Spiritual Somatics Coaching Module Six Self-Study: Reworking Limiting Belief Systems
By the time we are 35 years old, we unconsciously live by a set of memorized behaviors, thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and emotional reactions that run like automatic computer programs behind the scenes of our unconscious awareness . . . the body has been conditioned by the mind.
Our mind stories are largely unconscious patterning, but make up the basic structures and premises of our lives.
An emotion lasts 90 seconds. Everything else are the stories we tell about it. Our thought patterns are so practiced and incorporated into our psychic structure that we don’t know what we don’t know!
Over time, our thought patterns become beliefs, and our beliefs gradually turn into our belief systems that structure our behaviors and worldview. As coaches, we work to listen closely to clients’ words, stories, and belief systems to help them loosen mind stories, patterns, and belief systems that are no longer serving them.
Fear-based Core Belief Systems
Clients will have their own flavor of stories about themselves that come to shape their world. These include:
1. Defectiveness (Unworthy, Bad, Wrong, Imperfect)
2. Alone (Unlovable, Abandoned)
3. Helpless/Unsafe (Powerless, Victim, Suffering)
4. Entitlement (Justification, No Effort)
5. Responsibility (Caretaking, Self-Sacrifice)
6. Scarcity (Not Enough, Impossibility)
*Informed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Over time, thought habits manifest through unhelpful mind patterns that remain largely unobserved, or conscious, to the client:
1. Mind-reading (projecting other people’s thoughts/feelings)
2. Filtering (Negative “spin”)
3. Polarized Thinking (Black or White, All or Nothing, Good or Bad)
4. Overgeneralization (sweeping, gross generalizations based upon little to no data)
5. Catastrophizing (leaping to worst case scenario)
6. Magnifying (Exaggerating the bad, minimizing the good)
~Joe Dispenza
7. Personalization (comparing, interpreting others’ actions as being about you)
8. Shoulds (Expectations, judgements, arbitrary rules for behaviors)
9. Non-sequiturs (linking non-logical thoughts based upon false premises)
*Informed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Rewiring a Client’s Belief Systems
As soon as a client begins offering you back story or sharing events in their lives that are triggering them, this is a time to key into what words they are using to describe the happenings, the perspective/slant on the details that they are sharing, and the overall picture they are painting for you. All of this information provides you with information about how they are experiencing life, and the belief systems and mind patterns that are shaping their experience in the world.
Sometimes we can pick up on a client’s limiting belief systems right away. Sometimes they are more subtle and tricky to sniff out. Either way, with time and the collection of data, they become revealed.
As coaches, our job is to sleuth out the Ego stories that are no longer serving the client, and to begin to loosen the grasp of these well-worn stories, so that we can help the client to create more space around their thoughts, and offer ways into more generative thought patterns to take shape.
Part of how we do this is keying in to “get the data,” or the objective, logistic, and reality-rooted information from a client’s story, and to begin to help them separate the data from the stories they are telling themselves about it.
Working with a client’s belief systems is tricky. We can’t just tell someone to think differently! It doesn’t work like that. If it did, therapy wouldn’t be such a sought out resource! It is imperative to build trust with the client and to how a solid container for them to try out new thought patterns. Without these ingredients, we run the risk of them shutting down, retracting, or projecting their pain bodies and fears on us as we challenge them to grow past their Ego mind traps.
In other words, we want to:
Identify a client’s Limiting Thought Habits and Belief Systems
Help them to identify their Fear-based Belief Systems
Offer them new Soul-based Thought Habits
Help them to build Soul-based Belief Systems
Timing is important as a coach. You might notice a limiting belief system in your first session with a client, but a first session is not the time to share it! You can continue to quietly collect data without sharing with them what you are identifying. Why? It doesn’t feel great to be diagnosed. It also isn’t as powerful as holding space to facilitate a client arrive at these places themselves.
Loosening Limiting Belief Systems
We want to help a client build more flexible, resilient ways of working with their thoughts and belief systems. Asking questions is a great way to cultivate more curiosity and encourage clients to lovingly questions their thoughts, instead of believing that everything they think is true.
This process can be boiled down to variations of two basic questions:
What do you mean by, X? [Limiting belief that isn’t working for the client]
What if . . . ? [Non-dualistic belief that supports their vision]
In the first question, we are asking for more clarity from the client, asking them to share more data with us, and to push them to articulate their unconscious belief systems so that they can hear themselves say it—which can lead to powerful “aha” moments: Do I really think that?!
The second question redirects from their Fear-Based patterns towards an imagining of more of what they want.
Our job is not to tell them what to think. Only they know their truth. Our job is to help them gain clarity on what their truth is.
This requires a very sharp, quick thinking analytical mind! You have to be a step ahead of their logic so that you can debunk their mind stories, and redirect them into a Soul Truth that is more inwardly aligned:
1. Sense into a Fear-Based Core Belief (Red Flag!)
2. Internally decipher for yourself why it isn’t true.
3. Try on what might be closer to their Soul Truth.
4. Carefully guide them closing to this Soul Truth through use of questions.
Innocent Perception is an incredibly important tool when uncovering unhelpful mind patterns. As coaches we don’t know, and we want to know! Getting the data allows us to be a more valuable resource to our clients. If we need to get more data in order to get a fuller picture, we might say:
I don’t understand. Can you tell me more?
What do you mean by X?
Can you tell me more about Y?
Stretching the Rubber band
Once you feel like you have a sufficient enough of data, there are some core guidelines that can facilitate in unearthing these belief systems:
What do you mean by X? (Have the client explain their fear)
Okay, let’s say this does happen. . . (Catastrophize with the client to identify the underlying fearbased belief, exaggerating the impact and playing it to the extreme)
What’s the worst part of that? What feels scary about that? What are you most afraid of in this scenario? (Deep dive into the underlying fear-based belief)
Feel and Process (invite client into their body to try on what this feels like, and where)
What if X isn’t true? What if Y is true instead? (After having them try on their deepest fears, invite them to consider that they are not true, and suggest a possible expansive alternative to provide them with a point of contrast in their body)
Journaling Prompts and Practices
1. Begin listening carefully to the stories that you tell about your life. Begin engaging with yourself as a coach. When you hear yourself begin to assert a fear-based belief, ask yourself:
o What do I mean by that? What am I afraid of in this situation?
o What if that were to happen, what would be the worst part of that? What am I most afraid of in this scenario?
o What if it isn’t true?
o What could be true instead?
2. Do the same by beginning to listen closely to the people in your life (family, children, partners, colleagues, friends). Listen to the words they use to tell their stories, and “try on” whether these stories are grounded in reality, or if there are fear-based belief systems filtering their “take.”
Nobody wants their loved ones to “coach” them, so this is actually a very stealth, rewarding way of beginning to try out subtle redirection with questions and using your will to shift and redirect a loved one’s thought pattern. Try using these questions to help them begin to shift their belief systems:
o What do you mean by that? What are you afraid of in this situation?
o What if that were to happen, what would be the worst part of that? What are you most afraid of in this scenario?
o What if X isn’t true?
o What if Y is true instead?
When you can coach the people closest to you in life without them knowing you are doing it, it’s a good sign that your client’s are going to feel secure and supported in sessions with you! Remember, it’s not our job to tell anyone what they “should” think, only to highlight the fear-based limits of their habitual thought patterns, and to facilitate a redirection of that energy into something that is more supportive for the vision they are holding for themselves and their life.