The Stolen Self Esteem Case

The case of the Stolen Self-esteem

Core Beliefs and the battle between Positive and Negative Evidence

Author:

John B Nutting PO Box 133 Bald Hills Qld 4036 Australia ©

Publisher: Growing Awareness Pty Ltd 2008 ©

From the Growing Awareness Website:

http://www.core-beliefs-balance.com/

Please see the note at the foot of this page to obtain permission for reproduction or distribution of this fable

The case of the Stolen Self-esteem
Core Beliefs and the battle between Positive and Negative Evidence

INTRODUCTION

My name is Gro.W. Aware. I'm a detective. My specialty is investigating core belief problems.

Monday 10:15 a.m.
A call comes in, someone is stealing self-empowerment and self-esteem again. My job find them. I go to the scene of the theft to start my investigation and to look for clues.

Monday 11:12 a.m.
I talk to Kerry, a prominent young executive who complains that someone or something is stealing her self-empowerment and undermining her self-esteem. She explains that for the past five years she has been successfully running her own fashion business but she is now losing confidence and she concludes by explaining,
"I just don't feel good enough".

Kerry feels sure that her self-empowerment is being stolen, but has no idea why. She also says she feels weaker, has less energy and feels as though her motivation is being drained away. However while she is talking to me at the same time something inside her gives me the impression that she is actually a bit bossy. Some of the things she says sound as if she is in full control of the situation (or wants me to think she is).
I notice how much of the time she is blaming someone or something outside of her for her loss and yet it seems to me that deep inside the problem has something to do with her and her past.
My sixth sense prompts my suspicions that this might be the work of a gang that I have been watching for quite a while, a gang known as the Cor Credo who have a reputation around town for stealing self-awareness and self empowerment.

Monday, 1:55 p.m.
I talk to a technical expert on the Cor Credo in our Forensic Department Dr. Ann Alyse and she explains some of the tricks the Cor Credo use once they get inside their victims.

NOTE: In this story you will notice that Ann (like Det. Gro W Aware) is a bit too analytical and her technical explanations are not easy to follow - but the points she makes are very important.

As the case unfolds each analogy helps illustrate one of the key points people need to grasp a real understanding of those tricky Negative Core Beliefs (or Core Credo if my Latin/ Italian/ Spanish is accurate)

· The Cor Credo are masters of disguise. They work silently right in front of the victim but people just don't seem to notice them until after the theft.

· They also hide their presence by setting up masking behaviour patterns inside the person. (Compensating skills)

· They confuse the victim by suggesting (for example) black is white and white is black or convincing the victim he or she must turn to the right when it would be far better for them to turn left.

· They trick their victims into doing things that seem to stop the theft but which end up increasing the power of the gang and speeding up the theft. (self-fulfilling prophecy).

· They convince people that they are far more powerful than they really are, that they cannot be stopped and this helps them to steal and steal again from the same person.

· These negative thoughts are untrue (usually there is very little evidence or none at all to back them up) but the Core Credo gang trick other people around the victim into acting as if they were true. Even if the victim has a loyal friend who tries to explain the truth (that the core beliefs are not really powerful) the Cor Credo undermine that friend’s credibility.

I'm not sure how Ann's explanation helps me. I can’t quite follow her analysis but somehow I know that it’s vitally important for me to understand it.

Monday 3:40 p.m.
The Chief calls me in and says that he is putting a couple of extra officers on the case to help me with doing the footwork and search for evidence of the Cor Credo at work.
He introduces Officers Mary Clamp and Glen Crook. (Authors’ note: I know I am giving the plot away but these two, Clamp and Crook will turn out to be bad cops working undercover for the Cor Credo. That's a lot like what happens with core beliefs in real life.)

Tuesday 11:00 a.m.
Officer Mary Clamp calls me and says after talking to other people who know Kerry she is starting to doubt Kerry's reports of her past success in business and her high standing in the community. Officer Clamp thinks Kerry is covering up something nasty. I get a funny feeling that things are not adding up but don't know what it is, I think back to Kerry's overconfident and bossy attitude when I first interviewed her. That didn’t add up either?
I have another talk with Dr. Ann Alyse at 2:55 p.m. She gives me one more important clue about the Cor Credo explaining how they confuse their victims by having them act in two opposite ways at the same time.
I tell her about Kerry acting in two opposite ways.
She says this certainly makes it more likely that the Cor Credo are involved in stealing Kerry’s self-awareness.

Wednesday 11:10 a.m.
Kerry calls me, she's very upset. A big business deal has just fallen through and her self-esteem has plummeted even more. She is worried about what will go wrong next and is starting to feel distrustful of the people around her. I can't help but wonder if that includes me as well.

Wednesday 2:00 pm
Officer Glen Crook reports that Kerry’s Bankers say they are losing confidence in her ability to handle business decisions. I am beginning to wonder if Kerry is really the successful business person she claims to be. The evidence seems to be stacking up against her.

Thursday 6:00 am
I wake up with a sudden realisation. I remember what a wise old detective once told me about Cor Credo modus operandi.
As the old detective explained “The Cor Credo are tricky. Once they get to work inside a person they pretend they are looking for positive evidence about that person. (from other people). But when they find positive evidence they reject it or discredit the person who provided the positive evidence, sometimes both. This helps their influence grow even stronger.
However when they find evidence from other people that undermines self esteem or blocks motivation they accept it immediately and support the credibility of the person who gave the undermining evidence.” I understand now what Dr Ann Alyse told me about this. It ties up.
A bell starts ringing inside me. Officers Crook and Clamp have been collecting evidence about Kerry that seems to support the “truth’ that she is not good enough. And all the evidence has come from other people.
Kerry’s own story has been different. In the past she wasn't just ordinarily good enough she had been extremely successful in running her business until something started undermining her.
Her bankers and people in the community all believed in her ability. That is until recently when she stopped believing in her own ability. Her self-confidence went down, she lost her sense of self-empowerment. And it was after that happened that stronger negative messages from outside started coming in, with more than a bit of help from Crook and Clamp.
Things were starting to tie together. It was now clear, the Cor Credo had struck again.

Thursday 10:40 am
I called the chief for a background check on Officers Crook and Clamp. As I expected on paper they had perfect references and a clean track record. And yet they had been doing exactly what  Dr Ann Alyse had described as one of the Cor Credo’s trickiest methods, pretending to help in an investigation but favouring the negative evidence, while rejecting the positive.
I’d come across a few cases of crooked cops before and these two were starting to smell a lot like the others.  I spoke to the chief in private, explained my suspicions and asked for Crook and Clamp to be put under surveillance.
It didn’t take long.
By Friday  morning both officers had been arrested. As I suspected they were working hand in hand with the Cor Credo.
Meanwhile I am wondering what could we do now for Kerry. She’s losing her self empowerment, her business is in big trouble. We know it’s the Cor Credo at work. She has asked us for help.

HELPING KERRY MAKE A CHANGE
We have to find a way to stop the cunning Cor Credo undermining Kerry and leaving her feeling not good enough. We've made a start. The first thing we had to do was identify the Cor Credo and what they were doing to her and that’s why I was called in.
Even then, there wasn't anything much that anybody could do until Kerry has become more aware that the Cor Credo were at work inside her. I have achieved this essential step, identifying the Cor Credo and what they are doing to Kerry.

There is not so much more that I can do from here on, except perhaps to remind Kerry that it’s no use wasting time trying to change the Cor Credo outside of her. That won’t work. Luckily there’s something far more practical she can achieve just by focussing her self-awareness on what’s been happening inside her.
Adult self awareness is the only way

Saturday 10 a.m.
This morning we called in a couple of powerful change agents Sel F. Aware who just happens to be my brother and Sel F. Empower our cousin Their job is to get Kerry ready to face the Cor Credo by helping her to regain her essential sense of adult self-empowerment and expand her grown-up adult self-awareness.

I am only a detective but these two are teachers. Their specialty is expanding self-awareness in people. They will be getting to work inside her, to help her rebuild her positive self-esteem and self-empowerment. They will explain to her everything that we know about the Cor Credo, how the gang works, what they've been doing to her and why she has found it difficult to notice them stealing so much from her. Kerry will begin to see and understand the whole complex business in a way that has been impossible for her to do up till now.

At that point something amazing will happen. Her level of grown-up or adult self-awareness will shoot up like a rocket.

From the moment Kerry starts to raise or renew her level of grown-up self-awareness she is ready to start facing the Cor Credo herself. This will make it possible for her to reconnect to her essential sense of adult self-empowerment. That's what self-awareness does for everybody, which is why we all like working with it.

The two teachers show Kerry how she can use her renewed sense of self-awareness to re-construct some amazing self-empowered but positive core beliefs. Those positive beliefs are already waiting locked away within her. They just need to be released so they can match and the balance the negative core belief energy in the place where it works best, inside Kerry.
Next, they will help Kerry expand her new inner counter balancing core belief team. The faster they can get do this the better.
There needs to be a balance

While this is going on, it you might be thinking if she can’t change the old Cor Credo why waste time trying to balance them? Why not just use her positive core belief team to kick them out?

That’s where Kerry needs to be careful. Right now she might find it very hard to accept that her Positive Core Beliefs will only work properly if she uses them as a counter in balance with her old negative core beliefs.
If she starts using too many of her positive inner Core Beliefs too often, if she moves too fast or too soon she will end up overbalancing. It always works better if people like her keep a bit of the old Cor Credo culture around because they actually help maintain flexibility in the balancing.

The Cor Credo are part of her history that cannot be erased, but if we can just convince them to act as a counter balance they will end up playing quite a useful role even if it's only as a counterbalance.

The Cor Credo are a part of your history and Kerry's history
People like you and me and Kerry have spent millions in time and money over the years trying to get rid of the Cor Credo, change or reforming them or "engineer" them and nothing seems to change. There is a reason behind this. Our core beliefs are part of our history. I will explain this in a separate page about where core beliefs come from.

Where Core Beliefs come from

A local historian helps explain and conclude our fable.
Yes, today we see them as just a gang of crooks but during the war years* when the city was in danger of collapse it was the Cor Credo alone who kept order by balancing their underground power against the outside negative forces who were attacking the city.
Sure, the Cor Credo were tough in those days and they did whatever they had to do in their own way but at the time if it hadn’t been for the Cor Credo people would have suffered a great deal more.

Older folks haven’t forgotten those days, many of them still regard what the Cor Credo did with pride and a part of the city’s history. You can’t change that.
The trouble now is that though the Cor Credo has lost its original role, it’s members are still born fighters.

They don’t have a place in the modern city but they still want to fight somebody or something so they have turned to negative activities, things like undermining successful businesses and leaders, stealing self esteem from people like Kerry. These days many people describe them as the “Cor Credo Negativo”

* Footnote

· for you who are reading this the “war years” are the years when you were a small child trying to cope with the trauma of a not so safe childhood. For many of us including myself it really was like living in a war zone. We faced daily risks to our safety, sanity, security, survival. Even our “authentic self” (who we really were) was often under attack, in danger of being totally lost or taken from us.

· Many of us had to hide our authentic self far, far away in a secure place so it could not be stolen or destroyed.

· Your negative Core beliefs helped with the hiding but if they then became too strong when you grow up it can be very hard to get it back again, because the negative core belief is keeps saying that it still isn’t safe.

The whole area of negative core beliefs is so important that I dedicated a separate website just to deal with negative core belief work. Most of this work, discovering, dealing with and balancing negative core beliefs is directly related to voice dialogue and uses voice dialogue as one of its main tools. However it does branch out into other areas as well. For that reason I think it is better not to talk too much about core beliefs on this, my Voice Dialogue site.

For more information and particularly of this story rings a bell for you you can find out a lot more about negative core beliefs on my core belief website

http://www.core-beliefs-balance.com/

The links below will also take you directly to that site but away from this voice dialogue sites.

Please bookmark this website before you go and please come back again.

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