Summary: After posting on my blog a couple of weeks ago about how I felt totally safe to experience and express the love I felt for people at the Transformational Leadership Council meeting, but not most of the time away from TLC, I received the following comment: If you are the creator of the Natural Confidence program and I’m assuming you removed all the beliefs and conditionings on that program, then how could you not feel as safe expressing your love with anyone you run into? Please explain. Thank you. Here was my reply. I’ve not only eliminated all the beliefs on that program, I’ve eliminated a couple of hundred more. But each issue or problem in our lives is caused by a different set of beliefs and conditionings. And so while I’ve gotten rid of my depression and my neediness and my concern with the opinion of others, etc., I have still not handled every issue in my life. And not feeling safe to express love all the time is one of the issues I still have to work on. And I plan to see what beliefs are causing that in the next week or so and getting this issue handled. Thanks for asking. Regards, Morty I did work on this issue as I said I would and here is what I discovered. I couldn’t find any relevant beliefs, but I did find two different types of conditioning. Here’s how I identified the first one. There is some low level of anxiety when I feel people are “not there” when I talk to them, when I feel they are not “fully present,” or when I don’t feel fully accepted. The source of this conditioning was how my mom frequently acted when I was a kid. She divorced when I was only three and struggled being a single mom with no money. As a result of her constant stress and anxiety, and her frequent hysterical outbursts, I had a sense that she wasn’t really “with me” much of the time we were together and frequently felt rejected. Feeling that my mom was not fully present or was rejecting me when I was very young meant to me that she didn’t love me, which meant I could be abandoned, which meant I would die, which caused my the anxiety. So people not being fully present with me or withdrawn from me got conditioned to cause anxiety. I eliminated this conditioning with the Lefkoe Stimulus Process. The second conditioning required me to use a different process, the Lefkoe De-conditioning Process. This conditioning arose as follows: Because I felt fear when it seemed my mother seemed to be withdrawn from me, I shut down my body and my feelings to keep from feeling anxiety in that situation. Because the anxiety diminished when I shut down, shutting down became a conditioned response. In other words, when a behavior is rewarded (in this case, the anxiety stopped), the behavior gets conditioned. In order to not feel fear when I feel people are not fully present around me, or when I don’t feel safe around them for any reason, my body and emotions shut down. I eliminated this conditioning with the Lefkoe De-conditioning Process. I think the issue is handled, but I’ll watch carefully over the next few weeks. If there are any traces of the old behavior pattern, I’ll look to see what beliefs or other conditioning might still exist. I am really looking forward to being able to “be myself” and experience and express my love for people without regard to how other people are acting. For more details on the first type of conditioning please see two earlier blog posts, on 050509 and 032310. Please share any comments you have on these thoughts on my difficulties experiencing and expressing love in certain types of situations and how I dealt with that problem. These weekly blog posts also exist as podcasts. Sign up for the RSS feed or at iTunes to get the podcasts sent to you weekly. If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to htp://www.recreateyourlife.com/free
