How to Create Safety with Self-Compassion to Address Negative Core Beliefs

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Cool. Um, thank you so much for um, having the uh, group today, Kristen and Nera. Um, and Madison's question was so good. The the second part of it is something I really needed to hear. Um, you know, finding that balance between taking accountability and making changes. And I really like what you said that we're doing it not because we're bad, but because we love ourselves and we want to have happy relationships. So, thank you. Um, I asked the question, do you think that negative core beliefs from early childhood um can be positively changed using self-compassion? Um, and just to build on that a little bit, like something that's stuck with you, if you thought if you think that you're bad and you think that you've been bad since you were since you can remember, >> I'm finding that really hard to shake and I'm finding it really hard to um to to when I do feel okay, I will always revert back to the shame. shame and the badness and um then I behave in ways you know that that invite me to that sort of corroborate that shame and badness.

[00:01:20]>> So yeah, how how can you use can self-compassion really help to knock out negative core beliefs?

[00:01:31]>> Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely can. Um also I mean I'm a big believer in therapy. I see a therapist myself. I think sometimes, especially for these messages we got when we were so young, even before we were fully conscious and they're so deeply buried in ourselves, it can really help to work with um a therapist who can draw forward some of these. You know, I'm not asking if you have or have not, but in general, if people are listening to this, you know, having someone really help you unearth what those core beliefs are. Sometimes some good old cognitive behavioral therapy which is identifying the beliefs and questioning if they're true can be very very helpful. [gasps] Um but we but self-compassion definitely has a role to play. Um first of all I think one of the things we need to start with is the compassion for the pain of having those beliefs. So like when you said that to me Courtney and you know I have my own other people have those my heart just kind of goes oh you know an innocent child who's you know told to believe these things it just breaks your heart. So one of the things self-compassion can do to start is kind of just to let your heart break a little bit for the pain of you know what we experience as as innocent children um getting these messages. And so holding the pain of that I think is um even before going to the step of trying to change them just kind of ouch holding the pain of that just like you might a little child in your arms you know so that that's one place to start uh and then you know a as you give yourself compassion for for the pain of these beliefs then what happens is we start to become less identified with them. So, a lot of this has to do with the sense of safety. Okay? So, the reason we believe these bad messages, as I'm sure you know, as children, is because we had to to be safe. You couldn't say like, you know, if it was your mom, you couldn't say, "I'm sorry, mom. You are so off base." I mean, you can't say that. You have to believe your caregivers, right? Because it's not safe not to. So, what can happen is these beliefs start becoming associated with a sense of safety. And that's why even though we know it's not helpful to us, it's like well it's the devil we know and it it helps us feel safe and it helps us feel like we have our place in the world. And so what's one of the one of the ways that self-compassion helps and in fact there's research showing um I don't know if you know attachment theory but uh there's something called secure attachment where you feel like you're worthy you're a worthy person and your needs are worthy of getting met and people who who have insecure attachment as children can learn to have secure attachment as adults partly through self-compassion because what happens is the practice of self-compassion actually becomes your point of safety, right? So, you begin to um treat yourself as if you are worthy of getting your needs met. You know, you you begin to treat yourself in a caring, considerate way. Your security comes not from other people meeting your needs the way you you want them to because obviously they couldn't when you were young and they might not be able to now, but you learn to rely on yourself that you can be there for yourself.

[00:04:54]And once you really get that, once you know that, okay, I can be there for myself, I can have my own back, I can care for myself, I can love myself, I am worthy of being loved, then it starts creating that sense of safety that can replace, you know, the older patterns of going to those beliefs for safety.

[00:05:16]So there's a wonderful type of therapy called compassion focus therapy developed by um Paul Gilbert. He's in the UK and I think they have um people in Australia as well. That's that's really designed to help people who really suffer from these negative core beliefs and maybe because for some people compassion can be scary because what they know is this negative shame feeling and this compassion can feel like whoa, you know, I'm not safe. And so they figured out really useful ways of helping deal with that fear of self-compassion.

[00:05:51]So, I'd highly recommend you checking that out. Again, compassion focus therapy by Paul Gilbert. And there's people all over the world that teach the model. It's it's a really great one.

[00:06:02]>> Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Courtney.