Ep 5. You Know It's Not True. So Why Does It Still Feel True?

You've done the work. You have the insight. You can explain exactly what happened and why your beliefs are irrational. And you still feel exactly the same.

This isn't a therapy failure. It's a mismatch between what kind of belief you're carrying and what kind of help you're getting.

Not all beliefs that form in dysfunctional or traumatic environments work the same way. Some live in the body and the nervous system. Some live in the intellect. They formed differently, they feel different, and they need completely different approaches to shift. If you don't know which one you're dealing with, you can spend years doing the right work in the wrong place.

This episode breaks down both layers, how to tell them apart, and what to actually do about each one.

Get the Reality Audit — a free resource listing the most common distorted beliefs from dysfunctional environments, with the accurate version alongside each one.

• Read the Transcript

  Have you ever had someone present you with completely airtight evidence that the belief you hold about yourself is wrong?

  And you've thought, actually, yeah, you're right. That makes sense. I can see that. But then nothing actually changes. You have that little moment of insight, but it doesn't shift anything. You still feel the same and maybe like a few days later you forgot it even happened.

  That's not a personal failing. That's a clue. And today I'm gonna talk to you about what that is telling you.

  So, hello, I'm Helen Billows and this is the Trauma Nerd Podcast. I'm a registered psychologist, EMDR therapist and supervisor, and I run a trauma-focused private practice in Adelaide, South Australia.

  Today I wanna talk to you about the kinds of beliefs that come from dysfunctional upbringings — environments that involve neglect, abuse, emotional dysregulation, or the people around you being all over the place. The whole shebang. Things going wrong.

  And look, just for the scope of today, I am pretty much only going to refer to childhood, but this does apply in adulthood too. You'll know if it applies to you.

  So let's get into it. Before I get into these two layers, a quick word on why any of this happens in the first place.

  Children do not have alternative reference points. Whatever is happening in a child's household is generally all they know. Children view their caregivers as essentially all-knowing — if they're doing it, it must be okay. If they're saying it, it must be true. Whatever is normal in your environment becomes your normal.

  The problem is when the people you are learning from are themselves traumatised, chronically emotionally dysregulated, lacking skills in conflict and relationships and boundaries, or have their own unrecognised and very likely unaddressed mental health issues.

  The environment itself is distorted. And so the beliefs you develop from that environment are going to be distorted too. Not because you did anything wrong or perceived things incorrectly, but because children absorb their environment and take it as fact — which is exactly what they're supposed to do.

  ​The issue isn't the absorbing. In these situations, the issue is what is in the environment to be absorbed.

  So the first layer are what I would call trauma encoded beliefs. These are not just logical misconceptions.

  They are emotional beliefs formed in response to traumatic or painful repeated experiences. And if it's a trauma, it doesn't even need to be repeated — once, depending on the circumstances, can be enough.

  These beliefs are held in the body, in the nervous system. If somebody has a trauma encoded belief that they're worthless, and I ask them where they feel "I am worthless" in their body, they will be able to literally point to where it is, what it feels like. They'll describe the weight of it, the colour of it, the shape of it, the intensity — as if it's a physical thing inside them.

  So an example. If you had a parent who consistently dismissed you, never listened, never respected your needs or your voice, your nervous system, your brain, and your body are going to draw conclusions from that. Quite reasonable ones, actually. The problem is the environment, not your perception. The environment is distorted, so your brain and body are going to draw some conclusions. Things like: I'm not important. My needs don't matter. I am powerless.

  These are not things you are consciously deciding are true. These are the conclusions your nervous system, your brain, and your body are reaching from repeated painful experiences of not getting your needs met.

  The defining feature of this kind of belief is what I call the mismatch. You can know something is false logically and still feel it as true. Your head and your body can be completely out of sync.

  I hear this all the time in the therapy room. Someone will work through something and arrive at a really solid logical realisation — what does it mean about me if someone treats me like I'm not important? Well, actually it doesn't mean anything about me. It says something about them. And the client will say: that makes sense to me logically, but it still feels true that I'm not important.

  That gap between knowing and feeling is the sign of a trauma encoded belief. Logic got there, but the body didn't follow.

  These beliefs did not form through logic, so they are unlikely to shift through logic alone. They formed through experience, through pain, through not getting your needs met. And they need to be worked on at the level they were formed — which is where trauma therapy comes in.

  That is also why a lot of people will do other therapies — more traditional talk therapies or CBT — and find they don't shift this layer. If the beliefs have been formed through trauma, they are trauma encoded. The logic involved in CBT, like challenging beliefs, the approaches used in those formats — I'm not saying no CBT strategies can ever help, but the general strategies used in a lot of therapy rooms won't reach this layer.

  I have a lot of clients who will say: I've done 50 sessions of talk therapy and CBT. I get it logically. I'm there. I have great insight. I know exactly what's happened. I totally understand how irrational my beliefs are. But they still feel true.

  It is so frustrating for those people and I totally get it.

  EMDR, when it works effectively, will shift that felt layer because it works on the emotional and somatic level, not just the cognitive one.

  The second layer is different and I want to give it the weight it deserves. Before I tell you that it's easier to shift — easier to shift doesn't mean it's easy to shift, and it doesn't mean it hasn't done a lot of damage.

  Children have few if any alternative reference points, probably until they get older. And the people you trust most, the people you are literally wired to learn from, fed you a version of reality that was not true. Probably not deliberately. Most parents doing this are not sitting there thinking, how can I distort this child's worldview today? They are just passing on their own distorted template — one they were probably handed themselves.

  But the effect is the same. You absorbed a false map of the world and then you've navigated your entire life using it.

  In my opinion, that is a form of accidental brainwashing. I'm not using that word to be dramatic. I'm using it because I think it's an accurate description of the process. Brainwashing does not require malicious intent. It just requires repetition and no alternative reference point — which is probably every child in every household.

  These are what I'd call learned worldview beliefs. The intellectual template you develop about how relationships work, what's normal in a household, how it's normal to be treated by others, what love looks like, what conflict means, what you're allowed to want and need.

  These are not necessarily stuck in the body in the same way as the trauma encoded layer. They're just what's been modelled and normalised to you. You hold them the same way you'd hold any other assumption. You've just never had a reason to question them.

  Examples: it's normal for people to get angry if I say no. Love has to be earned. My wants and needs matter less than other people's. Saying no is selfish. I'm responsible for how other people react to what I say and do.

  All of those statements are factually incorrect. But if that's been your template your whole life, they're going to feel like common sense.

  You'll believe them until you get good evidence to the contrary. And once you do, they can generally shift fairly easily and fairly cleanly.

  The difference with this layer is that when someone presents you with a clear, well-reasoned argument for why the belief is wrong, it actually can be enough. There's no body mismatch. You hear it, it lands, things shift.

  I've actually become a bit of a lawyer in sessions because of this. Sometimes you really do need an airtight case — especially if somebody's been holding onto a belief for 30, 40, even 50 years. But if it is this layer, a bloody good argument can do it.

  Logic works here because logic is the level at which the belief formed.

  This layer can also shift through things outside of therapy — podcasts, books, online courses, seeing something modelled differently for the first time. I've had a lot of people describe getting into a relationship, making a mistake, and having their partner not react — because it's normal not to react when someone makes a small mistake. And it immediately provides what we call disconfirming information.

  Their expectation was to get yelled at. Instead they got: are you okay, do you need a hand? And the belief starts to loosen.

  Good quality information delivered well can be sufficient for this layer. Which means you can also do a lot of this work on your own.

  So how can you tell which one of these beliefs you're dealing with? Here's a rough practical test.

  If logic lands and things shift — if a well-constructed argument is enough to move the belief — it's the worldview layer. You might need more than a throwaway comment, you need a solid well-reasoned piece of evidence, but that should be sufficient. You won't notice that mismatch between what you think and what you feel.

  If the logic makes complete sense and lands — your head agrees — but your body doesn't follow, that's your signal. That is likely a trauma encoded belief, and that is your cue that you probably need trauma therapy to work on it. The belief lives somewhere logic can't reach on its own.

  Worth noting: it's frequently both. The layers coexist. You might have a trauma encoded belief about your worth and a learned assumption about relationships sitting alongside it. It can get complicated. But this is somewhere to start.

  Because I've spent this whole episode telling you to figure out which layer you're dealing with, I thought it would be useful to actually help you do that.

  I've put together a resource called the Reality Audit. It's a list of the most common distorted beliefs that people pick up in dysfunctional households, with the dysfunctional version of the belief and the accurate version alongside it. Sometimes people look at a list like that and notice beliefs they didn't even realise they held.

  Working through it should help you start to notice which beliefs feel obviously wrong versus which ones you can logically agree with but still feel the pull of. That distinction is useful information. It's not a diagnosis, but it's a solid starting point for understanding which layer you might be working with and what kind of support is actually going to help.

  You can find the link in the show notes and on my website at helenbillows.com. You'll need to sign up to the mailing list to get it. I think it's a fair exchange — I send one email a month, only when I have something worth saying. Absolutely allergic to spam.

  So if you grew up in an environment like this, part of the work is doing trauma therapy — processing the wounds, shifting those deep entrenched beliefs at the level they were formed. But another part, just as important, is auditing your worldview. Asking: what did I learn here that actually isn't true?

  Because a lot of what feels like common sense is just familiarity. And familiarity is not the same as the truth.

  Thank you so much for listening.

  Take care, and I'll see you next time.