ReThinking Mental Wellbeing

The Invisible Scars We Carry: How Our Beliefs Shape Reality

• Andre Jackson

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The power of belief is a fascinating aspect of human psychology that shapes our perception of reality in profound ways. Our podcast episode on this topic explored how our beliefs act as the lens through which we interpret everything around us, often creating self-fulfilling prophecies that reinforce these very beliefs.

The episode opened with the compelling Dartmouth Scar Experiment from the 1980s, where participants were made to believe they had a facial scar (which was actually removed before they interacted with others). Despite having no actual scar, they reported feeling stigmatised and noticed negative reactions from others. This powerful illustration shows how our internal beliefs about ourselves shape our perception of how others see us. When we "see the world through our wound," we assume others see us that way too.

Our beliefs function as the framework through which we interpret all experiences. Think of your life experiences as pieces of a billion-piece jigsaw puzzle. Most of us tend to only pick up the pieces that match the picture we already believe to be true, discarding evidence that contradicts our established beliefs. This selective attention creates a confirmation bias - we notice information that supports our existing beliefs while filtering out contradicting evidence. This is why the self-help industry thrives at $43 billion annually - reading about change is easier than actually implementing it.

The episode highlighted that insight occurs when our mind glimpses a truth our soul already knows. This insight allows us to see beyond our limiting beliefs, but achieving this requires curiosity and openness. We discussed how our natural tendency for "patternicity" - seeing patterns even where none exist - leads us to overlay our belief templates onto random life experiences, creating stories that reinforce our existing worldview.

Perhaps most fascinating was the exploration of the Pygmalion effect and self-fulfilling prophecies. Robert Rosenthal's experiments with rats and school children demonstrated how others' expectations can dramatically influence performance. Rats labeled as "smart" performed better than those labeled "dumb," not because of any inherent difference, but because the psychology students handling them had different expectations and treated them differently. Similarly, students randomly selected as "academically promising" showed significant improvement simply because teachers believed in their potential and treated them accordingly.

Learned helplessness represents another powerful belief structure that can trap us. Like a horse tied to a plastic chair who doesn't attempt escape because of past conditioning, many of us remain bound by beliefs that once protected us but now limit our potential. Breaking free requires recognizing that these protective beliefs have outlived their usefulness and developing the courage to challenge them.

The space between where we are and where our authentic self longs to be is the source of our suffering. Our humanity constantly calls us to live authentically, but outdated protective beliefs can hold us back. The path forward begins with curiosity - our natural state as children before protective beliefs took hold. By approaching life with renewed curiosity, we can see beyond our restrictive beliefs and discover options previously invisible to us.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Rethinking Mental Wellbeing. This is our community podcast where we can talk about everything related to depression and anxiety. So my name is Andre and I want to thank you for being with me over the next half an hour as we share this space of lived experience where we can talk about how to live the best version of our authentic life. So if you're ready, then I'm ready. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, welcome back. If you're here for the first time, then I welcome you to the space. If you are back again, then I welcome you back to the space.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to start this conversation off by talking to you about an experiment that was done a few years ago, back in the 1980s, conducted by a psychologist named Robert Clegg. This is famously known as the Darkmouth Scar Experiment. In this experiment, researchers set out to study how people with a perceived physical deformity, in this case a facial scar applied by makeup, believed how other people saw them. The participants, one by one, went into a room to get their makeup applied to resemble a very realistic looking scar. They were then given a mirror so they could see the scar and see what it looked like. The mirror was then taken away from them and the makeup artist said that they were going to touch up the scar to make sure that they didn't inadvertently scratch it off or move it when they touched their face, encouraging them not to touch the scar as this would affect the effect. But they also had another reason why they told them to do that, because what they did instead, without the participant knowing, is that they removed the scar. The participant was then told to go out into the public spaces and report back how they believed that others were treating them based on the way they looked, and when they came back, they reported feeling stigmatised. They talked about people reacting negatively to their appearances. People believed that other people were treating them differently based on the way that they looked. Some even reported that they heard other people whispering to their friends about the scar. They were then shown that they had no scar on their face, that it was removed before they went out, without them even knowing it.

Speaker 1:

This showed a very important point and is the topic of today's episode, as we discuss the power of our beliefs. So the conclusion the researchers came up with from the study is that when we see the world through our wound, we often think the world sees us through it too that what was the perception on the outside was a reflection of their own wounds on the inside. Our beliefs are the lens that we see everything through. It is our lens that everything is interpreted through and is the framework that interprets the content within that frame. So let me expand on the last point for you.

Speaker 1:

So, speaking personally, there have been moments in my life that I've had certain beliefs that weren't necessarily healthy. For example, some of my beliefs were don't be vulnerable to other people, the world is dangerous, I don't deserve love and I am worth less than other people. This formed a frame based on my belief that all of these things were true. The framework of these beliefs reframed the content and created the meaning of experiences within the frame. In other words, the picture of my experiences of life were filtered through my belief, and the truth that I assigned to my beliefs made the content within the frame feel very real. So imagine you have a billion piece jigsaw puzzle and each piece represents a moment in your life. Have you ever noticed that, as we are sifting through the moments in our life, thinking about our past experiences or our future possibilities, that we tend to only pick up the pieces that are matching the picture that we are referencing the pieces to. In other words, just like a real jigsaw, we will often only use the pieces that are going to be resembling what is on the box as the finished product, and our beliefs work just like that. If we have the beliefs of don't be vulnerable to other people, the world is dangerous, I don't deserve love and I am worth less than others, then I may discard all of the other pieces or moments in life that don't match the picture of the belief that I have. So if you have a belief that you are worth less than other people and you find a piece of moment or a piece of experience that goes against that belief, do you put that to one side and disregard it? Do you say to yourself oh look, I have a piece of experience that belongs to someone else literally anybody else but it's definitely not mine and do we then throw away that piece because it's not a piece that fits our belief and the reference picture of what we're going off? I hope that kind of makes sense.

Speaker 1:

The self-help industry is a $43 billion industry. It's projected to be worth about $89 billion in the next 10 years, and one of the reasons why it's so much is that for a lot of people, the idea of change is a lot easier, less riskier and more enticing than actual change. For a lot of people, their bookcases may be displaying rows and rows of self-help books, cds, podcasts. Maybe their home is decorated with highly motivating and inspiring quotes which, by the way, I'm not saying is wrong. But if it comes at the expense of making change or doing the work or leaning into the resistance of change, which requires effort, discipline, courage, self-kindness and compassion and a ton of other things to be put in place, so why would we work towards it? But growth only happens through resistance, through effort, because if it was easy then it wouldn't be growth. When we can get the small payoff of reading about it or talking about it or even imagining it, then this feels easier and we often will prefer to take the path of least resistance. So we already got the hit of dopamine and adrenaline as the reward for reading the books about self-help, because change is really hard, it's risky and it often puts us in vulnerable situations. The bottom line hard work takes effort.

Speaker 1:

So imagine you're in the library and if the belief about ourself and the world around us are contradicting all of the books, podcasts, courses that we are consuming about how to be authentically us. Then we may be reading or listening to all of the self-help material, but we're doing it in the wishful thinking section, even the not me section, or maybe it's the I wish life was different section. This is why in my workshops and in this podcast, it's not designed to give you information that sits within your intellect, but they are designed to filter through into your awareness, through your insight, and alter a belief that may be holding you back from living to your truth. Insight is when your mind sees a truth that your soul already sees. Insight is a glimpse into the bigger picture that is outside of your limiting beliefs.

Speaker 1:

One of the reasons why we don't change is because we have a belief that we can't, or if we have a belief that there's nothing we can do. So we are often overlaying our experiences onto the reference picture that we have based on our belief. Have you ever noticed when things happen that is unknown or unfamiliar, we create explanations and reasons to make sense of the unknown Because, generally speaking, we don't like the uncertainty of the unknown, because it's uncomfortable, and so we fill in that space with a story about what is happening based on the belief that we hold. So here's an example that I've heard quite often the only reason why people are nice to me is when they want something. If that is a belief that I hold as truth, then every time someone is nice to me, that is the story that I will tell myself, because that is the experience in the past, that I have now put a story to based on my belief. And if you want to really remember something well and increase the belief in something, then create an emotional story that backs up your belief and repeat that often. Here's another example If I'm talking to my friend, we're having a great conversation, laughing and joking and connecting, and then all of a sudden they go oh God, I'm late, I'm really late, sorry, man, I've got to go Bye and then runs off.

Speaker 1:

If I have a belief that I am worth less than other people, that no one wants to be around me because I'm worth less, I am more likely to take that action and lay it over the belief and interpret that action by putting that experience into my story that backs up my belief. This belief that I am worth less than other people may be so ingrained in me and so believed by me that I start to see it everywhere by interpreting even the most innocent of actions by other people, but always finding a way for those actions to fit over the top of that belief. And so that belief becomes a template of all my experiences in life and I may disregard everything else in life that doesn't fit into this belief template. And this means we will often take an experience that doesn't fit into this frame or this template of belief and try to make it fit. This is called a confirmation bias. There's also something called the blue dot effect, which I'll go into later on.

Speaker 1:

This confirmation bias is a type of bias and it implies that we have a tendency to notice and focus on the things around us that support and fit our existing beliefs, whether they're true or not. There's a beautiful quote that sums this up by Stuart Chase For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those that don't believe, no proof is possible. And regardless of any evidence that opposes that belief, you will not only keep believing it, but you will dig your toes in and be more convinced in your belief. There's a name for this, and they call this the backfire effect, and the backfire effect is a type of bias, and a bias generally means something that you lean more towards. And this backfire effect occurs when someone is more convinced of their belief after being presented with evidence that contradicts it. And you'll see this in fine detail when you're talking to someone about politics or COVID vaccine or a religion.

Speaker 1:

As human beings, we have a natural tendency to see and perceive patterns in life, even when nothing exists. These patterns that we will search for, we use as a template of our beliefs that we overlay onto the experiences of life. There's even a name for this we call this patternicity. Patternicity. This is important to us because it builds on our prior experiences and expectations and enables us to receive an intake of new information that we can then compare to the template of what we believe. And so, because of that, we all see the world differently, because the world is always filtered through this lens of both our experiences and our interpretation of our experiences. Our DNA, our genes and the expression of those genes, our family exposure, society and even culture all contribute to shaping our beliefs about ourselves, about the world, about other people. These beliefs that are further shaped and refined by the stories that we create, reinforce our beliefs that then reinforce the story. The expectation of what we believe also powerfully affects our physiological point of view. Have you ever noticed, when you're thirsty and you drink water, how you immediately feel better? But that's your brain shortcutting the 20 minute wait by giving you that feeling, through the release of dopamine, that you're actually hydrated, by making you feel better straight away.

Speaker 1:

Another very powerful belief bias is also known as the Pygmalion effect. This is a typical and common phenomenon where the expectation of other people leads into an altered performance of what we do. What this means is the belief that other people have about us shapes the way they behave towards us and, in turn, influences our beliefs about ourselves, and this belief then impacts our actions towards others, and it's our actions towards others that again influence their belief about us. And around and around we go. And if you think this doesn't affect you, think about this in relation to when you were a child. The way that our parents behaved towards us directly influenced our belief about ourself, which, in turn, impacts our actions towards other people. Therefore, we are reinforcing the belief that they had about us, whether true or assumed. So let me put this into context. I was extremely bullied at school. People had a belief about me and an opinion about me. Therefore, the way they behaved was shaped by their belief and their behaviour towards me and therefore influenced my belief about myself, which in turn changed my actions towards other people. I became withdrawn, fearful, non-trusting and extremely angry. This in turn led to the reinforcement of other people's belief about me that they were right, because, well, look at him, look at the way he's behaving. This is similar to what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Speaker 1:

In the early 1960s, a psychologist by the name of Robert Rosenthal conducted an experiment. In this experiment, he got some psychology students from the university in North Dakota to assist with an experiment involving rats. Their job was to simply teach the rats how to run through a maze. The night before that, dr Rosenthal went into where the rats were kept and split them into two different categories. He put half the rats in one cage on one side of the room and put a label on that cage that said Smart Rats. He then put the other half of the rats into another cage on the other side of the room, with the label that said Dumb Rats.

Speaker 1:

The next morning, the psychology students conducted the experiment with the rats to train them to get through the maze. The rats that were labelled smart rats right from the start performed significantly better and ran the maze faster, with less training time, than those that were designated as dumb rats. Some of the dumb rats would not even move from the starting position in the maze. The clever rats were more efficient and faster than their counterparts. The clever rats were more efficient and faster than their counterparts. Now, this has nothing to do with rat psychology, because the rats don't know whether they're dumb or smart, based in the cages that they were in.

Speaker 1:

What was happening was that the psychology students had subconsciously favoured the smart rats and handled them differently than the students who were handling and treated the dumb rats, and because they were treated differently, they behaved differently. So Dr Rosenthal decided to take this and try this out on humans. So he took this to a school in San Francisco where he told the headmaster that he created a standardized test that depicted the students in the school who would go on to be academically more successful in the future. So the students completed the test and sent them back to get marked and assessed. The results were shared with the school and the test showed the top 10 students who were going to be academically the most successful in the future. A year later, the students were all retested and the scores of those students who were told a year earlier that they were going to be the most successful academically had climbed significantly and significantly more than anyone else in the school. So the headmaster and teachers asked Dr Rosenthal, how could you have predicted these accurate predictions? And his reply was that the test was just a standard IQ test. The purpose was falsified. The names of the students are just picked out of a hat the names I gave you as the group of students that were going to be the most academically successful.

Speaker 1:

Your teachers treated them differently and it was that treatment that changed the student's belief and their behaviour. There is a beautiful quote that says treat people as if they were what they ought to be and help them become what they're capable of being. I was talking to someone not so long ago who made it really clear that the world hates him, that everybody took advantage of him and that there was nothing good in the world. His belief about the world around him led to his behaviour that backed up his belief and the way other people were towards him, based on his behaviour, solidifying his belief, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we don't see the world as it actually is. We see the world through what we believe the world is.

Speaker 1:

There are exceptions to this, though. Michael Jordan, for instance, chose not to listen to what other people told him he couldn't do, and he changed his script. Michael Jordan loves basketball, but he was thrown out of his basketball team when he was in college because he couldn't play basketball, and so he practiced and practiced and practiced until he got good. Then he became great. Then he became Michael Jordan. Roger Bannister was the first man to break the four-minute mile, but medical journalists reported often that it was physiologically impossible for a human to break the four-minute mile, so the expectation from everybody was that it was impossible. So no one tried until Roger Bannister decided to challenge that belief, and so he ran the first ever sub-4 minute mile. Other people very quickly followed his example because the belief system had changed, and about 46 days later two other athletes beat the record. Nowadays there's over 1800 people that have run the sub-4 minute mile because someone changed the belief.

Speaker 1:

Another powerful belief structure is a belief system known as learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a phenomenon that implies that we have no control over our situation and that we're going to give up trying to make changes and accept the situation we're in and that we cannot escape it. And so we should stop trying to escape it, even missing the opportunities that present themselves as ways to escape this learned helplessness mindset. It means that we may not be able to see those options, and so we stop any action towards changing the situation. And in my workshops I have a picture to demonstrate this of a horse tied up to a plastic kid's chair. So somewhere in his past he would have been tied up to something immovable, like a post, and like any young foal, he would have tried to get out and he would have tried and tried and tried, but then he would stop trying because his experiences of trying didn't get him anywhere. And so he created a false rule, and that rule created a belief, and that belief was if I'm tied to anything, I can't escape. So now, fully grown, no matter what he's tied to, he will have that belief that not only can't he escape, but he won't even try to. And so he stays bound to this plastic chair, living out the belief as more true, because he's fulfilling his own belief by the non-action.

Speaker 1:

I talk to a lot of people who are subject to this false belief that they see as truth about their lives. They may say things like there's nothing I can do. I have tried this and I've tried that in the past, so why should the future be any different? And even in the face of options, our learned helplessness creates blind spots that we are unable to see. The solution that we need to see Our place of suffering is the space between where we are and that we need to see. Our place of suffering is the space between where we are and where we need to be, and where we need to be is in a place that we can live through our authenticity, that we can be true to ourself, that we are able to live out our authentic nature so it can be expressed into the world by getting our needs met. That is our nature as a human being. But if we have a belief that contradicts that, in other words, stops us from moving towards our truth, beliefs that we put in for the sake of safety and survival and protection, then we are in a place of suffering, because your humanity is always calling you to live authentically. And when we change our beliefs that stop us moving towards the freedom of living authentically and find the beliefs that help us move towards your authentic nature. We start to move in the right direction when you change your beliefs. You change the direction of your path that heads you in the right direction that your humanity is telling you to move into.

Speaker 1:

So how do we start doing this? The very first thing we do is to start, or become curious. This is our natural state to be curious. This was a state that enabled us, as babies or as children, to learn about the world around us. We were in a state of discovery, of exploration, that everything around us was a wonderland, until we learn how to self-talk or how to be aware of other people around us, and then our protection beliefs that looked after us to avoid being hurt for whatever reason, changed those beliefs. Those beliefs, though, that once protected us, has now passed its use by date. They may have been there to protect us, to look after us or to keep us safe, but now they no longer are useful. So you can thank them for protecting you and you can heal and find your own path that your authenticity is prompting you towards.

Speaker 1:

Start to get curious. Start to get curious about the way things are that move you towards your truth, and when we start to live in a curious mindset, we start to see so many other options around us, instead of living in the confinements of the restricted belief that kept us safe once but now keeps us as a prisoner. So let's go over some of the key points that we looked at. There was the scar experiment, where participants believed they were treated differently due to this facial scar, which was actually removed, but it highlighted the power of our perception of the way other people see us, based on our own beliefs that limit us, and so often we will believe that the world sees us through the same belief filter that we see the world in.

Speaker 1:

Our beliefs act as a lens through which everything is interpreted through. This often leads to a confirmation bias, where we only notice information that supports our existing beliefs. This, in turn, becomes almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and so the way others treat us based on their belief can influence our behavior and reinforce those beliefs. We talked about learned helplessness. This occurs when people believe they have no control over their situation, and this leads to inaction, where we cannot see any opportunity for change, and so it's important to maintain this curious mindset, and this can help us challenge restrictive beliefs and move towards our authentic self. Our confirmation bias leads us to interpret new information in a way that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. The ability to be insightful and gain insight can help us see truths that align with our deeper understanding of moving towards our authenticity, and so challenging and changing our limited beliefs can lead to significant personal achievements.

Speaker 1:

So that's all I've got for this episode. Thank you for joining me today and I hope that you've got something useful from this discussion, and if you have any questions you would like us to discuss on future episodes, then please email me at RethinkingMentalWellbeing at gmailcom. I'd love to hear from you. So until then, go well, go in peace, have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye.