Self-Doubt: How to Know If Self-Doubt Is Interfering with Your Recovery

Table of Contents hide
Self-Doubt: How to Know If Self-Doubt Is Interfering with Your Recovery
Print
If you’re someone who struggles with conditions such as fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities, chronic Lyme disease, post-viral fatigue, anxiety, depression, or OCD, you’ve probably tried many different things to recover. Some treatments probably helped a little, while others didn’t help at all. Some may have even made your symptoms worse. You’ve probably searched and searched for answers to your suffering, only to be met with dead end after dead end. As the years passed, you started to lose hope that you’d ever recover, growing increasingly anxious, sad, and despondent. By the time you finally discovered re-origin, a limbic system retraining program, your self-doubt cycle was in full swing. You read about re-origin and the concept of the program intuitively made sense. You felt some hope for the first time in a while, but just as quickly as that hopeful feeling arose, thoughts and feelings of defeat and doubt took over:
  • “I’m never going to get better.”
  • “Nothing ever works for me. This will just be one more failure.”
  • “I won’t be able to do this.”
  • “This might work for others, but not for me.”
  • “I guess I just have to accept this as my life.”
Does this narrative sound familiar? Self-doubt occurs when we lack confidence in our ability to achieve something. While it seems incredibly powerful in the moment, self-doubt is nothing more than the product of a tired, anxious mind and conditioned thinking. The good news is that these feelings of self-doubt can be replaced with feelings of confidence and conviction using the principles of neuroplasticity[1] and small wins[2]. By taking small, incremental steps with re-origin, you’ll gradually rewire your brain to improve your confidence and conviction, replacing the cycle of doubt with a cycle of hope and empowerment. In this article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about self-doubt, including how re-origin, a neuroplasticity-based treatment program, can help you gain confidence in your ability to recover and ultimately help you regain your life.

Signs That Self-Doubt Is Limiting Your Recovery

While self-doubt can pop up in many different areas of life, for the purposes of this article, we’re referring to doubt relating to your ability to recover from your limbic system condition(s). Whether you’ve already started the re-origin program or just learned about it, these thoughts of self-doubt act as roadblocks to recovery.

We’ll explain how self-doubt hinders the recovery process shortly, but before we do, let’s go over how you can recognize if you’re caught in a self-doubt cycle. Here are some thought patterns, feelings, and other signs that may suggest self-doubt is interfering with your recovery:

  • You have a limbic system disorder, yet you don’t believe re-origin can work for you.
  • You feel like you’ve been unwell for too long to recover.
  • You feel like the program will work for everyone else except you.
  • You feel like you won’t be able to do the exercises correctly.
  • You feel confident in and committed to the program for stretches of time, but then experience self-doubt and discontinue your retraining or lose your confidence in it.
  • You feel that you’ve been let down by so many treatments and believe that re-origin won’t be any different.
  • You rush through the exercises or do them in a frantic way to compensate for your doubt.
  • You feel unable to connect with the exercises in a productive, deep way.
  • You feel overwhelmed when doing the exercises or thinking about doing them.
  • You often worry that maybe your doctors missed something or wonder if you should try a different treatment. (Side note: It’s crucial to get a thorough physical examination by a doctor before beginning this program. If they cannot find anything wrong or tell you that you have fibromyalgia, post-viral fatigue, or another limbic system condition, you can feel confident going all-in with re-origin.)
Essentially, any thought or feeling relating to questioning your ability to apply the program, change your brain, or regain your health is a form of self-doubt.

How Self-Doubt Can Impact Our Perceived Abilities & Behavior

Operating from the belief that you can’t recover leads to hesitation, inaction, and/or applying the program in a frantic, rushed way.

All of these things are counterproductive to recovery. If you don’t take action due to doubt, naturally, you won’t reap the benefits of the program. Additionally, if you approach the program in a frantic way, you’ll be sending a signal to your amygdala, the fear center of your brain, that you’re in danger, which is the opposite of what you want to be teaching your brain.

When you approach re-origin in a hesitant or frantic way, the program won’t have the optimal effect, which will (incorrectly) confirm to your doubtful brain that it won’t work for you. This, in turn, creates more self-doubt and may lead you to skip days, struggle to connect with the exercises, or even give up on the program completely. Can you see how easily self-doubt can hamper your progress?

re-origin works best when you approach it with belief, confidence, and calmness. These attitudes and feelings not only promote action, but also encourage the amygdala to stop firing faulty danger signals that are perpetuating your condition(s).

Common Methods For Overcoming Self-Doubt

When trying to overcome self-doubt, most people seek advice from friends, family, or even strangers online. These sources will give you an array of different tips for dealing with self-doubt. Some common pieces of advice include:
  • Remember past obstacles and fears and how you conquered them.
  • Try not to compare yourself to others.
  • Practice mindfulness and become aware of your thinking patterns.
  • Spend time with supportive people.
  • Remember that you’re your harshest critic.
While these are all good pieces of advice and play a role in how re-origin helps people overcome self-doubt, they’re typically, on their own, not enough to break a persistent self-doubt cycle related to limbic system dysfunction. Other people will turn to professional therapy, such as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). CBT can help you recognize, evaluate, and change cognitive patterns (ways of thinking) that are keeping you stuck and triggering symptoms. While CBT can be quite effective in overcoming self-doubt in general, the average therapist isn’t familiar with how to overcome limbic system dysfunction, so you likely wouldn’t be getting the accurate information you need to overcome limbic system conditions. Additionally, therapy sessions can be expensive, making them inaccessible to many people due to the cost.

re-origin’s Solution To Overcoming Self-Doubt

Self-doubt is nothing more than a conditioned pathway in your mind that’s developed due to years of stress and overwhelm from dealing with your limbic system condition(s). You’ve probably tried so many different treatments and been let down so many times, that self-doubt is the natural result. Take heart, though, because the self-doubt you feel can be replaced with confidence and empowerment, even if that doesn’t feel attainable right now. At re-origin, we help you change the story you’re replaying over and over in your mind. When a pesky self-doubt thought comes up, catch it and replace it with something affirming and empowering. For example, “I believe I can do this and it will work!” or “I have all the tools I need and I will succeed!” It’s okay if you don’t believe those things initially. This isn’t about positive thinking. Rather, it’s about shifting your attitude from a place of doubt to a place of conviction. This is often enough to reignite hope and inspire you to take a small step in the right direction—and then another step, and then another step. Ultimately, the process of recovery from self-doubt (and limbic system conditions in general) is all about accumulating small wins. Generating small wins throughout the day releases dopamine (a feel-good neurotransmitter) and helps you develop new neural pathways for confidence and empowerment[3]. It doesn’t matter how small the win is. Whether it’s catching a fear thought, changing your attitude about recovery, or running on the treadmill for five minutes, allow yourself to feel proud and celebrate the accomplishment. From this place of conviction and empowerment, you’re more likely to feel relaxed, capable, and inspired, and with these positive emotions on board, you can apply re-origin’s tools to reverse the root cause of your health issues: limbic system conditioning.
call to action banner

Frequently Asked Questions

Self-doubt is defined as a lack of confidence in oneself and one’s ability and arises due to years of trying different treatment methods and not seeing substantial results. Going through the hope/disappointment cycle so many times does a number on your brain, exhausting it and creating neural pathways that expect disappointment.
Overcoming self-doubt is achieved by changing the story you’re replaying in your mind, mustering up conviction, and generating small wins. As you achieve small wins, your confidence in the process, as well as your determination, will grow. With that determination, you’re able to apply the tools, which will eventually lead to results. Once you start seeing results, self-doubt gets weaker and weaker until it eventually fades away entirely. Ultimately, you replace a vicious cycle of doubt with a victorious cycle of empowerment.
Self-doubt is not a mental illness—it’s a temporary feeling. More so, self-doubt is something that can be retrained using the principles of neuroplasticity and small wins.
In the context of limbic system retraining, some examples of self-doubt include:
  • Feeling like this program won’t work for you, despite being diagnosed with a limbic system disorder, such as fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic Lyme, post-viral fatigue, OCD, anxiety, depression, or multiple chemical sensitivities.
  • Feeling like everyone else has the ability to recover using this program except you.
  • Feeling overwhelmed and frantic while doing the program.
Self-doubt is not a weakness. It’s the natural result of trying and failing so many different treatments in an effort to recover from your condition(s). Not only is self-doubt not a weakness, but it can actually be a strength. Overcoming your self-doubt will strengthen your resolve, reduce your fear, and forge healthy neural pathways in your brain. Once you overcome your self-doubt, you’ll feel unstoppable!

A Final Word from re-origin

Given the fact that you’ve likely been struggling with a limbic system condition for a long time, it’s natural to feel some self-doubt when learning about re-origin or embarking on your re-origin recovery journey. Thoughts like “I don’t think this will work” or “This will probably be a failure like everything else” are normal. They’re not a sign of weakness or mental illness. They’re simply learned neural pathways in the brain. Once you start your journey, however, you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised how quickly doubt and hopelessness can turn to empowerment and confidence. With this newfound conviction, you can confidently apply re-origin’s easy-to-follow, five-step neurocognitive technique to overcome your limbic system conditions, be it fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme disease, OCD, or any of the other conditions listed on our site. The key to overcoming self-doubt, and limbic system conditions in general, lies in applying our techniques, being persistent in your efforts, and celebrating every win, no matter how small. Each of those small wins brings you closer and closer to life free of symptoms and full of joy. To learn more about the re-origin program, sign up for a free trial at re-origin.com/neuroplasticity-training-program/.

References

  1. Fuchs, E., & Flügge, G. (2014). Adult neuroplasticity: more than 40 years of research. Neural plasticity, 2014, 541870. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4026979/
  2. The power of small wins. (2011). Human Resource Management International Digest, 19(7). https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2011.04419gaa.015
  3. ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratry Group. (2016, December 15). Manipulating brain activity to boost confidence: New breakthrough in neuroscience: Self confidence can be directly amplified in the brain. ScienceDaily. Available from: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161215085902.htm