Self-Limiting Beliefs
Navigating life is a complicated endeavor that provides a seemingly endless barrage of lessons both positive and negative. As time goes on and we meet new people and experience new things we may find that we are avoidant or fearful of choosing certain paths because of those lessons learned. Life lessons however are not always universal truths. Sometimes we can be unlucky or make mistakes and internalize a message about our own self and capabilities as a result. One form these messages can take is self-limiting beliefs and these beliefs can harm both our internal and external worlds. That is why exploring what they are, how they come about, and how to overcome them is such an important step in achieving mental wellness.
What They Are
Self-limiting beliefs are simply that - beliefs about self that result in making choices which limit opportunities in life whether they be personal, relational, occupational, recreational, etc. They are not simply decisions we make in a single moment but an underlying constant sense that we are incapable of doing something so we avoid related people, places, or experiences. We will not take risks to learn something new and disregard even the willingness to learn from failure because we believe it is not worth trying in the first place due to our own inabilities. Self-limiting beliefs are not the same as having a harsh inner-critic. The inner critic is primarily a voice that creates feelings and thoughts of negative judgement about our past self like guilt and shame. Self-limiting beliefs are present/future oriented where we avoid people or experiences because of a lack of belief in our abilities. These two concepts often coexist and feed off of each other but can be disentangled into two distinct parts.
The consequences of self-limiting beliefs are a greatly restricted sense of confidence, trust, and hope. When we do not believe in ourselves we avoid many possibilities to grow and find new joy or achievement in life. Such thoughts can lead to self-reinforcing behaviors where belief in lack of skill leads to avoidance which leads to lack of skill which leads to avoidance and on, and on.
Where They Come From
Beliefs that we are incapable often are built in childhood as a result of messages given to us by family or peers but can also be the result of actual failure to successfully achieve or engage at any point in life. Parents may have their own limiting beliefs that they impart onto us, we may experience bullying that branded us with feelings of fear and self-loathing, we may have had partners that made us feel unsafe or restricted our agency. As people we are deeply inter-dependent on others for social connection and if there were people in our lives that required us to limit ourselves for the sake of that connection we may believe that such limitations are required for a safe and stable life even if that is not true.
Furthermore, we can also experience failure, we are human afterall - failure is a natural and expected part of learning and growing. Nonetheless failing can be an overwhelming and sometimes even traumatic experience. As a result, we can write ourselves off completely from ever attempting whatever it was again, not because of self-hatred but because of a desire to protect ourselves from future hurt, pain, and disappointment.
Overcoming Our Limiting Beliefs
Start with Exploration
As is true with many psychological challenges the necessary first step is to explore and find deeper understanding about where the beliefs come from and what they truly mean. We can develop more generalized beliefs about self, others, and the world as a result of the specific moments of experiencing difficulty. A simplified example could look like this: if you listen to your friend when they say “you can park here even though you don't have a parking permit, I do it all the time!” and you come back to a parking ticket, you may develop the belief that people are untrustworthy. Consequently you may start to avoid trusting anyone and develop a struggle with hyperindependence that leads to isolation and anxious/depressed moods. Of course this example takes to an extreme a relatively innocuous event but it hopefully shows how the progression of self-limiting beliefs work.
So, when we explore self limiting beliefs with this example we simply reverse the thought process. We define what our challenge is [I am anxious because I have to be hyperindependent], move towards a reasoning for that behavior [I have to be hyperindependent because I cannot trust people], and then find where the belief originated [People are untrustworthy because of that ticket I got when my friend told me I wouldn’t]. Importantly, the self-limiting belief is that people are untrustworthy. Following the path to where it started is how we begin deconstructing, contextualizing, and replacing the thoughts around it to overcome the limiting belief.
Review, Refute, Renew
A core tenant of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that aligns with overcoming self-limiting beliefs is that such beliefs are not necessarily objective truth and as such can be tested and challenged. Therefore, once we have done the exploration of a belief we can review it for accuracy (i.e. getting the parking ticket only showed that person was untrustworthy in that specific scenario - all people are not always untrustworthy). In cases of learned beliefs from others we can refute their claims. For example, if we are conflict avoidant because our parents taught us to avoid conflict out of a fear that bad things would happen if we argue, we look to examples of other people/situations where that does not happen, proving the belief to at least not be an absolute truth. With these footholds on the way to challenging beliefs we can then start to renew our minds with different thoughts. We can start testing what it would look like to trust someone and over time obtain validation that some people can be trustworthy some of the time. We can learn communication skills to successfully navigate conflict with people. We can explore ourselves and the world in a way that is more open to possibilities. While true we will still find failure, we will also find success because we are giving ourselves a chance where the self-limiting beliefs would have otherwise kept us down.
A Future Without Self-limiting Beliefs
Though there are many ways we can learn to limit ourselves - whether it comes from our own experiences or others - there are just as many ways we can thrive. The presence of one does not negate the importance of the other. Regardless, such beliefs can be an important piece of our story that informs our decisions. We can either choose to be led by fear and a sense of inability or let our experiences guide us while maintaining compassionate intent to understand ourselves and curiosity of what our future can hold.
At RAFT Counseling, we want you to feel capable of navigating self-limiting beliefs with that compassionate curiosity. If you or a loved one is looking to overcome such beliefs simply visit our website or contact us to get connected and on the path towards a more mentally well self.
Further Resources