A belief is something you hold to be true. What you hold to be true influences the emotions you have. The emotions you have influence your behaviors. Your beliefs, emotions and behaviors shape your human life experience.
Descartes hardly explained fully how the soul interacts with the body. Well, your body is always listening to your thoughts AND it does not need to make sense to anybody but you- it’s how you cope with life. You know you best.
Those thoughts & feelings are intangible, but they completely effect your body experience.
How do you know if what you’re thinking is true or not??
Like I show in the cartoons your beliefs may be contradictory, may not be rational, they also may only be realized only when you reflect on them & may be automatic in your memory.
How do you know you can trust the source of your beliefs??
Your beliefs are influenced by the media, clinicians, past experiences of how you problem solve & emotionally handle life.
Let’s work backwards to teach you something new- You have the power to choose how you act. You have the power to choose what you feel. You have the power to choose what you believe.
For example- Originally you have knee pain. You get an MRI and because you believe seeing osteoarthritis on the MRI means that is where the pain comes from & clinicians in the past said pain means you should stop moving- you stopped moving. BUT you are sick of being in pain & open to trying something new. You find another PT/OT that you trust- you decide to begin strength training despite your pain. Session by session, you begin to feel better. Now you believe that moving helped your pain and you make it a new pattern of behavior. Your pain decreases. You get an MRI again out of curiosity.
and OA is still there, but your pain is not. Who cares? lol you feel better. Life goes on and you’re happy with less pain.
I challenge you to think of the beliefs you hold. Do they serve the person you want to be? The way you want to feel?
You control your experience. You’re stronger & more powerful than you may think.
Post inspo- Caneiro, et al. (2020) Beliefs about body and pain in BJPT
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