Why Is It So Hard To Change Beliefs That Hurt Us?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

If everything is so simple, if you just need to change a wrong belief, then why bother building a garden at all? It just takes three minutes to stop thinking: “I am the worst and most despicable person in the world”. And why does psychotherapy last so long, what can you talk about with a psychologist for hours, week after week? If it's a simple formula: "I'm bad, terrible!" - "No, you are not bad and terrible at all"? I heard - and ran elated, and you no longer think badly of yourself. And really, feeling like a good person is much easier and more pleasant to live?

Why in general does a person not abandon obviously erroneous beliefs, from which only harm and trouble? (I'm writing here about beliefs about self-esteem, but the principle is the same for both scientific and life ideas). Why cling so to an obviously erroneous point of view?

There are several options:

• Fear of the unknown
• Unaccustomedness (a person does not know how to act in a new way)
• Loyalty and superstition
• Contribution trap

And explain in more detail what all these points mean?

Fear of the unknown - lives in many of us and is traditionally underestimated. The fewer changes in a person's life, the more measured and familiar life he leads, the greater the fear of the unknown. And the fear of the unknown almost completely guides the lives of people who have experienced psychological trauma, where they were subjected to violence (not necessarily physical). Violence turns the human world upside down, he begins to value every drop of safety, and the familiar is associated with the safe. And even if the usual is not particularly fun, even if everyday life is boring, dreary and even filled with reproaches (and for someone, even beatings) - for a traumatic person the main thing is that I SURVIVED. I survived for one more day. Yes, I feel bad, yes, I am offended, persecuted, mocked, humiliated and beaten. But won't it be worse for me if I move away from the usual knurled rut? If I feel so bad in my own home, then in someone else's, it’s probably even worse, and there I’m definitely not going to survive?

Stephen King has a novel, Madamen Rose. The heroine of the novel is regularly abused by her husband: she humiliates, mocks, tortures, beats, rapes. She endures and is silent. But one fine day the woman suddenly realizes: she must run, every day it gets worse, sooner or later he will kill me. And King has very truthfully described the psychological experiences of the unfortunate beaten wife, who learned to endure and keep quiet, but she IS AFRAID of running away from the sadist. Because - well, until he killed her? So you can live here. And it is still unknown how it will be there, outside the walls of the native unkind home. What King understands and so similarly describes the experiences of the beaten traumatic: "no matter how it gets worse!" - this is what makes him a truly great writer.

… “Come closer to me, dear. I want to talk with you.

Fourteen years of such a life. One hundred and sixty months of such a life, beginning from the moment he pulled his hair and gnawed his teeth in his shoulder for slamming the door too hard after the wedding ceremony. One miscarriage. One broken rib. One almost punctured lung. The horror that he created with her with the tennis racket. Old marks scattered all over the body that cannot be seen under clothing. Mostly bite marks. Norman loved to bite. At first, she tried to convince herself that the bites were part of the love story. It’s even strange to think that once she was so young and naive. "Come to me - I want to talk to you frankly."

Suddenly she realized what caused the itching, which now spread throughout her body. She felt anger engulfing rage, and surprise followed the understanding.

"Get out of here," the secret part of consciousness unexpectedly advised. - Get out now; this very minute. Don't even linger to brush your hair. Just go away."

“But this is ridiculous,” she said aloud, swinging faster and faster in her chair. A drop of blood on the duvet cover burned her eyes. From here it was like a dot under an exclamation point. - This is ridiculous. Where should I go?

"Anywhere, if only away from him," retorted an inner voice, "But you must do it immediately, while …"

For now?

“Well, this question is not difficult to answer. Until I fell asleep again"

A part of her mind - used to everything, a clogged part - suddenly realized that she was seriously considering this thought, and screamed in protest in fright. Leave the house you lived in for fourteen years? A house where, as soon as you reach out your hand, will find everything your heart desires? Throw your husband, who, even if a little hot-tempered and quick to fist violence, has always remained an excellent breadwinner? No, this is really funny. She should not even jokingly dream of such a thing. Forget, forget immediately!

And she could throw the crazy thoughts out of her head, she probably would have done just that, if not for the drop of blood on the duvet cover.

A single dark red drop of blood.

“Then turn away and don't look at her? - cried out nervously that part of consciousness that showed itself from a practical and prudent side. "For Christ's sake, don't look at her, otherwise you won't get into trouble!"

However, I found that I was unable to look away from a lonely drop of blood …

(Stephen King. Madder rose)

Therefore, all the statements of the well-fed couch advisers, who from the safe comfort of giving advice to beaten wives and victims of domestic violence, are just spiteful nonsense: “Well, why did she endure for 20 years and not leave? I would leave. She probably wanted to be treated like that herself; you are the one to blame . A person accustomed to living in a situation of violence (and evil words and humiliation are also violence) cannot straighten their shoulders with a free jerk and proudly walk away into the sunset, without fear of anything. A traumatic person clings to every crumb of security, and he associates security with familiarity. That is, in our case, a person who habitually calls himself a nonentity, tortures and scolds himself with evil words, will be AFRAID to act differently - no, well, here, in my native swamp, I know everything! It is bad here, but as usual, I have survived here for years and decades, and also, God willing, I will survive. And how is it there, beyond the borders of my native swamp, whether I can cope, whether something even more terrible will kill me there than what I endure every day … No, I'll sit here for now. This is how psychotrauma works - the fear of the unknown. And it sometimes takes years to cope with it.

Unaccustomedness. Due to the unusualness, inability to live in a new way, it is so difficult to give up bad habits: for example, to quit smoking or overeat sweets. The fact is that the old, habitual way of acting, thinking and behaving is, of course, unpleasant and leads to dire consequences. But! In another way, a person does not know how. No way. (This is the basis of the so-called "rollback" in psychotherapy, when it is so difficult for a person to behave in a new way that he prefers the old way of behavior, already fully realizing that he is doing wrong and to his own detriment). And this is not the same as the fear of the unknown - in this case, the person is not at all afraid of what will happen. Why be afraid in a life without cigarettes? I will quit smoking, I will live perfectly, the person thinks. But when faced with reality, it turns out that many small nuances of everyday life have piled up, thousands of familiar automatisms. And now it won't be as usual, I decided - I don't smoke. But then what to do? No, in theory, everything is just elementary: rppraz, and I don't smoke. But … and what am I doing INSTEAD of this, during the free lunch hour? How will I take pauses when I want to rest - everyone has gone to smoke, and what am I going to do? I decided that not a single cigarette! This vacated empty space in life creates a lot of discomfort, and also sometimes provokes a "rollback".

Loyalty and superstition. Both of these characteristics are about magical thinking. In the magical view of the world, everything is connected with everything, there is no clear cause-and-effect relationship. Therefore, for a person inclined to magical thinking, a violation of the usual order of things can cause huge terrible troubles to life. "It is not us that has been instituted, and it is not for us to change." For example, a person may think that “everything that I achieved, I got because I scolded myself, sawed off and made me work. It was difficult, it was unbearably hard to force myself to work hard, and even under a hail of reproaches - but I did it! And now I will stop scolding myself - I will not work at all”. But it is difficult to plow, dragging a bag of bricks onto the hump. "Drop the bricks, it will be easier to plow!" - "No, no, what if I can't plow even a centimeter without bricks?"

And loyalty is the same superstition, but associated with belonging to a clan, family, to important people. “My mom always wanted me well, she scolded and pushed me. If I behave differently, I will have to admit that my mother was wrong. And if I say that my mother was wrong, then who am I? Bad daughter? No, everything connected with my mother is sacred to me, I will never say about my mother and her methods of bringing up a bad word, even if I have to endure and suffer for no benefit."

Contribution trap- a cognitive distortion (i.e., a thinking error), which works for most people and makes them continue actions with donkey persistence, from which there is only harm. I myself tested how this cognitive distortion works: in trainings I gave people that famous exercise about an unfinished plane.

Here it is: “Imagine that you are a member of the board of directors of a large airline. Your firm has ordered the design and construction of a state-of-the-art airliner. A total of $ 100 million has been allocated for this. Already spent 90% of the money, but the plane is not ready yet. And today we are gathered here to discuss important news: a competitor company has thrown into the market an aircraft that is better than ours in terms of running characteristics! And it is already ready and on sale! We have to decide what to do with the remaining 10 million.”

And now, honestly, big managers and managers behave as described in the textbook: they all fall victims of the "contribution trap". The participants of the training almost unanimously vote for the decision to invest the rest of the money in the completion of the development of our liner. So what if it's worse. So what, what will not be bought (from competitors, I repeat, the plane is better - this is stated in the problem statement). Well, we've already spent! Now what, to admit that 90% of the money is wasted? No, let's try? So much effort has been invested! What if it works out all the same?

The correct answer to this problem is counterintuitive: you really have to cry over the uselessly lost 90 million, take the remaining 10 and spend it somewhere else. Because if we also get them on a losing project, then we will have on our hands an outdated unnecessary plane and 0 money. In the meantime, we have an unfinished obsolete plane and still 10 million. And 10 million dollars is better than 0. But the deposit trap makes you think: no, well, it was all in vain ??? This is not huhry-muhry, it is 90 million! Should we admit that they are wasted? And if we do our best, what if everything goes as we planned?

So, a woman who realizes that her marriage was not a success doubles and triples her efforts: no, well, what if I try and everything will still be as I want? So people, reluctantly, work on an unloved job (it took so much effort! Well, should I get at least some return? Become the head of the hated financial analysis department, for example). The contribution trap also works with self-esteem: no, well, it may not have worked before when I scolded and nagged myself. Or maybe I will spend a little more time pecking and pecking myself even more and more sophisticated - and I will become not so lazy, I will love work and learn to build relationships? What - so much time wasted not useless self-reproaches? That 90% of your life is flushed down the toilet? I’ll let the rest of it go, but I don’t admit that I invested in the wrong place.

And what to do in order to change the self-deprecating attitudes, I will tell you next time.