Belief — A subjective mental attitude of accepting that something is true, real, or exists, even without complete or absolute proof.
I have been thinking about this word a lot of late, especially as it has become almost the centred aspect of what I do at Soulroots Journey.
I think of how this word previously sat with me, and how I only ever associated it with my faith. Almost like it was a card you put out, declaring something. As I began to formulate this blog on the way to school drop-off, I allowed myself to follow where the connections led me.
What first came to mind was the little girl who came into Christian life carrying a lot of trauma. I realised how much I had clung to what I believed, almost as though declaring it was enough. But what I have come to understand is that belief is often formed long before we are consciously aware of it. We don't always understand the drivers of those beliefs, or how they go on to influence and shape our thoughts, actions, relationships and the way we experience life.
I have read countless Bible verses about belief.
He believed.
Unless you believe.
If you believe.
And while I know this was not necessarily what the authors intended, for me, those words often came with an expectation, a duty and an obligation.
So, in effect, perhaps what I had understood as belief was actually obedience and there is a difference.
One of the Scriptures that comes to mind as I write this is:
"I believe; help thou mine unbelief." Mark 9:24 (KJV)
I find myself sitting with those words differently now.
Because here was someone who believed, yet could acknowledge that something else was present too.
Perhaps that is what I had never really allowed myself to consider. That what we consciously declare and what we carry within us are not always the same. I work with women from all different walks of life. Some are Christian and some are not. But at the heart of so much of the work we do is the realisation of a core wound that has shaped a belief. Whether that belief is about ourselves, our environment, other people or the world around us.
Seeing how that belief has gone on to influence and alter their lives, both consciously and unconsciously.
It's more the latter that I want to elaborate on.
As I sit here penning this, I feel a stirring within. Almost as though, for me to explore belief, it will evoke some of the very pain I have held within myself.
Perhaps that is part of why this word has been sitting with me so much.
I want to look at just a few core beliefs and the many ways they can show up. Particularly the ways we don't often recognise or address, because we haven't seen their imprint. Now, I can only write from a woman's perspective, because I don't think or know as a man.
I am not enough / I am unworthy
We often imagine this belief showing up as someone who lacks confidence or constantly questions her abilities.
But what if it looks like the woman who appears to have everything together?
The woman who achieves.
She sets high standards, works hard and rarely celebrates what she has accomplished because her attention has already moved to the next thing.
There is always something more she could do, learn, improve or become.
The woman who cannot rest.
She might sit down, but her mind is already running through everything she hasn't done.
Rest feels uncomfortable, perhaps even undeserved, unless she has been productive enough to earn it.
The woman who struggles to receive.
A compliment is dismissed.
An offer of help is met with, "No, I'm fine."
A gift creates an immediate need to give something back.
Receiving without reciprocating can feel strangely uncomfortable.
The woman who overexplains.
She feels compelled to justify her choices, her boundaries, her prices, her needs or even why she is tired.
A simple "no" doesn't feel sufficient.
The woman who undercharges or overdelivers.
In business or work, she gives more than was agreed, discounts her services or feels guilty asking to be paid appropriately.
Not necessarily because she doesn't know her value intellectually, but because receiving can feel different from giving.
The woman who compares.
Someone else's success quietly becomes evidence of what she hasn't achieved.
Even when she is happy for them, something inside measures the distance between where she is and where she thinks she should be.
And sometimes this belief shows up in the opposite direction.
She may avoid opportunities, procrastinate, dismiss her own dreams or decide not to try because the possibility of failing feels too exposing.
Different behaviours. Potentially the same underlying question:
Am I enough, even when I am not achieving, giving, proving or doing?
And as I reflect on this, I think about the words:
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephesians 2:8–9 (KJV)
I wonder how often, even within our faith, we can find ourselves trying to earn what was never meant to be earned, not just salvation, but our sense of worth, acceptance and belonging. How easily doing can become intertwined with being enough. How difficult it can be to receive when somewhere within us we have learnt that everything must be earned.
I am not loved
This belief doesn't necessarily mean a woman believes nobody loves her.
She may have a loving partner, children, family and friends.
She may even be the person everyone turns to for comfort and connection.
Yet somewhere beneath the surface, love may feel uncertain, conditional or something that could disappear.
The woman who becomes indispensable.
She remembers everyone's birthdays, notices when something is wrong, organises gatherings, checks in and offers support.
Being needed can become closely intertwined with feeling loved.
The woman who struggles with boundaries.
She says yes when she wants to say no.
She worries that disappointing someone will change how they feel about her.
Keeping the peace feels safer than expressing what she actually needs.
The woman who constantly checks the temperature of relationships.
A delayed message.
A change in someone's tone.
A partner who seems quieter than usual.
Small changes can create an internal sense of uncertainty, even when nothing is actually wrong.
The woman who gives love but struggles to trust it.
She can be affectionate, generous and deeply committed, yet reassurance never seems to settle for long.
Love is received in the moment, but it can be difficult to hold onto when the other person is absent or distracted.
The woman who doesn't ask for what she needs.
She may secretly hope someone notices.
That someone will offer without being asked.
That someone will choose her, remember her or make space for her.
And when they don't, it can reinforce a familiar feeling of being overlooked.
The woman who keeps people at a distance.
Not every expression of this belief looks like seeking connection.
Sometimes it looks like avoiding it.
She may pride herself on not needing anyone, struggle with vulnerability or withdraw when someone gets too close.
Because if you don't let someone in, perhaps they cannot hurt you by leaving.
The woman who accepts less than she needs.
She might stay in one-sided friendships, minimise hurtful behaviour or feel grateful for small amounts of affection, even when her emotional needs remain unmet and sometimes the question beneath these very different patterns is:
Am I lovable simply for being me, or do I have to do something to keep love?
I think about how often we hear the words love one another, yet how difficult it can be to allow ourselves to be loved without feeling we must do something in return.
To receive love without questioning it.
To be present in a relationship without constantly looking for evidence that it is secure.
And perhaps for some women, the challenge isn't knowing what love is, but allowing themselves to experience it without the expectation that it will be taken away.
I am broken
This belief can be particularly difficult to recognise because it often disguises itself as a desire for growth, healing or self-improvement.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to understand ourselves, learn new skills or seek support.
But what happens when the desire to grow is quietly driven by the belief that something about us needs to be fixed before we can fully live?
The woman who is always working on herself.
Another book.
Another course.
Another healing modality.
Another explanation for why she feels the way she does.
There is always one more thing to uncover before she can finally feel whole.
The woman who mistrusts her emotions.
If she feels anxious, angry, overwhelmed or sad, she immediately wants to know what is wrong.
Rather than recognising an emotion as information or a response to something happening, she may interpret it as evidence that she hasn't healed enough.
The woman who apologises for having needs.
She feels guilty when she is overwhelmed.
She worries that her sensitivities make life difficult for others.
She may describe herself as too emotional, too complicated, too sensitive or too much.
The woman who believes everyone else knows how to live.
She looks at other women and imagines they have something she is missing.
The ability to cope.
To maintain relationships.
To manage their emotions.
To move through life without the internal struggle she experiences.
The woman who struggles to trust her body.
She may see her body's responses as something to fight, control or eliminate.
Tension, fatigue, tears or discomfort become frustrating interruptions rather than experiences she can approach with curiosity.
The woman who waits until she is healed to begin.
She postpones relationships, opportunities, joy or change because she doesn't yet feel ready.
She may believe she must become a better version of herself before she is worthy of the life she desires.
And sometimes this belief shows up as resistance to support.
Because needing help can feel like confirmation that something is wrong with her.
Beneath it all may be the quiet assumption:
If I could just fix myself, then I could finally be okay.
There is a verse that I keep coming back to as I write this:
"Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." Romans 12:2 (KJV, excerpt)
I find it interesting that we are invited into renewal.
Yet how often do we approach that renewal from the belief that we are somehow broken?
What if the starting place wasn't finding everything that is wrong with us, but becoming aware of what has shaped us?
What we have learnt.
What we have carried.
And what we have come to accept as truth about ourselves.
Because there is a difference between wanting to grow and believing we are not enough until we do.
We have only covered three...
Three beliefs.
And look at how many different ways they can be expressed.
What I find particularly interesting is that two women can hold a similar underlying belief and behave in completely opposite ways.
One woman may constantly seek connection, while another avoids it.
One may overachieve, while another never allows herself to try.
One may spend her life seeking healing, while another refuses to acknowledge she needs support.
We can spend years trying to change the behaviour without ever understanding what is driving it.
This is where I want to take us a little deeper, into the subconscious and the language of the body.
Because at the heart of so much of this is not simply what we think, but what we have learnt to respond to.
Our bodies are constantly receiving information, both from the world around us and from within.
A tone of voice.
A look.
A feeling of being dismissed.
A situation where we feel we have disappointed someone.
Something that may seem so insignificant to another person can create a very real response within us and sometimes we don't consciously recognise why.
Our body may recognise a familiar sensation, one associated with an earlier experience of hurt, rejection, shame or fear.
It doesn't always stop to determine whether the threat we once experienced is present now. Instead, a familiar protective response can be activated.
Almost as though something within us says:
I've felt this before. This is how I respond.
This is where autopilot can kick in, before we know it, we are responding in the very way we have consciously been trying to change.
We say yes when we wanted to say no.
We withdraw when we wanted to connect.
We defend ourselves when we wanted to listen.
We push ourselves harder when what we really needed was rest.
Sometimes we find ourselves back in the very situations we had hoped never to experience again. Not necessarily because we have chosen them, but because familiar patterns can influence what feels safe, what we expect and how we respond.
We can know intellectually that we are worthy.
We can know that we are loved.
We can know that we don't need to prove ourselves.
And yet, in the moment, our body can respond as though something entirely different is true. This is what I find so important about understanding beliefs.
Because knowing something consciously doesn't always mean we have learnt to experience it differently.
When we keep trying to change, keep telling ourselves we should know better, keep making promises that next time will be different, only to find ourselves responding in the same way.
We can become despondent.
We can start to lose trust in ourselves.
And this is where hope can suffer. Perhaps we even begin to reinforce the very beliefs we are trying to move beyond.
See, I'm not enough.
See, I'm too difficult to love.
See, there really is something wrong with me.
And the cycle continues.
What if we approached ourselves differently?
This is why I love the work that I do. Because for so long, we may not have been able to identify or understand what was happening within us.
We simply allowed those beliefs and responses to direct our path, often without even realising it. I think there is something incredibly meaningful about the moment a woman begins to recognise a pattern, not with judgement, but with curiosity.
When she can pause long enough to notice what is happening within her.
When she begins to build the capacity to be with what she feels, rather than immediately trying to change, suppress or escape it.
When she can offer herself compassion for a response that may have once served a very real purpose.
That, to me, is where something begins to shift, not because she has finally found everything that needs fixing. But because she is beginning to understand herself differently and I can't help but see the connection to what we have been shown and invited into through faith.
Grace. Compassion. Love. Patience.
Not simply as things we are called to extend to others, but perhaps also as ways we can learn to meet ourselves.
I love seeing women come to that realisation, whether they are Christian or not. Because when we begin to understand what has shaped us, we can start to recognise that the beliefs we have carried are not necessarily the truth of who we are. That is the part I keep coming back to.
We can spend so much of our lives living from beliefs we never consciously chose, while trying to become someone we were never required to be.
For me, this work isn't about creating a dependency on someone to continually uncover another wound or another belief. It's about awareness, building capacity, compassion and learning to recognise what is happening within us, so we have more choice in how we respond.
The work happens in the session.
The integration happens in your life.
As I reflect on where this blog began, on that little girl who thought believing meant declaring the right thing, I am beginning to understand something else.
That belief isn't always what we say we believe.
Sometimes it's what our responses reveal we have come to accept as true and becoming aware of that doesn't mean we have failed in what we believe.
An invitation to become curious about what else we have been carrying and to discover that we don't have to keep living from it.
What if you could experience this for yourself?
Reading about beliefs is one thing. Becoming aware of how they show up within your own body and responses is another.
If you're in Adelaide, I'd love to invite you to Beyond the Belief, our free, in-person interactive somatic experience on 17 November. A space to pause, get curious and begin exploring the connection between what we believe, what we feel and how we respond.
Or, if something in this blog has resonated and you'd like to explore your own patterns more personally, Root Cause Therapy offers a space to begin understanding what has shaped your beliefs and responses, with awareness and compassion.
Explore working with Soulroots Journey
And if you're not quite ready for either, perhaps simply stay a little longer and explore another reflection here on the blog.
Because awareness doesn't have to lead to immediate action. Sometimes allowing ourselves to become curious is enough to begin.
