Hi there. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being there. This is Josh. Darmapunks, New York, Tuesday night gathering. Welcome. If you'd like to support my work, everything I do is supported entirely by donations. I don't charge for anything.

That's the teaching and the counseling. So even the smallest donation helps.

Venmo is Darmapunks with an X, NYC, and the Venmo and PayPal are on the Darmunks with an ex-NYC.com website.

So thank you for that.

And tonight I'm going to be talking about how core beliefs are formed,

how they turn into lasting beliefs about ourself, and how we can move through the world, what others will think of us, and how healing self-esteem or negative core beliefs, what it requires.

What are core beliefs?

Well, they are the implicit, non-conscious, unspoken.

We don't think these core beliefs so much as we live by them. So they're these kind of unconscious expectations about how others will treat us, whether we are worthy of love and acceptance,

whether we believe we are likely to be well received when we express

ourselves, explore, take risks.

And these core beliefs are formed or rooted in early relationships from childhood, and they run very deep,

and as I noted early, they shape the course of our lives.

So emotional beliefs are built across thousands of relational events.

They're very similar, but broader to attachment styles.

As infants and toddlers, when we are upset, frightened, frustrated, overwhelmed, we reach out to the adults around us,

as evolution has primed us to do,

for attention and soothing and understanding.

And our brains register what we get in return. So when a caregiver stops and turns towards us and their facial expression is mirroring, which means it at first mirrors ours, but then it becomes soothing

when their tone of voice is calm,

when their body orients towards us,

when they are willing to touch and regulate our nervous systems,

...