I'm going to find that illness before it gets me. So I'm going to go to 10,000 doctors.

And if I don't like the answer, I'm going to go to someone else, and I'm going to take this pill and that pill and this pill. And now I'm just overwhelmed. I don't know what's working, what is and what reactions. Because you're running for this certainty, you're never going to know certainty over how you're going to die. So you're just left in this angst forever. And of course, nobody wants to die at a young age and leave their children. I mean, that's obvious, right? And we all hope to go also before our children, but an older age, right? But worrying about death and trying to stay alive because this is your core fear, right, isn't working. And that anxiety will come out in all areas of your life, where you go, how you handle things, right? Oh, is that safe? Maybe it's too many people. We shouldn't go. We might get sick. I mean, on and on and on. And you might not understand that it's coming from that core fear, but you want to be mindful about that. You might have a core fear regarding losing your purpose in life. Am I just going to college to get a degree so I can make a living, but I'm really losing myself and my purpose because that's really not what I want to do.

And I want to find my purpose but be able to also make a living and take care of myself. What would that look like? So am I going in a direction I don't want to just because that's what everyone says to do. And now I'm never going to really be satisfied because I really lost my purpose in life and what I feel like I was put on this Earth to do. So that's an example of that. So these are, again, just to repeat them for you. The five core fears are fear of abandonment, loss of identity, loss of meaning, loss of purpose, and fear of death. And you really want to think about, what is that for me? So there's an exercise. If you're using the Mind Over Mood book, there's a chapter called Core Beliefs, which is Chapter 12. And there's an exercise in CBT that I learned with all different trainings with people, and it's in the book called the Downward Arrow Technique. So we talk about core beliefs about yourself, about others in the world. It doesn't mean you have core beliefs in all three categories, but those are the ones that are something to look at.

And that using the downward arrow helps you go down further and further and further until you get to that core belief, because core beliefs are really absolute thoughts, right? Absolute beliefs, I should say. I'm sorry. Really absolute. It's like, I'm not good enough. Again, I'm bound to be abandoned. I'm unlovable. All of these a lot of helpless, unlovable core beliefs. And I want you to identify those, and those are definitely worth working on. But if you can get to what is that real fear I have that I really need to work on and change, it can make a big difference. Because if your core belief is that I'm not good enough, that's really based on things. And the problem with having that as a core belief and not just believing that you're good just for who you are, is that if my core belief is I'm not good enough, that means that I have to be good enough all the time in all areas of my life. It's like a moving target because I could be doing great in this area, but if I wasn't there for my friend, oh, no, I'm not good enough.

Or if I didn't get on that paper, now I'm not good enough. So it goes back and forth where I want your core to just be like, I'm lovable, I'm good enough just for who I am. I'm not bound to be abandoned because that's not my destiny in my life. It happened in my life, but I don't have to put that into the rest of my life and the rest of the world that I live in and assume that and not be able to trust others in my life because that's where it would get to. And bringing unhealthy people into my life that we're going to abandon me. So just this vicious cycle we get into, a lot of people are like, Why do I keep repeating the same pattern? Because you didn't figure out your core belief. You haven't figured out that core fear that you have about yourself in your life. It can just be, like I said, really eye-opening and being like, That's what I've been missing. It's painful. It is hard to look at, trust me. We want to think, Oh, we're more than that. Oh, that doesn't really affect me.

I got past that. That was so long ago. But if it's still showing up in parts of your life, it's something you want to have the courage and the strength. And trust me that you will get through it. And it's really not any worse of what you're living with. A lot of people are like, if I don't say it out loud, then it's not real. When I really say it out loud, people are like, why don't I go to therapy and talk about my problems? Because then it will make it more real. And I'm like, Maybe it'll make it more real, but don't think it's going to make it worse because it's coming out in other ways. Over eating, drinking, drugs, bad relationships, can't hold on to a job, being rageful, being angry, and losing people in your life because you're always angry. So it's playing itself. Don't fool yourself. It's playing itself somewhere in your life. And if you really want to get to the nitty-gritty they can change all those other things. So when you're working on that downward arrow technique, a couple of questions, it's going to say, What does this mean about me?

What does this mean about me? So it keeps digging and digging and digging. But some other questions you could ask yourself with the downward is, why What is this situation upsetting me? What are you afraid might happen next? What are you afraid you're going to miss or lose out on if you make those changes, if you leave that relationship, if you leave that job? And a lot of the underlying core issues in our lives is issues of control, right? Especially with anxiety. I want to have control. I want to know what's going to happen. Then I won't be anxious. Not really true. But that's what we tell ourselves, right? That was my issue of abandonment. Right now that I understand more that if I'm afraid of being abandoned, then I need to control things in my life so I won't be abandoned, right? When my parents told me they were getting divorced, it was like the rug got pulled out from my feet. I don't want that to happen again. So what am I going to do to control control that. I'm going to, again, be this great girlfriend and control the relationship, which was a fallacy.

And if, again, I'm going to be able to make somebody stay, not that I even want that, but I thought I did back then. But it was this fear of not being control. The only control we have in our lives is over ourselves and our choices. We can't control people, places, and things. You always need to remember that. And when you're healthy, you don't even want to because just the thought of it is exhausting. Controlling everything, there There's no way you're going to be present in your life if that is your focus, if I control things. But you have to understand that's that behavioral strategy, right? If somebody is controlling it. If you said, How would people describe my personality? Am I a controlling person? We've met people like that. Am I an angry person? Am I a passive person? Am I aggressive? How would people describe your personality? And that might be a little inkling of how you can say, Oh, maybe that's part of my core fear, right? Because that's what I do to try to manage my life. And it's easy to me, and it just flows. I don't think about it because it's so ingrained, but it's really not working.

It really doesn't create happiness, and it doesn't serve other people around me or myself. Those are some things to understand. Is control an aspect in my life that when people feel out of control, they try to control. When people feel that they are in control of their lives, they don't have that need to try to control others. So these are just a lot of questions to ask yourself, and hopefully you'll have one of those ding, ding, ding. That's me. That's me. I didn't really think about it that way before. And when that fear comes up, what you can just start to do, take some work, but recognize it, breathe through it, and do the opposite. Do something different. I'm not going to go and tell that person what to do. I'm not going to go to another doctor to try to get a different diagnosis or a 20 I'm going to give the opinion on something. I'm just going to be present and stick with maybe the plan I have with my doctor. I'm just going to focus on what can I do for myself today and let that person make their own choices. That self-care honoring yourself.

I'm going to honor myself instead of trying to make all these things work out because I'm thinking that's going to make me feel better. And it's really just a bandaid. It's not going to make you feel better forever because you're going to just keep repeating that behavior. And that's the Well, the CBT thing I talked to you guys about that most people live their life based on how they feel. So they go from feelings, moods, same thing, to behavior. Oh, that felt good to scream and yell and get everybody to shut up and leave me alone. That That felt good to eat the entire pint of ice cream. I just feel comforted now and I'm not thinking about other things. That felt good to avoid another get together because I have that social anxiety. Whatever you're doing is working, right? I'm drunk enough so am I feelings are numbed out. That worked. So next time I feel something, you go back to it. That's what people do. That's what we want to break. I don't want you to make decisions based on how you feel. We want to make decisions what's best for you. So what is best for me is when I feel that fear coming up I'm worried about dying.

Somebody's going to leave me. What's my identity? What's my meaning? What's my purpose in life? I just got to breathe through it and take a minute. I don't have to have answers right away. And maybe I already have the answers. Maybe I am living the life that I want, and I don't have to keep searching, and I'm not giving up myself. Or maybe I need to reassess and say, maybe I do have a job that makes a nice living and it works for me, but I could go find my purpose through volunteering, through getting involved in an organization or whatever that might be to feel like I can still have my purpose. It doesn't have to be everything I do, but I can still have that as part of my life. So again, it's not about stopping everything and changing everything in your life. It's assessing what parts maybe aren't working well. Sometimes it could be your whole life. Sometimes we're in those moments. Sometimes it could just be work. It could be your relationship. It could be how you take care of yourself, your health, all of those things, whatever is going on in your life.

What is it that isn't working for me? And what fear can I relate it to? And it doesn't have to just be one of the five fears. It can be maybe even two of them. It's not like I got to find that one. I had one, but a lot of people might have more, and that's okay. We can have many different negative core beliefs. It's not that we just have one. And a positive core belief just to share what is that, is that I am lovable, I am good enough, I am adequate. And those we don't want to touch, obviously. We want to have more positive core beliefs. So if you have your core belief and you feel like you figured that out, which is great, and you've been working on that since you've been listening to my podcast and understanding all that. This is one step I want to go, what's the core of the core? What is my core fear in life? Maybe what was it in the past And maybe you worked through it, but you really weren't cognizant of what that was. That'd be interesting to figure out as well. But I've had some of my clients this week that I've worked with for some time and have been doing really well.

And I broached this topic with them and I'm like, Okay, that is the core belief, and we know your behavioral strategies. But why did you pick perfectionism? Well, then I wouldn't be abandoned. If I was perfect and I got great grades because that's what my parents want, I wouldn't be abandoned emotionally from them. Or again, if I was perfect at work, I wouldn't be fired, which is being abandoned by losing something. A lot of my clients were like, Oh, I didn't really think about it like that before. Wow. I didn't realize I really had that core fear. But it makes sense based on things that we all go through in our lives. And it's not always childhood. It can start in your adult life. Like I said, some of my clients didn't really have this fear of death until they had their children, they said, because now they're like, I need to be here for them. So core beliefs This can be developed throughout your life. It's not all childhood issues. A lot of times it is, but not always. Things happen throughout our lives that can be traumatic, can be long term negative situations that create those core beliefs, and we want to figure out what they are.

And again, when you can start changing them and doing something different and going through that angst of like, that was uncomfortable, but I got through it. And when you work through the fear, you will start feeling more confident and understanding I don't need to hold on to this core fear in my life anymore. I can be that warrior. I can be brave. I can be solid on my feet and feel strong and know that I don't have to go back to that and react in a creative way to give myself this false sense of control. It's very liberating. It's very eye-opening. Again, I was really excited to look at it in this different way, and that's why I wanted to share this with you. And again, it was time to do another podcast on core beliefs because it's just a huge element in all of our lives. All of our lives. There hasn't been one client I've ever met that didn't have a negative core belief because we're all human. We all have our own stories and have gone through things in our lives at different severity. But it could be something, quote, small that you might be surprised.

You still develop a core belief. I mean, it just can come Every day you wake up, we don't know what's going to happen. We plan for it, but things just happen that we didn't plan for. We want to feel strong and confident that we have the tools on how to deal with that in those situations. If my core is strong like that tree, it's going to hold me up. That's what it's all about. Look at just an analogy of working out. Everybody says you need to have a strong core. The strong core is going to help your back, your posture, everything. That's the same emotionally. You need a strong core to hold you up in all situations and not to react out of fear. Fear is an emotion. And again, you don't want to make decisions based on your emotions. You want to make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel. And fear is a feeling. So I hope you guys, if you didn't have an aha moment yet, I hope it comes to you. I hope you can start to think about this and and use it to your benefit.

Again, please reach out, share with me what you think about this topic. If you've had some insights, if you have any questions, I always get back to everybody. I'm here just to teach you these tools because I use them every day and I know how life-changing they can be. I'm just excited to share this with all of you to be able to continue your journey with CBT and the tools and to be happier and live a better life and have better relationships and all that better health, all the things that you can create for yourself when you're using tools on a daily basis.

So again, I hope this was helpful. Please share with others that you might feel would benefit from it. You know where to find me at my website, mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com.

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Remember on my website under mycbt.store, there's a lot of fun merchandise that has my mantra on it.

And also on the bottom of that page is the books that I talk about, the Mind Over Mood, which is my main workbook I use, Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns as well. They're all great CBT books.

And as always, I will leave you with my mantra, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.