EMDR Core Beliefs

i find the emdr method of identifying the deepest negative core belief to be really one of the most effective ways to approach this and i'm going to walk you through this in this video also share how emdr formulates the positive core beliefs that we will work with to counter the negative and then i have a resource to share with you that gives you some actionable steps to transforming these beliefs if you're new to my channel my name is barbara heffernan i am an approved emdr consultant i've been a psychotherapist for 20 years and my work online as a life coach and a youtuber is to integrate what i've learned in that process from cbt emdr as well as mindfulness meditation some buddhist philosophy and i weave all of that together with some actionable life coaching skills to help people live more joyful lives so if you do like this video please do give it a like subscribe to my channel share it with somebody you think it may benefit and let's get into the topic so core beliefs is a key concept in cbt cognitive behavioral therapy and it is incorporated into emdr which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy and both emdr and cbt are highly effective therapy techniques and both have a considerable amount to offer to people who are working in a self-help fashion and i do have some videos on core beliefs and cbt and how to work with those and i will link those here that way and you can watch those when you want i do feel that emdr goes a step deeper with these beliefs and i'm going to explain why so getting to the core belief in emdr is not dissimilar from the downward arrow technique in cbt but we tend to ask the question what does that mean about you we start with an upsetting situation we look at the worst part of it we have the client bring up the thoughts feelings emotions that go with the worst part of it and then we say and what does that mean about you what's the negative statement about yourself that goes with that and we will keep asking what does that mean about you until we get to a core and what i tell clients is that core beliefs tend to be in like five-year-old language their basic i am statements and in emdr these statements fall into a couple of areas so this is an example of a client of mine who was dealing with a very difficult situation at work and a difficult situation at home so we took both of those situations and drilled into them and this is how the discussion went so the situation at work was that she was in charge of a project it was coordinating with different departments a project was specifically under her responsibility to oversee the success of this project she had to coordinate with a lot of people who didn't actually report to her and she was finding that difficult and she was also working with two people on the team who were continually taking credit for what was going right even when it really wasn't their credit and those two people were also refusing to accept any responsibility for the parts of the project that weren't going well so on a team of five people that she was coordinating she had two people who were always jockeying for position and claiming credit for things she had done and then pushing blame onto other people for things that perhaps the whole team and perhaps those individuals were responsible for so i think you can probably imagine that kind of situation very upsetting right so we drilled into it and i asked her kind of like well what's the worst part of this and she was like well i'm so overwhelmed at work like i have so much going on that i hadn't been able to spend the time on this that i should have initially which maybe could have prevented some of these problems so i said okay well if you didn't spend the time that you should have because you were busy with other things what does that mean about you well i guess it means i have too much to do well if you have too much to do what does that say about you i don't know it says i can't keep up if you can't keep up what does that say about you i don't know i guess sometimes i just feel like i'm not qualified for the job for the amount that i have to do and everything so if you're not qualified what does that mean about you i'm just i'm not good enough okay so you're not good enough sort of pervasively you feel you're not good enough yeah okay so the other situation in this client's life was her home life and she had an adolescent son who was having a lot of problems so i asked her well what's the worst part of the situation for you and she said well you know my son's really struggling he's really struggling so if he's really struggling what does that say about you well i don't know i feel like i feel like i should be able to do something here well if you feel like you should be able to do something and you're not doing something what does that say about you i don't know i guess it says i'm just not a good enough parent so if you're not a good enough parent what does that mean about you i'm just not good enough so you can see how we took two very different situations in this person's life and she drilled down to i'm not good enough in both situations so in emdr we take this a step further and we say okay well if you're not good enough what feelings and physical feelings and body feelings go with that and the client might say i feel heavy my muscles feel tight my stomach's upset so okay if you're not good enough if you bring to mind i'm not good enough and you bring to mind all those physical feelings and you float back do you remember early memories that tied to those and most clients will be like absolutely i've felt that way my whole life okay that's where the work is that's where the work is to help a person who developed a belief that they're not good enough when they were a kid perhaps they were the youngest let's say this client had two older brothers who were always active and doing things and kind of teasing her because she was little and not good enough and she couldn't play sports with them well enough she wasn't smart enough they could do math and she couldn't and when you go back and you look at it you're like of course you couldn't you were two to three years younger than them that makes a big difference but as a child you incorporate this belief of i'm not good enough so there's many ways that this can formulate but what i have found in working with emdr for more than 15 years is that most people have one or two primary core beliefs and in emdr we look for the beliefs to fall into a couple of different categories one category is a category of sort of defectiveness or shame so i'm not good enough falls into that category another category is really vulnerability and lack of choices and to be honest when a client brings a difficult situation to the room i can't always tell where they're going to go in terms of what the core negative belief is like i would know what my core negative belief would be in that situation but i can't always predict what it might be for somebody else and sometimes i'm surprised i also can't always predict like what's the worst part of that situation right so that's a key question as well like when there is a difficult situation like what's the worst part of it because the worst part of it will be different for different people so given this work situation that i ran through where somebody felt like you know she couldn't control the team people were taking credit she was being overlooked her voice was being shut down she easily could have gone to a negative core belief of i don't matter she also could have gone to a core belief of i'm powerless like i have no agency here i can't do anything about it and what we find in emdr is that the core beliefs that are underneath the problems of today tend to tie to the childhood experiences that may have been little t traumas may have been big t traumas may have just been sort of ongoing difficulties but they become embedded in us in a core way so here's a list that i use and i actually do have a pdf on transforming your negative core belief that uses an emdr approach and you can find the link below this video in the notes and download it so i think it is very useful i get great feedback on it now i also want to say here that in cbt core beliefs you can have core beliefs about the world in emdr we always bring it back to the self so if there's a core belief about the world like the world's a dangerous place or people are out to get me those are beliefs about the world we still keep drilling in to what does that say about you so if people are out to get you what does that mean about you well it means i'm in danger i'm not safe okay so i'm not safe i'm in danger falls into that vulnerability category right and one could see how in that same work situation someone really could have come to the core belief of i can't trust others like i can't trust these people to have my back right i can't trust others so even with negative beliefs about the world and emdr we bring them back to the self and then when we formulate a positive core belief in emdr it is very important to have it be reasonable so we don't go from i'm stupid to um brilliant because our minds will argue against an absolute positive our minds don't argue against these absolute negatives that are negative core beliefs they don't they're like no i'm stupid i'm stupid in all situations or i'm bad i'm just bad right so our minds don't argue about that but if we say i'm brilliant yep our mind will come up with all the reasons why we're not brilliant so instead we use i'm smart enough or for someone i'm not good enough i am good enough or i'm in danger i'm safe enough we always qualify the positives because they're true they're true statements that we can then begin to believe in head part soul we can believe in these reasonable positive beliefs right like i'm smart enough there's always going to be some people smarter and some people less smart like that's just how the world works right i'm competent enough i'm safe enough and then that helps you to eventually transform these negative core beliefs now i do have a video on how to find an emdr therapist and i will link that here because we can't always do this work on our own i know a lot of people who watch my channel really like doing things on a self-help basis or feel like they don't have access to help and if you are thinking of doing emdr on your own please do watch my video on self-administered emdr is it a good idea for you because it is a powerful technique and very often having somebody to guide us through it is extremely helpful and then i do have another resource for you which is kind of in between complete self-help and going to see a therapist and that's called virtual emdr virtual emdr lets you have unlimited emdr sessions virtually for a monthly cost there are coaches who can help walk you through some of the pieces but it is also primarily self-administered so do make sure it's the right thing for you so if you are interested in that i do have a link below the notes underneath this video and if you use a promo code of awaken joy 20 you'll receive 20 off which is not bad so it benefits you it benefits this channel i appreciate it it helps to keep this channel operating and bringing information to more and more people across the globe so i'm very interested in what you think about this emdr formulation whether this concept can be helpful for you and please comment below let me know and i truly wish you health and healing and happiness and i'll see you next week bye

Channel: Barbara Heffernan

Views: 30,570

Keywords: barbara heffernan, core beliefs, negative core beliefs, changing core beliefs, negative core beliefs list emdr, transforming your negative core beliefs, healing your negative core beliefs, emdr core beliefs, emdr core belief, ore beliefs emdr, core belief emdr, identifying core beliefs, negative core belief, emdr negative core belief, negative core belief and emdr, core beliefs emdr

Id: jXwBT7JgxCc

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021