Identifying our Limiting Beliefs Related to CEN

July 7, 2021

Click here to download worksheet

Hi everyone, this is Ludemia ( aka Mia ),

 and welcome to Heart-Mind Equation.  

This is Episode 5 of our CEN series. 

Today, we are addressing Recommendation #2, related to CEN. Recommendation #2 is:

Identifying our LB consequently to the emotional neglect we were submitted to, as a child, leading us to people-pleasing. 

Don’t forget to go on my website: heartmindequation.com, to access worksheets I’ve put in place to accompany you throughout this episode.

So basically, a belief is when we accept that a statement, a thought, or perception is true. We have trust, faith, or conviction in something or someone.  Beliefs are influenced, in a large spectrum, by our family, culture and social conditioning, but also on the individual level, by our experiences, observations, emotions, and most of all, by repetition…

Beliefs that are influencing our behaviors the most are those rooted in our subconscious mind ( about 90 – 95% of them ). And our subconscious mind is primarily influenced by our limbic brain, responsible for initiating a cascade of chemicals resulting in different emotions.

There are 2 brain structures, responsible for creating and sustaining our limiting beliefs: The hippocampus ( for memory storage ) and the amygdala ( emotion regulator ). Both structures work together, to help sustain the neuro networks, related to the creation of our beliefs. Indeed, we can remember something better, when we can remember how it felt ( involving a correlation between our hippocampus and our amygdala ).

As everyone’s pathway through life is different, we can say that there are as many more different beliefs as there are people.

The paradox is with the word belief itself: since it demonstrates someone’s conviction in a perception.

In the case of PP habits, related to CEN, most beliefs about our self-perceptions are disempowering ones, becoming, limiting beliefs.

It is relevant to say that a child who has experienced emotional neglect, tends to develop limiting beliefs that reflect that emotional neglect he experienced, growing up. More often than not, this child has a higher risk of becoming an adult with tendencies of people-pleasing; approval, validation, or attention-seeking.  

Unfortunately, most of the time, we can identify those limiting beliefs, when we validate an emotional need we have, that is being ignored by someone.  Now, don’t get me wrong… It is not anyone’s responsibility to look out for our feelings or emotions.  It is our own responsibility.  And it is the way we interpret the negative situation that triggers our negative emotions.

The vicious cycle:

The unpleasant situation  triggers Negative Thoughts 

The Negative Thoughts lead to negative feelings or emotions

The interpretations of both the thoughts and emotions, 

build a Perception, that we link to the situation,

That Perception draws a Conclusion 

And that Conclusion becomes a Limiting Belief. 

Every time we face a similar situation, or similar context, that LB gets reinforced.  Our subconscious mind automatically recalls the emotions associated with the feeling we had back then. Sometimes it happens, without us knowing it. Could be something very subtle, like a smell, a rainy day, a particular song playing, someone’s voice, etc, recalling the neuro network responsible for that negative emotion.  In the case of emotional neglect, we can think of feeling unworthy, incompetent, insignificant, invisible, etc.

Whenever we experience an unmet emotional need, or, get our feelings hurt, for a reason or another, it often brings us back to the narrative we started to believe about ourselves, as a child, whether we are aware of it or not. 

Here are some examples of limiting belief, initiated by some of our CEN:  Some kid would say or think …

…What I think or feel must not be important enough to share it with people;…We should never disappoint anyone if we want to be appreciated…;  If I give my true opinion on this, I might get laughed at;… When you are a black kid, in a white school, you should always do more than what’s expected, to be congratulated by the teacher, etc. 

Now, how do we uncover the limiting beliefs related to our CEN? Not only from a parent, growing up,  but could also be from a sibling, our teachers, back then, a friend, or peers at school.

This is when we go, as far as we can remember, to recreate, in our mind, the unfortunate situation,  where we felt one of our emotional needs was being neglected or simply overlooked. We need to recall:

What happened, who was there, when it happened, where, why, and how. I call it the 5W-H questions.  Again, the conclusions we make about that situation, often become our limiting beliefs.

Here how it goes:

First, Recall the unpleasant situation or event, when you felt that your feelings were overlooked, using the 5W-H questions, in the context of CEN.

Who does it involve?

Where were you at?

When did that situation happen?

What happened or didn’t happen?

What were you expecting  this person to do for you, at the time

( was it to receive words of encouragement from your teacher, support from your parents, acceptance  from your peers at school, to be nurtured or comforted by your mother, to receive help from from a friend, to be validated about something you did, to get approval from your team, or simply, to be seen or heard, by the people you care about, etc.).  What was this person’s reaction, for you to think that your emotional need was dismissed, at the time?

How did it make you feel? How did you perceive yourself, then? How do you think that parent, sibling, teacher, teammates or friend perceived you, at the time?

Why do you think you felt the way you felt about yourself,  then? …about the situation or about that person? 

Most of the time, the perception we think someone has of us, is often the perception we have of ourselves (mirror effect). That perception sets the first LB regarding that situation.  

And the way we interpret the context of the situation often gets us to generalize the situation, usually based on family, social, cultural, and even generational conditionings.  Unfortunately, most conditioning statements create LBs. 

Well, in my last podcast, I shared with you, one of my childhood memories. To recall the what, who, when, where, why, and how, Here is the context:

Between the age of 11-12 years old, when my parents were finally home, on the weekends, I used to verbalize to them, how I felt very sad and unhappy as a child. When my father asked why, I told him about my feeling that I am only used to help out in the house, take care of my sisters and perform well in school. Told him about how sad I was, about the fact that they never showed interest in knowing the real me. For my father, he would pay attention to me,  as long as I behave in a way to make him proud, for him to show off, in front of other people.

Unfortunately, both of my parents had the same attitude, at the time. They both overlooked my unhappiness. Always mentioning their parental sacrifices to raise us, children, and how I should be grateful instead. They said,  that as the oldest child, it is expected of me to look out for my younger sisters and teach them a good example, which I can understand, today.  But, I can recall the memory easily by remembering how insignificant my feelings were to my parents, back then. 

The conclusion my immature mind came up with, at the time, was that my feelings and opinions were not important enough to be taken into consideration. That was my LB #1.

As my parents have emphasized the sacrifices they had to make to take care of us, children, I  made another conclusion: that what is important is what you do for people. This LB leads to People-Pleasing. Need to think about everyone else, first, before me. This other conclusion brought me back to LB #2, which was: ‘’If I do as I please, I am being selfish, and I resent being selfish. Based on my LBs, at the time, I was always trying to live by the principle of doing what I should not do what I want. Since I was a parentified kid, at the time, I came up with LB #3, which was: Making and keeping everyone happy is one of my responsibilities.

Sadly, my people-pleasing behaviors were based on the misconception that everyone else was more important than me, at the time.  I wrongly thought that my people-pleasing was a way for me to feel that I mattered, by doing for people, what I thought mattered to them. As if, it was more important to matter to people than to matter to me.  And this is another LB that is shared amoung many people-pleasers, who experienced CEN.  Thankfully, I have come a long way since. I know today, that the best way to be able to take care of anyone, is by taking care of ourselves, first. And it does not make of you a selfish person, only, a wise person.

Well, I’d like to suggest that you also identify the limiting beliefs that your childhood emotional neglects have triggered, using the 5W-H questions. You can use my worksheets to complete the exercises.

After identifying our limiting beliefs related to our childhood emotional neglects, we need to overcome them. And this will be our Recommendation #3. 

So, if this episode resonated with you in any way, feel free to share, like, or leave a comment below.  For those of you who are watching from YouTube, if you haven’t already, you can hit the subscribe button, to be notified of our next episode. We’ll introduce a 5 steps method to disempower those limiting beliefs.

Until then, you can still follow me on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or simply on the website, heartmindequation.com, to unlock hidden potentials.