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Overcome Limiting Beliefs: 3 Questions to Ask

Barbara Heffernan • October 8, 2024

If your limiting beliefs are holding you back and you are struggling with how to change them, I have three questions for you to ask yourself.

#1: Does this belief really belong to you... or does it belong to someone else?

 

We generally get our limiting beliefs from difficult situations in our lives or relationships with difficult people, and sometimes we internalize what they say about us, which may or may not even be their belief… but it becomes our belief.

 

Or other times we can absorb a belief from a caregiver or someone we're close to who believes it about themselves. We can absorb a limiting belief, almost by osmosis, from our caregivers when we're young. So really think through, is this your belief or does this belief really belong to somebody else? Did someone in your life believe this about themselves or the world?

 

#2 : Is your belief based in the fact that you are uniquely unusually horribly, [X, Y, Z]. Do you believe that most people are not this way, but you are just uniquely bad or uniquely worthless or uniquely unlucky?

 

If your belief is based on this type of thinking, it is, for sure, false.


In working with clients over 20 years, this would come up when we were working on transforming their limiting beliefs.

 

Because I'd say, “If this happened to somebody else, would you think [x, y or z] about them?” And they'd always respond, “No, of course not, but they're a good person!”

 

“Well then why did this experience make you think you are a bad person?” I would ask.

 

It would come down to a primitive belief that developed extremely early in life.

 

I don't know how many of my videos you watch or blogs you read, but I hope if you watch enough of them, you'll get a feeling that we are all very much alike.

 

We are all more alike than we are different. Many of us have the same types of thought patterns and similar struggles, all around the world.


We have a lot in common.

Just because we feel we are bad, or stupid, or selfish, does not mean we are.  And if we feel we are unusually any of these things, we can rest assured we are not.

 

So that's a question to really look into for yourself.

 

#3 What is the gain to you of having this limiting belief?

 

This is also a challenging question, and it can be hard to get your head around.

Generally, when we have some kind of counterproductive behavior or habit, there's some type of hidden gain.

 

And it might be that your limiting belief is protecting you from something. Or trying to protect you.

These beliefs develop early because they are trying to protect us, and trying to protect the relationship with our caregiver

 

Let me give you an example. Let's say you'd like to get a new job, but you have a limiting belief that you are just not good enough.

 

That limiting belief might be protecting you from being disappointed. That belief, that part of yourself that holds that belief, doesn't want you to go after that job and then be disappointed.

 

But honestly, let's say you're not good enough and you apply for the job and you don't get it. So what, right?


But the part of you that holds that limiting belief yells, “No! No, don't even bother!” Because it is avoiding disappointment.

 

We do a lot of things to avoid certain emotions. And weirdly, I would say, and I know this in myself and saw it with my clients, we try so hard to avoid being disappointed.

 

The other emotions we really, really try to avoid are embarrassment, shame and sadness.

Many people get very anxious about situations that are truly sad. They just don’t want to feel the sadness. They don’t want to acknowledge their powerlessness to change a situation, so they will stay in anxiety trying to fix something they can’t fix. And, meanwhile, they’ll continue to talk negatively to themselves, beating themselves up about not being able to fix whatever needs fixing.

All to avoid accepting the reality of a situation that is simply sad.

I do believe it is healthier to let ourselves feel those emotions than to get tied in a knot avoiding the feelings.

So, notice if your limiting belief is helping to protect you from feeling one of those super uncomfortable emotions.

So I do want to let you know I'm about to launch a new program live.

I haven't done a live program in about two years, but it will be a live program on transforming your negative core beliefs. It'll be webinar format.


You'll be able to directly ask me questions via chat and text. You won't have to show your face on a screen, as I know many people don't like that. But you'll be able to listen in, ask questions, and I'll help you drill down into what your true core belief is and what a reasonably adaptive positive belief might be.


And then we'll go through the methods that you can practice on your own to really transform them from the core. More information is here: Break Free: Overcome Negative Core Belief

Blog Author: Barbara Heffernan, LCSW, MBA. Barbara is a licensed psychotherapist and specialist in anxiety, trauma, and healthy boundaries. She had a private practice in Connecticut for twenty years before starting her popular YouTube channel designed to help people around the world live a more joyful life. Barbara has a BA from Yale University, an MBA from Columbia University and an MSW from SCSU.  More info on Barbara can be found on her bio page.

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By Barbara Heffernan March 24, 2025
Understanding the Fawn Response The Fawn response is a behavior developed in childhood, often connected to complex trauma. It could even be little "t" traumas on an ongoing basis, where as a child, you learned to subjugate yourself to the caregiver in order to stay in relationship and survive. This becomes a deeply ingrained survival behavior which can become habitual. As you grow up, it gets applied to all situations. This blog will go through nine components required for healing. - The first three focus on internal work - The next three are more practical, action-oriented techniques - The last three address deeper psychological work Internal Work (Components 1-3) # 1. Recognize that fawning developed because it was necessary at the time Understand that fawning was a survival strategy, and it might have been the very best choice available to you. It may also have been, in many ways, the only choice. Even today as adults, there are situations where choosing a fawning-type behavior might actually be the best choice. This is important to understand because we don't want to eliminate this response entirely—we want to get to the point where it's not an automatic go-to reaction. Instead, we want to reach a place where you can consciously think, "I'm choosing to do this right now." Acknowledging that this developed as a survival strategy helps prepare you for the next two components. [ For more information on what the fawn response is and why it developed, read this blog] # 2. Begin to acknowledge and validate your own feelings If you grew up in an environment where you learned to fawn, my guess is that not only were your caregivers not paying attention to your feelings, but you also had to subjugate your own feelings to the point where you weren't aware of what you were feeling. As an adult, it's necessary to begin recognizing and identifying your emotions: "I'm feeling angry" or "sad" or "frustrated" or "irritated." Begin to acknowledge and even verbalize what you're feeling. The simple act of labeling your emotion calms down your fight-flight-freeze response and increases activity in the areas of the brain that help you solve problems. There is research that shows this happening via fMRIs! # 3. Practice self-compassion Understanding why this behavior developed can help you practice self-compassion. Changing these behaviors is hard and takes time. If you find yourself automatically fawning and later yelling at yourself, try not to do that—you're basically re-traumatizing yourself for a behavior you learned for survival. Instead, try noting it with self-compassion: "Interesting, I fell into that pattern again." And then connect this to the next step by adding, "I fell into that pattern again because of this situation." Observe with compassion rather than judgment. Practical Tools (Components 4-6) # 4. Identify situations that trigger fawning behavior Notice which situations trigger your fawning behavior. As you review these situations, see if there are patterns similar to those you experienced as a child. They may reflect situations that were emotionally or physically dangerous, or that created a rift between you and your caregivers. Identifying these situations helps you understand what patterns became embedded in your emotional brain. As you observe these patterns, bring in self-compassion and that observer mindset. This approach is much more productive than criticizing yourself. As you identify these patterns, you can connect them to current situations: "This situation at work with a difficult authority figure is recreating this childhood pattern for me." You are bringing in your frontal lobe to analyze the emotional reaction, which helps you realize, "That was threatening to my very existence when I was a child, but it is not threatening to my existence right now." This recognition is crucial because automatic fawning behaviors come from a need to survive immediate danger. The uncertainty of longer-term consequences (like losing a job) might be problematic, but it's not an immediate survival threat. Differentiating between then and now helps calm your fawn response. # 5. Keep a journal to track people-pleasing behaviors Keep a journal for 30 days. Journal on this question: "Did I say or do something today to please someone else that was at my own expense?" As you review the events of each day, you might realize, "I didn't do it this situation, but I did do it in those five situations." Again, maintain self-compassion with no judgment—just observe and be aware this will take time. This question gets at the heart of the issue: What did you do today that ignored your own values or needs in order to stay in relationship with someone else, avoid criticism, or prevent rejection? Verbalizing this through an audio journal or writing it down utilizes different parts of your brain that help you comprehensively understand what's happening. # 6. Practice emotional regulation tools daily Implement diaphragmatic breathing, grounding exercises, or any techniques that calm your physiology. Practice these regularly, not just in the middle of triggering events. You can weave these practices throughout your day. Set an alarm for three different times during the day, and when it goes off, simply take three deep diaphragmatic breaths. No one needs to know you're doing it—you can do it anywhere, and it's free. While it might not feel immediately helpful, you're stimulating a different part of your nervous system that helps you realize, "In this situation, it would not be life-threatening if the relationship were severed. I'm not in a situation where my immediate survival is at stake." When you feel safe enough, your normal breathing pattern will naturally be diaphragmatic. It's all a feedback loop—a body-based technique that communicates to the rest of your brain. The fawn response is differentiated from the fight-flight-freeze response. Sometimes they're grouped together, but I think it's more useful to separate them (I'll cover this topic in the future if you're interested—let me know in the comments). The fawn response uses different parts of the nervous system and brain because it's largely about staying in connection with others. That said, knowing whether your underlying response is fight, flight, or freeze beneath the fawn behavior can be helpful. 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