10 Questions to Transform Devaluation to Empowerment

When you look in the mirror, do you see the radiant individual you aspire to be, or do shadows from the past dim your light? Join me, Dr. Amen Kaur, as we navigate the treacherous waters of self-worth and confidence, which have been clouded by past traumas and complex relationships. We delve into the art of deprogramming manipulative influences and reprogramming our beliefs to align with our true value. My own journey with trauma acts as a beacon, helping to guide you out of the fog and toward a place where you can stand firm in your sense of self.

Trauma has a cunning way of embedding itself in our brain's survival instincts, leading us to instinctive reactions that we may not even be aware of. Whether it's the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses, understanding these can be a powerful catalyst for healing. Our conversation transforms into a safe haven for self-reflection, providing you with probing questions to journal and identify patterns of toxicity that have been silently influencing your life. With the right tools, we work together to ensure that you're not just surviving, but thriving, while staying safe on this path of self-discovery.

Picture yourself months from now, free from the chains of limiting beliefs and toxic patterns, living the life you've always envisioned. This episode takes you on a transformative journey, offering practical exercises to visualize and understand the true cost of maintaining the status quo. We talk about the importance of letting go of emotional pain to bridge the gap between your current self and your aspirational self. Moreover, for those ready to take the leap, I introduce my intensive four-month program designed to confront trauma head-on. Together, we champion the cause of self-kindness and awareness, knowing that the very act of noticing our thoughts and beliefs is a significant stride toward healing and personal fulfillment.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What if I said to you you know I'm carrying this $20, but actually it's not real, it's a fake $20 note Science has revealed it's quite normal to react in this scenario and start looking at the note and looking at reasons why it wouldn't be $20. It's not worth that much. Maybe it is fake. The danger is if someone did the same about your worth Now, as human beings, we move towards pleasure and avoid pain. Most of us assume it always feels good to know your value. But when we're in difficult relationships and I know that you understand that we can receive pleasure or love after the devaluation phase and, as you, receive pain, when we know our worth, we get punished. When we're doing something good, we get punished. So, logically, we might know our value and know that we've got a lot to offer. But what happens over time is you will start to doubt yourself. You will start to question is it me? Did I do something wrong? Is it my fault? And especially if you have trauma from a young age, you'll be trained to actually think that way. You'll always start looking for the reasons why it's your fault. So today, in these podcasts, we're going to cover and uncover your beliefs. Today is really about you and me spending some time together and really looking at what is affecting your self-worth and your confidence, and I'll be asking you a number of questions around 10 questions, key questions and we're going to find the beliefs that are becoming a barrier for you really knowing your worth and really feeling your confidence self. So, to get your life back on track. We all, like I always say, we're all worthy of loving our life. We need to actually uncover some of these beliefs so that they don't hold you back anymore from the life that you want to fulfill.

Speaker 1: 2:24

My name is Dr Emman Corr and I, too, experienced trauma after a difficult relationship, and really what I wanted to share in this podcast with you is information that I wish I had had, you know my younger self would have had, so that I could have got through this trauma a lot quicker. I'm going to be asking you these questions today only because I really want you to become aware of your own beliefs and, as you become aware, you take back control, rather than allowing these beliefs to subconsciously control your life through procrastination, through fear, through thinking that maybe you're just not somebody who actually wants to achieve a lot in life. It could be that you're just allowing yourself to hold yourself back and you don't even know that Beliefs actually can create your life or destroy your life. And when we have been manipulated and devalued, a lot of gaslighting has occurred. Why? Why has this happened? Because they need to change your reality. They need for you to not value yourself so that then they can have control and power over you. So that way they believe that you won't be able to see all the trauma that they have and they can have this illusion that they've created and live in this illusion where they can believe that they are okay and protect themselves from their real deep pain that they have.

Speaker 1: 4:05

What happens when someone changes your reality is they also change your subconscious beliefs, the beliefs that you have about yourself. These are all subconscious. Subconscious means you're not fully aware of everything, but it's basically your driver. It's like when you're driving a car, your subconscious is actually driving the car. A lot of the time you're just doing things without even thinking. You're not consciously aware, like you were when you were first learning to drive a car. So when you have subconscious beliefs, you can believe in things and act on those things just like you're driving a car, but not be aware that that is what's really driving it, so you can believe in the devaluation that they have planted and that impacts all of your life. Now the truth of the matter is you are worthy. You really are. The devaluation that has occurred in the actual relationship is not the truth. It's no more natural, when you have been devalued, not to feel your confidence self after a difficult relationship, and it's really about having compassion and understanding towards yourself about that.

Speaker 1: 5:25

You might be thinking why is the narcissist even doing this? You know why is? Why are they doing this? Ultimately, it's really important to know that they have trauma that they're hiding from. They're just not aware of it. They do have very fragile egos and in order for them to feel good about themselves, they have to put you down. So just imagine it like a seesaw. Like a seesaw, the whole aim is for you to, for them to push you down and devalue you so they can be higher and be perceived to have more value, so then that way they can feel better. They're completely. It's part of their personality disorder. This is part of who they are, and because they don't have the empathy, they don't have the ability to understand the impact it's having on you. They only really are thinking about themselves. However, the impact it does have on you is over time.

Speaker 1: 6:25

We experience shame, embarrassment, especially for being in this type of relationship where someone didn't see our value, for questioning whether, oh, am I overreacting? You know, maybe you know it's just a lot of shame around admitting that someone has hurt us in this way, and because we've been trained not to feel our emotions, we sometimes feel that we're not strong enough to deal with the emotions and the impact of this devaluation, which unfortunately further devalues us, because it's as though we're saying we don't, our feelings don't matter, our thoughts don't matter, our emotions don't matter, they do matter. The problem here is that it's not one thing that they're doing, it's the continuously the small things that they're chipping away at you bit by bit, but never actually adding to your value, never actually adding to your self worth, unless it makes them look good or feel good or benefit them in some way, and that can make us feel helpless, confused, and we can't see what's going on. We can't understand why we feel so different. We don't even understand the impact it's had on our body and that leads to low self esteem, low self worth. The biggest problem is that we doubt our own experience about reality. We can start to believe that we cannot live without this person, even though they're so difficult and they're devaluing us. In reality it's not true, but it's understandable that if we've lost our confidence and our trust in our own self, it's really easy to feel like I need this person. You know, it's understandable, isn't it? It's normal.

Speaker 1: 8:33

So today we're going to look at three main ways that we can become stuck because of subconscious beliefs. We can stay stuck in the relationship itself because we believe that we need them or we're not going to be able to survive without them, and a lot of this stuff doesn't make logical sense, but it's just a feeling, because it's the belief in our subconscious, okay. Or we could perhaps get stuck in a repeating pattern. So you come out of a toxic relationship and then you get into a different toxic relationship. Or you come out of a toxic relationship and then you meet people at work, or you know relationships, or you know, or in a community, somewhere it feels like they're everywhere. And finally, you might even avoid relationships because you're thinking, oh, I don't want to do any relationships ever and you're isolating yourself. But even then you're thinking about everything that they've done and you're in a loop of rumination.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Even though you're out of the relationship, even though you're trying to isolate yourself, you're still finding that those subconscious beliefs are controlling you because you're going round and round the story in your head over and over. So in all of these three scenarios, it's because the subconscious beliefs are still there and they're still controlling how we think and feel about ourself and the confidence that we have in ourself and the trust and belief in ourself, and ultimately this really impacts our overall happiness, the joy we feel in life, the freedom we feel, the peace we feel, and hence it impacts the quality of the life that we're living. So these subconscious beliefs have a huge impact on us and if we're still dealing with the trauma of what happened, because there's still that belief, we might even believe that we're not good enough for love and then we start, you know, repeating that pattern of expecting people not to be there for us or not to support us. So, as we do this exercise today, so I would invite you to actually get your journal out. I would say we need to start as we mean to go on, and I really want you to cultivate understanding and compassion for yourself, especially because I do know you're a kind person. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind You're probably loving, compassionate and you're understanding towards other people. Because you have that empathy. You give so much and you have so much more to give. But before you grab your journal, I need you to make a commitment. Are you going to try and be kind and loving and compassionate and understanding towards yourself? Because, if you don't know it yet, you are actually worthy of being treated in this way? Everybody is that means so are you? It really starts with you treating yourself in this way and knowing, ultimately, there is nothing wrong with you. It doesn't matter what's happened in the past. What's happened is there's a belief now, based on what you've experienced, that maybe you don't deserve to be loved Because we've been through this trauma.

Speaker 1: 12:07

And what is trauma? Trauma is an emotionally painful experience where you didn't feel safe and you weren't able to process that experience and you just stuffed that emotion down until you could actually come back to it and it gets locked into the amygdala, which is the part of the brain I like to call it Amy. She's like Wonder Woman and she's keeping you safe and she has superpowers because she is super fast. She's four times faster than the thinking part of the brain and she will get you into fight flight, freeze fawn. So grab your journal and we're going to start with looking at these four trauma responses. I want you to really think about and write down these four words, right, flight? Flight is when you just want to get away. You just don't want, you can't wait for this situation to be over. You just want to run away. And I want you to think as you're writing down these four words. So you want to write fight, flight, freeze fawn. And then really think about which one of these are you really experiencing right now? Maybe it's all of them, but there might be one that you're feeling a lot more of than the others. So, flight, we've already covered where you just want to go and you want to run away. You just want to get away from everything.

Speaker 1: 13:38

Fight is when you're getting snappy, you're getting angry, you're getting irritated and stressed easily. Now, sometimes the narcissist will really want you to fight, because what they're pushing you to do is actually react in a way where they can then use that reaction so it's called reactive abuse so that then they can make you feel ashamed and keep you in the relationship and cause you shame and guilt. So that's a fight. Are you finding that you're getting angry a lot, going over everything? Freeze. This is where you don't feel you can do anything, you're just stuck, you're frozen, you know.

Speaker 1: 14:23

And then, for this, is people pleasing. Are you a people pleaser, and have you been a people pleaser for a long time, because you might go into for quite easily. Or maybe you've gone past that phase and at different times of the relationship we go into different phases. All of these are trauma responses. They're all survival modes that you have needed to do. So please don't give yourself a hard time for going into any of these four phases. You've needed to do it to survive, so that people don't harm you in some way or reject you or abandon you.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So if you've experienced any of these, there's nothing wrong with you. You have had trauma. The only thing might be that you don't know how to heal the trauma so you don't get as triggered anymore. So whenever the trauma does get triggered, every time you want to get up, every time you want to heal, every time when you want to move on, it can trigger you, because life triggers you, and then you feel like you're going back, around, around, around. It's not part of your personality to allow someone to abuse you. You're not weak. There is nothing to be ashamed of. But if you have had trauma growing up, you will trigger that trauma and some, a lot of the times, toxic people actually pick people that have had trauma growing up because it's easier to control people when there is trauma.

Speaker 1: 16:00

So and question yourself if, if, if there is anything you're handling right now and you've had a lot of trauma and you're still functioning. It's amazing that you're still doing so well, because Amy has taken over and it's really hard to think clearly when Amy's in charge. But you're still managing to. You know function. But if you could actually declutter some of the things that Amy is dealing with, because she's probably struggling a lot, she's overwhelmed. If you could declutter what she's handling on a daily basis, it would help you feel calmer. You might be thinking well, where do I even start? Like there's everything feels so overwhelming it nothing is possible. It just feels like there's just too much to do.

Speaker 1: 16:57

What we're going to do today is we're going to look at key patterns and I want you to answer some of these questions If you're still living in a difficult scenario. I I really want to put this in out in place. If your partner reads your journals or your diaries or personal thoughts, like my toxic person, did you really need to make sure that you keep these thoughts safe? Okay, so one of the things that you can do is you can journal on your phone and lock the journal if you feel safe enough to do that, or you can write these questions and some of these answers down on paper, but do destroy it, because we don't want to make you get into an even more unsafe scenario. So I think the best way to do this is to make sure that you are safe doing the exercise and, as we go through these questions, just write whatever comes to your mind. I don't want you to overthink this, because there's no right or wrong. Everything is just perfect. You are just perfect. Just write down whatever comes to you. So there's no right or wrong. I don't want you to overthink this.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Is there a pattern in your relationships? No, so just really think back, take your time and you can pause in between all these questions. How many toxic relationships do you think you've been through? And I really want you to do a recce of your friendships growing up, where you ever bullied at school. Look at your family members. Do you think there was any? I'm not saying that there might have been someone that was narcissistic, but maybe they had some narcissistic traits, you know. Or maybe it was an uncle or someone, but there was potentially somebody growing up that might have influenced your family in some way, or you might have witnessed something. How many toxic relationships would you say you've been through? And then what? So please pause in between these questions.

Speaker 1: 19:10

The next question is what are you currently struggling with? What is it that's really impacting you right now? Is it the emotions? Is it? Are you physically struggling with the trauma and the anxiety symptoms? Is it the beliefs? Is it the rumination? Is it fear? Is it the fact that you really wanna move forward in your career and you just procrastinating? Really think about what is the key thing you're struggling with right now. If you could change that one thing, what would it be? Yeah, so that's the next question.

Speaker 1: 19:52

I'm gonna go on to the next one. So, if you wanna pause here, how is this impacting what you believe about yourself? What do you think that belief is subconsciously? Yeah, so imagine that you're stuck in some way say, for instance, you know you're procrastinating, for instance, it might mean that there's a belief there that you're too scared to fail or you feel too tired. What's the point? Why bother? It could be something along those lines that is subconsciously driving you that you might wanna just watch over the next few days and see if it comes up.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Every time you're trying to do something, you become conscious of something that's going on subconsciously and then you can think, huh, how is this belief showing up in my life? Is it that my works I'm not doing as well as I would in my work because I'm not as confident as I used to be? Is it impacting my relationships, my health or my nervous system? What is it that is impacting you and that maybe it links in with what your big thing is, that you really wanna change, and why is this a problem for you right now? Why is this an issue for you? What is it that you wanna change? Okay, so the next question.

Speaker 1: 21:27

If we know from science, the beliefs are basically just thoughts that are repeated over and over again, and I want you to think of Hitler, because Hitler just said the same old thing over and over again and people believed him. It's not because they were bad people you can't say all those people were bad but they believed him because he kept repeating it over and over and they were gaslighted, and there were some good people that were made to do some really bad things because they believed in something that wasn't true. Unfortunately, we have a little Hitler in our own head, especially after being in a toxic relationship, and I really want you to think okay, what is it that you're telling yourself over and over again? Maybe it's a story and it's causing you pain, but it's just something that you've said over and over again, and now you believe it. And, looking at what's happened to you over your course of life, what do you believe that no longer serves you? Is it that I'm not good enough? I don't know. There'll be something, though, and that would have come from that relationship somewhere.

Speaker 1: 22:53

Okay, once you've done that, do you think it's possible to change? Because there will be maybe a belief in there that you think nothing can change. It's impossible to change. I'm just not good enough and it's impossible to change it. I just have to live like this. Do you think it's possible to change? Because beliefs can be changed. You can believe something different. Whether you believe it's right or you believe it's wrong, you're right either way, okay.

Speaker 1: 23:31

So then the next question is when we have these beliefs or we ruminate, it's normally because we're trying to avoid an emotional pain. When you think about this thought that's going round in your head or in your subconscious, what do you think the emotional pain is that you're avoiding? Is it hurt? Is it anger? Is it vulnerability? What is it that you're trying to do? Because it's protecting you. That belief is trying to protect you from feeling the emotional pain, or is trying to make sense of the emotional pain, because you can't process the emotional pain, the trauma. So then, this belief is there, okay, but beliefs create or beliefs destroy, and you really have to think ah, is this helping me create the life that I want, or is it destroying it? Next question I really want you to think about what is it that you want? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be free to be you? Do you want to feel loved, to experience love, to transform you and to become the version of yourself that you were always meant to be, that confident, amazing self? Then, what is it that you don't want anymore?

Speaker 1: 25:12

When we're stuck, it's normally because we link pain and pleasure to the same thing and you have to rely on willpower and the way humans work is that we move away from pain and we move towards pleasure and a lot of the times we stay in toxic relationships or we, you know, repeat toxic relationships because we link pain to actually healing and pleasure to staying in the same situation, because it feels more painful to heal than it does to actually not heal. So you have to think, okay, does that make sense to me? Is that the really the right thing for me? And a good exercise to do, especially if you have a trauma bond, is to really look at the negative consequences of what's happened to you in the past. Really look at the pain, because a lot of the time when we've got a trauma bond is we're linking more pain to leaving than pleasure to leaving. You know, like that we're actually linking. You know it's going to be more painful to get out of this and that's what keeps us in that painful scenario, but really, in truth, it's actually more painful to stay in it, but we can't see that at that time. So what's a good exercise is to really look at okay, what's happened to me what have been the negative consequences in the past for me?

Speaker 1: 27:05

You know, and really really be honest. Like has it impacted your body, your performance, your work finances? Really put it all down. You know the cost to you overall. You know your health, your happiness, your joy, your confidence. Really be honest, and how much is it costing you now living like this, your respect, your whatever it is that you really bothers you deep down, your hurt, your pain, your emotions, your belief in yourself and how is this going to cost you in the future if you carry on this way?

Speaker 1: 27:46

You know and this is great for anything that you do in life you know, if you really want to make a change and you find you can't make a change is because you're linking pain to change, even if it is changed for the better. So it's really changing that and becoming consciously aware of what is it. That's, how is this you know being painful for me in the past, how is it painful for me now and what is it going to cost me in the future if I carry on the way I am? And then you can really look at why do I want to change, you know, really, and what is it that I want to do instead, because sometimes, when we've been in a toxic relationship, we don't even know what we want anymore. But one thing you will know is that you don't want the pain that you're experiencing, and if you are able to see that oh my gosh, it's going to get worse, then you'll be able to make a change because you'll know that there's going to be more pain in the situation that you're in. And I think you know it depends on what it is that you really want. So for me, I knew that I didn't want my child or my children to be in the same situation that I was in, and that was something worthwhile to get out of that relationship for and then allow them to have more pleasure and happiness in their life. And consequently, you know I am also having more happiness and love in my life.

Speaker 1: 29:19

The real reason normally is, when we're not ready to change is we're not really ready to let go of the problem, because we don't see the cost of it. To us, we see it as better than to stay in it, than to leave. So once you are able to let go of the trauma, then you can. It's easier to let go of the painful scenario. So if you are able to actually release the painful emotions around it, and then what you want to do is, when you're doing, you're looking at where you are now, where you want to be. You want to look at what is the gap in between you know. So this is who I want to become. This is where I am right now.

Speaker 1: 30:09

You know, is it a skill set? Do you need to go out and learn something? Maybe you know, if you want to be, if you want to write a book, for instance, maybe you need to learn how to write a book, you know, or is it a fear? Is it fear? You know? Is it emotions of emotional pain? It was at these belief systems and then you can really do something about it. Now you know, if you are interested in really looking at healing for yourself and really want to heal the trauma, because you've had enough and you want to live your life and you really want to make the most of your life moving forward, you don't want to be holding on to this trauma and these subconscious beliefs that the toxic person has planted, because it is impacting your confidence, and if you know you want to do something with your life.

Speaker 1: 31:02

I do have a four month intensive program. I only take limited number of people, but if you are interested, then do apply for a free one to one session with myself or someone from my team and we can look at what is it that you need to invest in to be able to move forward, so that you can actually live the life that you're meant to live and release the barriers that are holding you back so you can heal and thrive moving forward. Please do look in the resources section, but, most importantly, it's really important that you keep being kind and loving to yourself. And the other thing that I would say after you've done this, you know exercise is to really observe yourself over the next week, until the next session, until the next podcast. Just become aware of what are you thinking, allow yourself to become aware of your subconscious beliefs, because it will just that awareness. You're already healing Just doing this exercise. You're on your healing journey. So sending you so much love and look forward to seeing you again or speaking to you again.