Why do you think that way?

Our brain has an amazing ability to think on auto-pilot. For example, you can brush your teeth without having to think about it very much.

Our brain learns rules and actions and can operate them with little conscious effort on our part.

This isn’t just for daily activities like dishes or brushing our hair. Our brain also goes on autopilot with a lot of our beliefs and thought patterns. Sometimes we call these deep beliefs schemas.

Schemas are a framework or belief that our brain has learned and uses as a shortcut to quickly categorize situations without having to stop and assess them. (Meaning we don’t often think of the schemas or are fully aware of them)

For example, you can be walking through the woods and see a stick that looks like a snake. Your brain will quickly (and without conscious thought) react with ‘snake means danger’ and you will likely recoil back from it.

This is only if you have already learned that a snake is dangerous.

If you did not have this learning (snake = danger), then you would not have this reaction to recoil from it.

We have formed schemas/belief systems for almost everything in life. We have learned what is safe/dangerous, right/wrong, painful/rewarding and so on.

This is information we don’t think about all the time, it stays in the subconscious where it can operate on autopilot throughout the day.

But what I really want to talk about is where these beliefs and schemas come from.

One influence on our schemas is our culture (social conditioning).

We learn from our local culture (online included) the norms of who we need to be in order to be accepted and have status. Aligning with the culture is important for staying included (accepted and included = safe).

We learn our culture’s language, values and expectations of the roles people should play (gender roles included).

Even if we all live in the same country, you will have cultural influence from the people you hang out with, the places you attend and the media sources you use.

Another factor that has shaped our beliefs is our experiences in our close relationships.

Often the most impactful relationship is with our caregivers, but this can also include impactful people in your life such as teachers, siblings and so on.

We adopt beliefs from how we are treated in relationships. We pick up on both explicit (the words said out loud) and the implicit (the implied) to understand who others think we are. (And we often adopt their opinions of us)

We learn from others, especially our caregivers, who we need to be in order to be approved of and taken care of. For example we might learn that good grades pleases our parents, we assume that we should be more of that. However, if we are scolded for expressing sadness we then we learn that is not an acceptable part of us, we should be less of that.

We hear the labels people give us (sometimes empowering, sometimes disempowering). If you always heard you were ‘a handful’ you may struggle to view yourself as ‘easy to be around’.

We also learn about how life looks from those around us. We look to those relationships around us, growing up, to show us a model of how to be in the world and how to cope with the world.

The same way we learn our first language from those around us, we learn a blueprint of who we are, who others are and what the world is.

The final factor to talk about is what we learn through our own experiences.

From the time we are small, our brain is gathering data on situations and outcomes.

One way this happens is by us having an experience and then we assign some meaning to it.

If a partner breaks up with us we make it mean/assume that we are unlovable, or we can assume that we are better off.

If we baked a cake and it didn’t turn out we can assume we shouldn’t try baking again or we can assume there is something for us to learn

What we assume can turn into beliefs that we operate from.

When we experience either ‘pain’ or ‘reward’ our brain files that information as something to avoid or pursue in the future.

The simplest example is how we are all conditioned to reach for our phone when we hear a ding because we could get a reward of a certain type of notification

Some of us are conditioned to avoid being vulnerable in relationships because it didn’t go so well in the past (pain)

The bigger the emotion/pain/reward, the stronger that reinforcement is.

This topic is a very interesting one to me because we don’t realize how much of our thinking is on autopilot.

We also don’t realize how much our upbringing, caregivers, early life experiences and culture truly shape who we become in the world.

Once we become aware of these beliefs we have formed and lived by, we get to begin the work of choosing what we keep and what we let go of.