You Know It's Not True. So Why Does It Still Feel True?

You've had the insight. Someone laid out a completely airtight case for why the belief you hold about yourself is wrong. You saw it, you agreed, it made total sense. And then absolutely nothing changed. 

This is not a you problem. 

It's actually a clue, and it's telling you something specific about what kind of belief you're dealing with. Because not all beliefs work the same way, and if you don't know which one you're up against, you can spend years doing the right work in the wrong place. 

Some beliefs live in the body and the nervous system. Some live in the intellect. They formed differently, they feel different, and they need completely different things to shift. Throwing logic at a trauma-encoded belief is like trying to argue someone out of a panic attack (completely useless, FYI). 

This episode covers: 

• Why you can have perfect insight and still feel exactly the same, and what that's actually telling you 

• The difference between trauma encoded beliefs and learned worldview beliefs 

• Why some people can do 50 sessions of therapy, understand everything, and still feel like their irrational beliefs are true 

• How to tell which layer you're working with 

• Why the gap between knowing and feeling isn't a flaw in your thinking, it's diagnostic information 

If you've ever wondered why you keep arriving at the same realisation without anything actually shifting, listen now.

Get The Reality Audit Here — a free resource listing the most common distorted beliefs from dysfunctional environments, with the accurate version alongside each one. https://www.helenbillows.com/the-reality-audit

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, I'm Helen Billows, and this is the Trauma Nerd Podcast. I'm a registered psychologist, EMDR therapist, and I work exclusively with trauma. This podcast is for people who want psychologically sound explanations without pop psych shortcuts, toxic positivity, or excuses dressed up as empathy. We'll talk about trauma, responsibility, relationships, and recovery, backed by nuance, honesty, and of course, actual evidence. Let's get into it. Have you ever had someone present you with completely airtight evidence that a belief that you hold about yourself is wrong? And you've thought, actually, yeah, you're right, that makes sense. I can see that. But then nothing actually changes. You have that little moment of insight, but it doesn't shift anything. You still feel the same, and maybe like a few days later you forgot it even happened. That's not a personal failing, that's a clue. And today I'm gonna talk to you about what that is telling you. So hello, I'm Helen Billows, and this is the Trauma Nerd Podcast. I'm a registered psychologist, EMDR therapist, and supervisor, and I run a uh trauma-focused private practice in Adelaide, South Australia. Today I want to talk to you about the kinds of beliefs that come from dysfunctional upbringings. Environments that involve neglect, abuse, emotional or the people around you being dysregulated emotionally, the whole shebang, things going wrong, okay? And look, just for the scope of today, I am pretty much only going to refer to childhood, but this does apply, this does happen in adulthood too. You'll know if it applies to you. If it wasn't caused by childhood, that doesn't mean that it doesn't apply to you, okay? So here's the thing: beliefs that come from these environments are not all the same. They operate differently and they can feel quite different. Um, and they actually, depending on what they are, need different things to shift. Or sorry, they require different approaches to shift them, okay? So understanding which type of belief you're dealing with is actually going to change what you do about it. So let's get into it. Let's start with why this happens. So before I get into these two layers, a quick word on why any of this happens in the first place. So, setting the foundation, children do not have alternative reference points. Whatever is happening in a child's household is generally all they know. And children view their caregivers as essentially all-knowing. If they're doing it, it must be okay. So if this if they're doing it, it must be okay. If they're saying it, it must be true. Whatever is normal in your environment becomes your normal, the norm. The problem is when the people you are learning from are themselves traumatized, chronically emotionally dysregulated, lacking skills in conflict, relationships, boundaries, everything, um, or have their own unrecognized and very likely unaddressed mental health issues. So putting that all together, the environment itself is distorted. And so the beliefs you develop from that environment are going to be distorted too. Not because you did anything wrong or you have perceived things incorrectly, but because children absorb their environment, little children absorb their environment and take it as a fact, which is exactly what they're supposed to do, right? So the issue isn't the absorbing. The issue in these situations is what is in the environment to be absorbed. So the first layer that I'm going to talk about after I have a sip of water. The first layer are what I would call trauma-encoded beliefs. These are not just logical misconceptions, they are emotional beliefs formed in response to traumatic or painful repeated experiences. And actually, if it's a trauma, it doesn't even need to be repeated once, depending on the circumstances and the situation, can be enough. And these beliefs are held in the body, in the nervous system. So if I are, if if I if somebody has a belief, a trauma-encoded belief that they are worthless, if I ask them, you know, where do you feel I am worthless in your body, they will be able to literally point out where it is, what it feels like. They'll be able to describe like the weight of it, the colour of it, the shape of it, um, the intensity. They will be able to describe it as if it's a physical thing in their body, right? Um, not that it actually has a colour and a shape and all sorts of stuff like that. This is just a way in therapy that we use sometimes to sort of make the internal experience more explicit and help us take a more observing stance towards it's like this isn't me, I'm actually observing and noticing something inside of me. It's kind of it's really a mindfulness activity activity. Anyways, I digress. So it is a physical thing that they can notice inside of them. So, an example, if you had a parent who consistently dismissed you, never listened, never respected your needs or your voice, your nervous system, your brain and your body are going to draw conclusions from that, and quite re rather reasonable ones, actually. Right? The problem's the environment, it's not your perception, the environment is distorted. So your brain, body, and mind are going to draw some conclusions. Things like I'm not important, my needs don't matter, I am powerless. So these are not things that you are consciously deciding are true, these are the conclusions that your nervous system, your brain, and your body are reaching. Okay. So the defining feature of this kind of belief is what I call the mismatch. You can know something is false logically and still feel it as true. So your head and body can be completely out of sync. I hear this all the time in the therapy room, right? So someone will work through something and arrive at a really solid logical realization. So something like, um, what does it mean about me? So coming back to the person who's developed a belief about themselves that they're not important. What does it mean about me if someone treats me like I'm not important? Well, actually, it doesn't mean anything about me. It says something about them. Right? And the client, if they've got this trauma-encoded belief, they'll say, I can like I that makes sense to me. I see that, that makes sense logically, but it still feels true that I'm not important. I've got like this mismatch between what I know to be true logically, what my intellectual mind is aware of, and what my emotional experience believes. Okay, I still feel like I am not important. So that gap between knowing and feeling, that is the sign of a trauma-encoded belief. Logic got there, but the body didn't follow. These beliefs did not form through logic. So they won't, they are unlikely to shift through logic alone. They formed through experience, through pain, through not getting your needs met, and they need to be worked at at the level that they were formed, which is where trauma therapy comes in. That is also why a lot of people will do other therapies, like maybe uh more traditional talk therapies or CBT. But if the beliefs have been formed through trauma, they are trauma encoded, the logic involved in CBT, like challenging beliefs, the approaches used in those formats. I'm not saying that there's no CBT approaches or um strategies that can't work with that stuff, but the general strategies um I think that are used in a lot of therapy rooms won't. Um, so I got a lot of clients who will say, I've done like 50 sessions of talk therapy and CBT. I get it. Logically, I'm there, I have great insight, I know exactly what's happened, I totally understand all of the logic and how irrational my beliefs are, but they still feel true. It is so frustrating for those people, and I totally get it. So, EMDR, when it works effectively, um, it will shift that felt layer because it does work on that emotional and somatic physical level, not just the cognitive one. So, moving on to the next layer, the second layer is different, and I want to give it the weight it deserves before I do tell you that it's easier to shift. Because easier to shift doesn't mean it's easy to shift, and it doesn't mean it hasn't done a lot of damage. Um, remembering children have few, if any, alternative reference points, probably until they get older, maybe in some cases, much older. And the people that you trust the most, the people you are literally wired to learn from, fed you a version of reality that was not true. Not deli, probably not deliberately, right? Most parents doing this are not sitting there thinking, how can I distort this child's worldview today? They are just passing on their own distorted template. Um, they may have been handed that themselves when they were children, probably by people that were even handed one themselves, right? But the effect is the same. You absorbed a false map of the world, and then you've navigated your entire life using it. I will note that that, in my humble opinion, is kind of a form of accidental brainwashing. And I'm not using that word to be dramatic. I'm using it because I think it's it's an accurate description of the process that's occurring there. Brainwashing does not require malicious intent, it just requires repetition and no alternative reference point, no a person who has no reason to question what they're being taught, which is probably every child in every household, right? So these are what I'd call the learned worldview beliefs. So this is the intellectual template that you develop about how relationships work, what's normal in a household, what how it's normal to be treated by others, how it's normal to treat others, what love looks like, what conflict means, how to do conflict well, um, or how to disagree well if if that's happening, or how to disagree, um, what you're allowed to want, what you're allowed to need. These are not necessarily stuck in the body in the same way as the trauma-encoded layer. They're just what's been modeled to you, normalized to you. So you're going to probably hold those in the same way that you would hold any other assumption. You've just never had a reason to question it, probably. So examples of this are like it's normal for people to get angry if I say no. Love has to be earned. My wants and needs matter less than other people's. Saying no is selfish. I'm responsible for how other people react to what I say and do. So all of those statements are factually incorrect, right? But if that's been your template your whole life, they're gonna probably feel like common sense. You'll believe them until you get good evidence, quality evidence to the contrary. And once you do get that, they can generally shift fairly easily, fairly cleanly. So the difference with this layer is that when someone presents you with a clear, well-reasoned argument for why the belief is wrong, it actually can be enough. There's no body mismatch, you hear it, it lands things shift. I have actually become a bit of a lawyer in sessions because of this. Um, sometimes you really do need an airtight case. Um, especially, I mean, if somebody's been holding on to a belief about themselves or the world or others or whatever for 30 or 40, even 50 years, um, you need a bloody good argument, but if it is this layer, a bloody good argument can do it. So logic works here because logic is the level at which the belief is formed. This layer can also shift through things outside of therapy, right? Podcasts, books, online courses, seeing something uh modeled differently for the first time, like observing it happen differently. I've had a lot of people describe to me, for example, like getting into a relationship and making a mistake and having their partner or the person they're dating not react because it's normal to not react when people make a small mistake, right? Um, and it's immediately provided what we call this disconfirming information. My expectation is that I'm gonna get yelled at because that's what I grew up with. You make a mistake, you get screamed at. I did something wrong. And so you might make a mistake and be like, like brace yourself for the yelling, and then the person like is like, are you okay? Do you need a hand? Or something? And the expectation is disconfirmed. So that in and of itself, if this is a logically sort of based uh belief, can resolve quite quickly. So good quality information delivered well should be sufficient for that layer, which I think is quite hopeful to know because you can also do a lot of that on your own, right? So, how can you tell which one of these beliefs you're dealing with? Here's a rough practical test. I would suggest that if logic lands and things shift, if a well-constructed argument is enough to move the belief, it's the world view layer, right? So you might need more than just a throwaway comment, needs a solid, well-reasoned piece of evidence against the belief, that should be sufficient. You shouldn't notice that mismatch between what you think and what you feel. If the logic lands, like it really needs to land, you need to go, like, right, that's true. So if the logic makes complete sense and it lands, and you're like, oh my god, that's true, but your head agrees and your body doesn't follow, that's your signal that is likely a trauma-encoded layer, and that is your cue that you probably need trauma therapy to work on it, um, or some kind of deeper work, because the belief lives somewhere logic can't reach on its own. I would note here too, keep in mind it's frequently both. The layers coexist. You might have a trauma-encoded belief about your worth and a learned assumption about relationships that's just wrong information sitting alongside it, right? Um, so it can get a little bit complicated. Um, but at least it's this is something. It's something to start with. So, because I've spent this whole episode telling you to figure out which layer uh you're dealing with, I thought it would be fantastic to actually help you do that. I've put together a resource called The Reality Audit. It's a list of the most common distorted beliefs that people pick up in dysfunctional households. Um, and it's sort of got like the dysfunctional version of the belief and then the accurate version of the belief. Sometimes people look at a list like that and they notice dysfunctional beliefs that they have that they didn't even realize they had, so it can be quite helpful, and then you can see the true version, the accurate version next to it. Working through that list should help you start to notice which ones feel obviously wrong versus which ones you can logically agree with, but still feel the pull of. So that distinction is useful information. It's not a diagnosis, but it's just a solid starting point for understanding which layer you might be working with and what kind of support is actually going to help. Um, you can find the link to that in the show notes, the uh podcast description, and on my website, helenbillows.com. Um, you will need to sign up to the mailings to get it. I think it's a fair exchange. It's pretty good. And um, I send one email a month only when I have something worth saying, absolutely allergic to spam, you'll hear from me and not get a barrage of nonsense. Okay, so if you grew up in an environment like this, part of the work is doing trauma therapy, processing the wounds, shifting those deep entrenched beliefs at the level they were formed. But another part that's just as important is actually auditing your worldview, asking, what did I learn here that actually isn't true? Because a lot of what feels like common sense is just familiarity, and familiarity is not the same as the truth. So, thank you so much for listening. Take care, and I will see you next time. That's it for today's episode of the Trauma Nerd Podcast. If you felt validated, yay! If you felt challenged, double yay! If you found this useful, you can follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're interested in trauma focused therapy or resources, you can find more information at my website. Thanks for listening and bye for now.