This audio is an adjunct to the previous recording that I completed on the topic of perfectionism in ADHD. And in particular, I want to explore the themes around how negative core beliefs influence some of our compensatory behaviours, or we talked about extra checking behaviours, or needing to do things to a very high standard. Obviously, as mentioned in the previous recording, there might be a number of reasons why people with ADHD have a tendency to engage in perfectionist behaviours. But as mentioned, I'm a firm believer that core beliefs hugely play an important part in that.

Now, typically, for perfectionists, there are a number of underpinning negative core beliefs. Most common ones are "I'm a failure" or "I'm stupid", or "I'm not good enough". Again, we've covered that in other audios and the high prevalence of these negative beliefs. Everyone has negative beliefs. So I'd encourage you to ask the question what yours might be. Where does your brain go all the time? What are the types of negative thoughts that you can't consistently have, the themes? What's the buzzword with the heat, failure certainly has an emotive context to it doesn't it? "Stupid, not good enough". I guess I just want to get you thinking about, a. how that might influence negatively your life by causing you to overcompensate, thus, causing you stress and anxiety perhaps, and b. I just want to have a think with you about just how real are these beliefs.

So I want you to engage in an exercise with me, I'm going to use an example of the core belief" not good enough", just because I think it's the most common negative core belief, and very, very common and prevalent in the ADHD community, as I previously mentioned, and quite happy to own it's definitely one of my negative core beliefs, if not the main one. And when somebody has that core belief, it's often their main belief, because it's so generic, it can attach itself to almost any situation. Whereas stupid or failure is a bit more absolute, isn't it? You know, not good enough can attach itself to anything. If I played tennis last night, and I played a bad shot, it's not good enough, if I was a little bit late to a meeting it's not good enough.

So there can be multiple times in any one day where that core belief can be activated by a thought process and situation. Now, the exercise I'd like you to do is to pick the core belief that feels the most powerful for you. Now, I'm going to stick with not good enough, as I said, But you know, you could do it to "I'm stupid", or "I'm a failure". And I'd like you to draw what we call a continuum line. That would be like a scale, like a like a nought to 100 scale across a page. And for the purpose of this exercise, if you have this not good enough core belief, then obviously, do it on that one. At the bottom end of the scale, write the words "not good enough". And at the top end of the scale, write "good enough".

Now, before we go any further, I want you to look at that scale, and ask yourself the question, Where does my self-esteem tell me I am on that scale. I don't want you to rationalize it and think "well, we have it objectively I'm very good at this". I want you to just go with where your self-esteem puts you, what's the felt sense. If it's a core belief, it will almost certainly be in the bottom half. So put a little mark where you feel on that scale.

Now, I want you to step away from yourself for a moment, get out of your head. And let's think objectively about what it means to be not good enough or failure or stupid. In this incidence "not good enough". What does it mean objectively? Now you may because of the way our brains work, and our negative belief systems work, they may want to pull you back to things that you do, which are what you perceive to be not good enough, but that's just cognitive bias. So you're not allowed to link it back to yourself, okay? No cheating.

Now, ask yourself what is not good enough in humans, in human behaviour and make a list underneath the bottom end of the scale under the "not good enough" heading. So typically, things that come up is antisocial behaviour, manipulative. Common other things maybe "really judgmental", "bigoted". It's got to fit with kind of how you see things objectively. But these are common ones that come up, uncaring, unkind, no compassion, thoughtless, selfish, arrogant, etc. Okay. And once you've got that list, it then becomes like a word association game. So just match the word to the opposite end of the scale. Obviously, it's the opposite of that word. So antisocial would be appropriate, unkind, would be kind, uncaring - caring, judgmental - perhaps openminded, lazy - hardworking, or diligent. So hopefully, you will have two lists.

One list that depicts what you think makes a not good enough person and one list on the other side of the spectrum and the scale, which lists good enough. Now, once you've reviewed those lists, ask yourself, do those negative words under the not good enough list depict who you are? Or is it possible that actually reading the other list under "good enough" that you resonate more with those words? Once you've weighed that up, I want you to mark objectively not where you feel, I know where you feel. That's what your self esteem says. That's to do with the way our brain filters out information. But putting another mark where you objectively are, and then measure that against where your self-esteem tells you you are.

I'm curious to know whether there's a disparity between those two things. And commonly, we find that our core beliefs are wildly inaccurate. Now you can apply the same technique to "I'm a failure", or "I'm stupid". Another common one with core beliefs, because we all worry about being rejected or judged, or many of us do, you can't really do it on that, because it's a core belief about others. But you could do that on "I'm unacceptable", and acceptable, and see what happens.

I'm curious to see whether you can establish and notice that actually, your core beliefs are quite inaccurate. And if you're able to discover that, ask yourself the question why? And the true answer to that usually is because they form in childhood, and they're based on childhood appraisals of our experiences. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't want to live my life based on negative child beliefs.