Do you ever shoot yourself in the foot? You know, just when things were starting to go well in your career, or relationship, or health-wise, you made some sort of boneheaded decision or blunder that sets you back? What’s up with that?
After years of witnessing this dynamic in my own life, and through the stories of very intelligent clients (making incredibly dumb mistakes), I think I have an explanation for this strange, self-destructive behavior.
For now, I’m calling it ‘the dreadful equation’ and I suspect that most people have some version of this program running in our subconscious. This is a work in progress, but I present it here in the hopes that this rough draft may be helpful and empowering.
The Dreadful Equation
Young children need to believe that their parents are good people who love them.
Because of the child’s absolute helplessness and dependence on their parents, this really is a NEED. Any other reality (that mom or dad are messed up, for example) is much too terrifying to even consider.
Unfortunately, lots of parents, perhaps even the majority, are in fact, pretty messed up.
Even the best parents, the ones who are really trying, are bound to have an off day now and again. And let’s face it, most parents probably aren’t trying all that hard. They’re basically doing unto their own kids what was done unto them.
So here’s how it works: As a child, if mom and dad are abusive or neglectful, my need to believe they’re good people who love me requires me to decide that I deserve the mistreatment. That must be all I’m worthy of.
That decision is my only way to balance the equation and make sense of what is happening to me.
This is a really big deal. This can set our personal thermostat for worthiness at a very young age. We know that we don’t deserve good things. Otherwise, mom and dad were wrong to treat us that way. So now we have a negative core belief that affects our overall wellbeing, and it’s pretty much immune to change.
As adults we may know full well that mom and/or dad were absolutely terrible people. Doesn’t matter. That childhood belief is still running, like a line of code deep in our subconscious operating system.
For some of us, it’s as if we’re going through life with a hidden agenda of proving mom and dad were right to treat us poorly. So, when things start going just a little too well, time to shoot ourselves in the foot again.
I suppose one solution might be to buy a pair of bullet proof shoes. Maybe you could find some online? Or better yet, you could do some EFT tapping, ideally with a good practitioner, to try and undo that original decision.
Copyright 2024 Rob Nelson
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