What Does Trauma Do to Your Belief System?
- Fortitude Psychological Therapy
- Feb 4
- 3 min read
When we talk about the fallout of trauma, people tend to think about things like flashbacks, nightmares and being triggered into anxiety. But there’s another side of trauma that’s even more insidious – the way it can impact your belief system.
What is a Belief System?
When I talk about belief systems, I’m describing how people see themselves, other people and the world around them.
What we believe determines our whole outlook on life. It’s the lens through which we view and experience everything, shaping our relationships with other people and with ourselves. Our beliefs also shape what we think we’re capable of and the choices we make.
Our belief system has different layers. First, there’s the constant stream of thoughts running through our mind as we go about our day. You might know this as ‘consciousness’. Beyond this, there are the beliefs we say out loud like ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that’ or ‘I feel like people don’t like me’.
Then there are the really deep-seated beliefs that often underpin our day-to-day choices. Sometimes, we’re not fully aware of them. They’re just automatic assumptions. We may not even realise they’re beliefs. They don’t really feel like an opinion, they feel like a fact. This is what makes them so powerful. They shape how we do things without us noticing.
How Do We Develop a Belief System?
Our belief system begins to develop in childhood. This usually looks like:
Beliefs about ourselves. We are forming beliefs about our worth, whether we matter, whether we are loved, and whether we are competent and good at certain things.
Beliefs about other people. We are developing beliefs about whether people are inherently good or not, whether people can be trusted and whether they’re safe. Perhaps most importantly, we are forming beliefs about whether other people care about us and whether we matter to them.
Beliefs about the world. We begin to form beliefs about whether the world is safe, whether life is good or bad, fair or unfair. And we begin to form beliefs about what the future might look like – is it hopeful or is it bleak?
The beliefs we develop in childhood continue to evolve throughout our lives. We’re continuously filtering information about the world and ourselves, forming new beliefs or confirming beliefs we already hold. Sometimes beliefs are built from thousands and thousands of a tiny moments. Sometimes they stem from one big experience.
What Does Trauma Do to Your Belief System?
Our belief system can be shaped by trauma, and it can also change dramatically following a traumatic experience.
During trauma, the brain is in survival mode. Its main goal is to keep you safe. When it’s in this state, it doesn’t have the ability to take its time carefully forming beliefs. It makes snap safety-based judgements. Eventually, these snap judgements can form into deep-seated, firmly held beliefs.
Some people experience trauma over and over again, or lots of little things happen (or don’t happen) that repeatedly confirm these beliefs. Other people start out with a fairly balanced, well-grounded set of beliefs, then something traumatic happens and it completely destroys this belief system, replacing it with something much more negative.
Due to the nature of trauma, people are constantly re-triggered. This means these beliefs keep getting revisited. Over time, this makes them stronger and more difficult to challenge or question.
This is one of the main reasons trauma can impact almost every area of our lives. For example, in a relationship, if you believe you’re worthless, you’re more likely to accept being treated badly. If you believe you’re not good enough, it can hold you back at work. And if you believe the world is unsafe, you’re constantly going to be anxious, limiting the things you do.
What Does This Mean for Your Healing Journey?
The most important thing to remember is that thoughts are not facts. Even when they feel deep, long held and true, they’re not. They’re just opinions your brain formed at the time.
Some trauma therapy focuses on these thoughts or beliefs directly, some doesn’t. Whichever approach you take, changing the belief is often a byproduct of processing the trauma. In other words, recovering and healing from trauma means these beliefs can be changed. It is possible for you to see yourself, other people, and the world in general through a different lens.
Therapy for Trauma
If you’re struggling with any of the things described in this article and you’d like an expert to help you heal and recover, please get in touch. Alternatively, subscribe to The Trauma Toolbox to receive my insights and tips straight to your inbox every month. I also share lots of mental health education via Instagram.