Part 1: Your "limiting" beliefs didn't drop from the sky - systemic reflections

“It is our choices that make us who we are.” – Corrag, by Susan Fletcher

Where Do Our Beliefs Come From?

Actions and behaviours are choices we make every day based on our values, empowering and limiting beliefs. But where do our values and beliefs come from? – Childhood. We grow up in a family, a community, and a country that define our culture.
While a country gives us written rules – laws – a community and a family give us social norms: unwritten rules of behaviour or behavioural expectations. These norms are powerful, more than we often realise. Some are family-based, others cultural, religious, or community-based. That is where our “limiting beliefs” come from.

The Tension Between the Collective and the Individual

Social and family norms are meant to mold us into respected members of the community. But these norms can also be demanding, pushing us to go against our true heart’s desires. It's the tension between the collective and the individual.
Norms are learned by observing and growing up in a society that defines what is “good” and what is “bad.” The goal is often to preserve the family or community’s way of life, ensuring continuity and, often, creating a (false) sense of harmony. These norms are usually about well-defined roles that all members are expected to perform. In order to live together, societies have set strict roles.

Performing Roles Without Question

Extract from Corrag by Susan Fletcher

Alastair: This is where I learned to fight, on top of that hill. With Iain. We used to come here armed with wooden swords. Do you want to know how I was brought up? I was taught to be proud. To protect everything I loved and to never give up. The stories we were told as children glorified warriors, vengeance, and the fallen.
Corrag: You didn’t know any other way of life, perhaps.
Alastair: Maybe. Or maybe I had no choice. We have so many enemies. If we don’t fight, it will be our death — or the death of our way of life. Of our heart.

In Corrag, Alaistair, one of the highlanders, raised in a bloodthirsty clan, reflects on how he has been performing the strong, combative male role since he was a boy. That is how he was brought up — and he never asked himself why he was stealing cattle or killing other clansmen. It was simply what he did as a member of his clan. There were no other options available.
That’s often why we keep doing what we do — because no other options are offered within the set of social norms, and the survival of our “way of life” is at stake.

The Cost of Not Conforming

What happens when you don’t follow norms?
Often, stepping outside of norms is punished with shame — sometimes internalised, sometimes openly expressed by others.
In Corrag, the protagonist is a prisoner accused of witchcraft in 1692 in England. She describes so vividly how, from birth and due to her circumstances, she was labelled a witch, a prostitute, or an evil woman — cast out from “normal” society, which at the time meant being married, obedient, and churchgoing. She was none of those things.

Corrag: There are many cruel words that I had to hear in my life. Once I was called dirt, as if I were bird poo on the street, not even a human.

Shame falls on those who don’t live within the norm. Sadly, we still see this in many forms today.
Internalized shame is something not many people talk about.

Through therapy, I realised shame was one of my biggest block on my healing journey. I had a constant stream of criticism in my head, shaming myself for every little mistakes I made. My wounded inner child needed love and belonging — so any actions or thought that went against family or community norms triggered intense inner criticism and shame. I would literally shame myself for feeling sad and depressed, not helpful.

These norms are deeply embedded in us. They often prevent us from reflecting critically on our own actions. They live in the subconscious. Norms can be identified as all the shoulds we tell ourselves.

Family Rules and the Repression of Self

In The Vital Spark, Lisa Marchiano talks about family rules — rules we must follow to survive, to be loved, and to belong to a family, community, or culture.
Extract: We bury the traits that are unwelcome in our families and cultures. We follow the rules of convention. Though families and cultures require everyone to conform to norms, they usually make different demands on women and girls than on men and boys.

I grew up in a family where every time someone cried, they were shamed or belittled. People would whisper about them being fragile. As a child, I concluded that crying was not okay in my world. I rarely cried or connected to my emotions because being “emotional” was also seen as a problem.
Fast forward: I needed therapy and a lot of reading to allow myself to feel a full range of emotions. That family norm had become a personal belief.

Beliefs as Inheritance

Personal beliefs, whether “limiting” or “expanding,” don’t drop from the sky. They have a history. They stem from social, religious, and family norms. They also come from your own experiences, both positive and negative, and from your observations as a child.

Your limiting beliefs are part of your inheritance — from your family and the society you were born into. To deconstruct those inherited beliefs, you need to look at the systems in which they were formed, the experiences of loss and joy that shaped you, and the systemic oppression in the society around you.
Systemic patriarchal rules — a topic for another day — affect men, women, and non-binary people in different ways. These performative rules pressure us into behaving in certain ways, and shame us into conforming.

Reflective Prompts for Your Own Journey

  • Look at the community, cultural, religious, and family systems you were born into. How did they influence your values and beliefs?

  • How did you form your limiting beliefs? How did you form your expanding beliefs?

  • Why do you do what you do? Who shaped your life?

  • What qualities — “negative” or “positive” — were not permitted in your family or culture? Anger, sadness, being emotional, selfishness, shrewdness? - were the qualities not permitted different for girls and boys / men and women?

  • To reclaim your inner power, working on your limiting belief is one side, but you will also need to honour your soul and inner voice. How do you give space to your soul and inner voice? What does your soul need to take up more space?

A Path Toward Healing

I wanted to highlight the importance of using a social norms lens in your healing journey. Changing your problematic behaviours and beliefs requires a deep understanding of your inner belief system — one that was forged through external influences from your family and community.

This awareness is not meant to assign blame, but to offer clarity and compassion toward yourself. You did not choose your starting point, but you can choose your path forward. Family constellation work can be a powerful modality to get unstuck at a systemic level. And alongside it, conscious reflection, inner child work, and self-compassion can help you slowly undo the shame, and make space for a more authentic self to emerge — one that no longer needs to perform, but simply be.

Next post will concentrate on the soul and developing your relationship with your inner voice and body to support your growth.

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