CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) believes it has an answer to the problem so many of us are plagued with of what they call “limiting beliefs.”Those are things we truly believe about ourselves, like:
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I’m no good.
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I’m a bad parent.
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I should be doing better than I’m doing.
And so forth; you get the idea.
A long time ago, Albert Ellis invented Rational Emotive Therapy and then Aaron Beck turned that into CBT.The way you (supposedly) combat these beliefs is by recognizing that you don’t mess up all the time and that “shoulds” aren’t realistic and are usually too harsh.
The problem with all that is that people feel their unfortunate, limiting beliefs so deeply that in spite of the fact that they know these beliefs aren’t true, they still feel that way.
For example, there are very successful people who will acknowledge the external truth of their success but tell you that they don’t feel real in that successful role.That’s called “imposter syndrome.”
Clients have told me in one way or another, “My friends say I’m a wonderful person and I agree that I am good and kind to them. I’m just not wonderful to myself, and very frankly, I don’t like myself.”CBT has no answers for this.
Other than to keep arguing with the person that it doesn’t all add up.
The problem is that CBT, like John Gottman’s therapy, is based on logic, and where emotions prevail, logic has no chance.The reality is that we are emotional beings. Scientists have, in fact, demonstrated that the ability to detect and display emotions can be found all over our brains.
Not only that: Feelings take precedence over logic.
What do I mean?
If you have a strong feeling about something, you will use logic to justify it.
We call that rationalizing, don’t we 
First comes the emotion; then comes the way we explain it to ourselves. (There’s a great book that gives the funniest examples of how we do this. It’s called, “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain” by neuroscientist David Eagleman.)So how in the world can a CBT therapist expect to use logic to heal deep emotions?
Which brings me to the point of this post: The way to learn to love yourself is by discovering the emotional reasons (not the logical ones) that you don’t.And emotional reasons are never logical so there’s no need to try to combat them using logic. That just won’t work.
These emotional reasons always have a root in childhood. The bad marriage is layered on top of that.In fact, childhood traumas (traumas with a little “t” doesn’t make them any less painful or frightening) prepares us for the marriage traumas.
What do I mean by that?
When, as a child, you came to believe that-
life is a frightening place, or
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you can’t ever please people, or
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everything you do comes back to bite you in the rear, or
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you’re just a loser no matter how hard you try, or
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you do not know how to get along, or
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you cannot protect yourself so you better rely on someone else to do it, or
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you will always be misjudged and misunderstood
then you’re “primed” (like that coat of paint primer that makes the wall ready to “receive” the coat of real paint) for mistreatment in your marriage.The frustrating thing is that very often the childhood mistreatment turns out to be things so many adults do to their children without ever intending to hurt them or leave long-lasting scars.
What’s more, those nasty messages that we tell ourselves turn out to come from the voices of frightened inner kids inside of us.We think the voices are us, but they aren’t. As children, we had a need for safety and protection and we took it on in whatever way we could.
Let’s take an example. Take, “You’re just a loser no matter how hard you try.”A good question would be, “Well, DrDeb, how can saying this to myself be protecting me or providing safety?”
Right, it sure doesn’t seem that way at first glance.
Let’s look a bit deeper: Where did those words originally come from?Mom? Dad?
So what your little Self was doing a long time ago was giving yourself your parent’s message before they could so that you’d fix things before they got to you.Your little inner child thought that beating them to the punch would be helpful. That is how it intended to protect you.
We absorb these messages and make them our own.
But they’re not.
So how do we come to love ourselves?
We go back in time and validate that inner child, allow him or her to unburden themselves of these thoughts/feelings/messages/sensations in a very dramatic way, and then rescue them.This is all based on way our brains work. Here are some points:
1. To our brains, an imagined experience is as good as a lived one. It feels the same and has the same impact.
2. Neural pathways literally uncouple and recouple differently from vividly imagining and re-experiencing something differently. That is what we mean by saying we can “re-wire” our brains.
3. The reason why couples have the same fight over and over is they never feel heard. This “rescuing” process enables that inner child to finally feel heard.
4. It is really a person’s own job to hear – and witness – one’s own inner children; this can’t be done by a spouse or even the original perpetrator because it will never come out right. But our Selves can do it right.
5. The more trauma in a person’s life, the more inner children that need to be witnessed and rescued. Generally speaking, it is recommended that the rescuing experience take place with a qualified Internal Family Systems-trained therapist or coach.
There definitely are answers. And this method is guaranteed to work by Dr Schwartz himself, the founder of Internal Family Systems. I heard him say that myself.