Hi, everyone. So today I'm going to talk to you about what we refer to in psychology as core beliefs. Have you ever wondered how it is that two people can experience the same situation and have completely different interpretations of that event and completely different emotional responses to it? That's because they have two entirely different brains, which are built on the foundation of our belief systems.

Now, many of you will have positive core beliefs. Common ones might be I am kind, I am compassionate, I am good at x, y, and z. Now, they're very unlikely to be causing you any problems. But I just wanted to remind you that we have positive ones as well as negative ones. But it's really important to say also that we all have some negative core beliefs. That's because it's impossible to get through life without having some adverse experiences. And those experiences shape the way in which we see the self others in the world.

Research would indicate that those beliefs are commonly set in stone by the age of 9 or 10, which is terrifying to me as a parent of young children. But let's not forget also that there's a lot of neuroplasticity during teenage years, which can heavily affect our self-esteem as well and also, it's worth saying that traumatic incidents have the ability to turn our belief system upside down.

Now, core beliefs are very interesting, because once the belief sort of hooks in, once it starts to form and find its place in our brain, the brain then starts to develop this sort of bias system, whereby it filters out information that doesn't fit with it. So for example, let's pick a really, really common negative core belief: I'm not good enough. Very, very common, it seems to be almost a universal issue, that core belief. Now, let's just say I have that belief, I'm working really, really, really hard. In my very ADHD way. I'm doing lots and lots of hours at work and struggling with procrastination, etc, as well. And my boss says, Hey, Steve, great job, you did really well on that report or whatever.

I'm very unlikely with that core belief to just go, hey, do you know what I did do a brilliant job, I am rather brilliant. What's very likely to happen is my brain is going to ooh, that doesn't really fit. So I might get something that we call cognitive dissonance, where we receive information, which doesn't fit with my belief system. So my brain is very likely to then crush that information to fit with the belief to make it fit inside this neat little box, it's got. So I'm very likely to maybe get rid of the compliment and say something like "he's just saying that because he's buttering me up for next week to do this other report" or, "err yeah, I only did well on that because I worked so bloody hard on it".

And so what happens is we start to filter out the positive information, and focus only on the negative because it fits with a negative belief. And what's going to happen to that belief? It's going to get stronger. Now, what happens if we keep doing that year on year, it's going to get stronger and stronger and stronger, and that bias is going to get greater and greater and greater. And we then start to get what I like to refer to as a sort of volcanic emotional response to certain situations.

So let's say I've got that not good enough core belief and I go for a job interview, and I don't get that job, it's going to trigger my not good enough core belief. And I might get this sort of volcanic emotional response, which makes me feel awful for a few days, which is beyond, say, normal, common shame or low mood or anxiety. It passes. But these core beliefs often form the basis really for a lot of our negative thinking. And it's very common for people to have between three and seven or even eight negative core beliefs in my experience.

So it's important to understand that in particular, in relation to ADHD, because we were very likely to have experienced perhaps more criticism than a neurotypical. I heard a statistic the other day which surprised and shocked me but also didn't surprise me in a way. That is that the average person with ADHD experiences up to 20,000 more negative comments by the age of 12 than a neurotypical. Kind of interesting if you're a CBT therapist to think about that because I mean, it's pretty hard for us to avoid thinking that we're not good enough, it's pretty hard for us to avoid fearing judgment from others if we're impulsive, and our classmates don't know what to make of our behaviour, or we keep getting into trouble, etc, etc or our parents keep telling us off.

So these beliefs form and it's incredibly common that you meet people or adults in particular with ADHD who have some low self-esteem difficulties. I'm going to talk a bit more about that a bit more broadly in several other recordings but I just wanted to start getting you thinking about negative beliefs and how they influence the way in which you think.