The battle of two minds

When it comes to understanding how low self-esteem and self-worth can impact you, there are often two minds at play. The intellectual mind and emotional mind.

The intellectual mind is the mind that uses logic. The emotional mind is the mind that thinks the way it has been conditioned to or feeds off of a person's insecurities. So for example, like mentioned earlier, somebody might have evidence that they're smart but because of a childhood of being told their stupid, can't stop themselves from telling themselves that they're stupid.

I once had a client who was a doctor for over 25 years. During our intake the client shared that what was bringing him in was his self-esteem surrounding his intellect. He further explained that he felt as if he had below average intelligence and it was only a matter of time before people caught on. Now here's somebody who has objectively accomplished things that only a higher then average intellectual person can accomplish. He didn't only make it through med school, residencies and everything else that comes with becoming a physician. He had over 25 years of successful practice to back him up. Yet, someway somehow he has incorporated this belief that he wasn't a smart person. After further talking further with this client it was evident that his family of origin was the culprit in why he felt the way he did about himself and we moved forward accordingly.

Here are some tools one can use to help the intellectual mind overcome the emotional mind.

The First step is recognizing and believing that what the emotional mind is telling you is not true.

Not to oversimplify it, but there needs to be a clear distinction between the emotional mind and the intellectual mind. Your brain can tell you what it wants to in the moment and we can't understate how powerful the brain can be. But YOU need to know what reality is and isn't. If you're unsure whether or not something is your emotional mind or intelectual mind then you're going to have a difficult time challenging the emotional mind in the moment.

First take out a piece of paper write down the following question:

"What makes me any worse/less/different then anybody else walking around this planet".

Don't overthink this. Write down any insecurity that you can think of that makes you feel less then, not good enough, worthless, looked down upon etc. Whatever it is you can think of get it down on this paper.

Then go through each item on your list and take some time to consider whether or not this belief is factual or emotional. Now in order for a belief to be marked emotional, it doesn't mean you never believe it. Rather it means you can identify the belief as something that your brain tells you when you're in the moment but when you take a step back to analyze and practice introspection, you can ultimately identify the belief as innacurate. Once you have your list, you are ready for the second step.

You now have two columns in front of you. One column contains the intellectual beliefs about yourself that you truly believe make you less/different/worse then everybody else and the other contains the emotional beliefs that you might tell yourself but don't really believe.

The intellectual column we will need to come back to sort through and either 1) address this issue about yourself that makes you less, different etc, (i.e if you steal and feel bad about stealing, stop stealing) 2) challenge your belief about this issue (maybe it's a maladaptive belief that isn't accurate like thinking you're stupid because you're not in the top 5% of your class) 3) come to terms with this issue and learn to accept it without it impacting your self-esteem (i.e reframe it in a healthier way. So for example, let's say you feel like you're a bad person because you've mugged somebody. Let's learn how to forgive yourself and not let the past define you).

But first, let's look at the column that contains the emotional beliefs that you can acknowledge are not accurate. What we need to do is recondition the way you talk to yourself regarding these beliefs. You know they're not true, so what is likely happening is that your brain is just habitually continuing to tell yourself these things due to simply being used to doing so for so long. This is done with repetition and practice as you need to get your brain accustomed to thinking habitually in a different way. One helpful tool is to take 10 minutes ever morning to express out-loud the falsehoods of that which is written in the emotional beliefs column.

If self-esteem, depression or anxiety is something you struggle with, please feel free to reach out to Philadelphia therapist Noam Dinovitz of Dinovitz Counseling LLC.

Noam can be contacted at dinovitzcounseling@gmail.com or 484-278-1230