A four-level belief model explains how societal, ethical, group, and personal beliefs fuel anxiety. The exercise: write every belief you hold about your anxiety without filtering, then flag absolute language like always and never, and rewrite each as something more realistic.
Chapters
Hi and welcome to our next video. This is the first of the video in step 2 of the Alchemy Process. Now, you may remember towards the end of the last video, I did that wonderful diagram of how the mind works and how files are created. So what we're going to be looking at today is some of how these major categories— it's like the, the headings of the filing drawers within the filing cabinet, it's the big areas have been created and how they may be supporting or underpinning your anxiety, your confidence. And this is all about beliefs. So a little bit of a classroom style here, but then there is an exercise that is important for you to really go away and focus on. So classroom bit. We have a hierarchy of beliefs. So right at the bottom, underpinning The whole of the belief structure is our societal beliefs. It's the sort of things that most people in the world, in your community, will buy into. So to give you an example, in the Western world, for example, there is a commonly supported belief that it's wrong to murder someone. So they're very broad beliefs, and typically these sort of beliefs will also become law. So they're things that everyone tends to abide by and believe in and support. We then go up to our next level. At this level, it's what we have are called ethical beliefs, and these beliefs tend to be more culturally bound. They may be more religiously linked. So it may be, for example, for some people they believe it's wrong to eat certain types of meat. So those are ethically bound beliefs, and they tend to be very, very strong. We then go up another level into what we have as our group beliefs. Now this would be something like a charity or the Brownies, for example. They have certain beliefs again about what is right and what's wrong. So these beliefs aren't always negative things you shouldn't do. They're equally as strong in terms of things that you should do. So it's more about the boundaries of what's right and what's wrong. Within society, within a particular community, within a particular group, and that group can be very small. It might be a peer group. So for example, teenagers in their kind of gangs will have very specific beliefs about what is right and wrong within their particular gang. And then finally at the top— there we go, I've got to do a little drawing, haven't I, just to make you laugh— we have our individual beliefs, and this is where We are really interested in terms of your anxiety because it's beliefs that you have created about your anxiety that is really driving a lot of your behaviour. So let's think about this individual's beliefs and how we can find out a little bit more about those beliefs that you have that at the moment you may even not be consciously aware that you have them. So this is the exercise bit. What I would love for you to do now is to sit down with a bit of paper and just start writing all of the beliefs that you have around your anxiety. The important thing, the thing that's really going to make this exercise really valuable, is to avoid being logical. The first few ones that come out may well be quite logical, but then if you keep going, keep saying to yourself, and what else, and what else, and what else, just keep writing, then some of the things that are buried really quite deep down will start to emerge. So to give you an example, it may be It could be that one of your beliefs is, everyone's going to judge me badly. Every time I get in the car I'm going to have an accident. So those, initially when you write them down, there'll even be a little part of you that's probably saying, oh no, that's not true. But that's okay. Keep writing them down. And a bit like many of you will have experienced when we did your goals, you might start off at quite a narrow area about what you believe your anxiety is, but then we broadened it out and we came down to that trunk of the tree, which is where the roots of your anxiety really lie. And that's where we're really interested in getting to with this exercise, is what beliefs are rooted alongside your anxiety, keeping them very firmly in the ground. So the thing to do with this is just keep writing, just keep pushing yourself, just whatever emerges, whatever comes up is what you write down. Don't think, oh, that's silly. It is— it's not silly at this stage, it's real, it's how your subconscious mind is working. Remember the subconscious mind isn't always very logical. When you've got that list down, and it may be you need to come back to it a few times until you think, yeah, I really have got up everything that I believe about my anxiety, about myself, I then want you to give it a bit of a break, perhaps leave it a day, and then come back and look at it with a very cold set of eyes and say, is that right? Is that belief absolutely true? And what I'd like you to really look for are words like all, always, never. And then because it's rarely like that, I'm always going to be judged by other people. Really? Always? Sometimes. Sometimes it's true, you are going to be judged by other people, but sometimes and always is very different. So look for those sort of words. And if you've got someone that you really trust perhaps supporting you on this process, get them to look at it with you and just say, Do you know that's not true? And another way to look at it is if other people can do these things, then that means it's also possible for you to do it as well. So look for changing these things, and if you get stuck, pop some of your— pop some of your beliefs up in the Facebook group. I'll have a look at them and give you some suggestions as to how you might be able to look at them differently. So you need to have that initial list of what your beliefs are. Then in the second list, is questioning those. You may be able to do what I call downgrade them, taking it from always to sometimes, from never to a possible. Just looking at downgrading them to a level that you look at all of those beliefs and go, yeah, those feel as if they're right. So that little voice in your head that's going, well, that's not true, kind of goes, yeah, I can buy into that one. And at that point, I want you to rewrite all of those new beliefs. Okay, so this exercise is described in the book, so if you want to go through that in the book, we, we use the example of a dog phobia to kind of give an indication, to give you a benchmark on how it may work, and then give this a go. And when you've done this exercise, again, I'd really love it if you put up some of your learnings, what you've realized, any aha moments up in the group. Share them so we can all learn from them and all support your successes and your achievements. So I'll leave that with you. I'm going to give you a few days to do this because it is something that you do need to think about. Find some time and leave that little bit of gap in between, between coming up with your initial beliefs and then that process, that second step of actually questioning them to come up with the ones that really you feel a lot more comfortable with because they really are a lot more real. So I'll leave that with you and I look forward to talking to you again very soon. Bye-bye.
