Most of us carry a few quiet convictions we have never said out loud. I'm not enough. People leave. God is disappointed in me. They rarely announce themselves. They show up as a flash of shame after a small mistake, a reflex to keep people at arm's length, or a nagging sense that prayer "doesn't work" for you the way it seems to for everyone else.
Psychologists call these core beliefs, and decades of research suggest they shape our moods, our relationships, and even our spiritual lives. Here is a plain-language summary of what the research says, where these beliefs tend to come from, and why there is real reason for hope.
Where core beliefs come from
Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, proposed that our passing thoughts grow out of deeper layers of belief about ourselves, other people, and the world. These often trace back to childhood experiences such as rejection or neglect. Jeffrey Young's schema therapy builds on this idea with a set of "early maladaptive schemas." A meta-analysis of 33 studies found these schemas are linked to childhood emotional neglect and abuse, most strongly the link between emotional neglect and a felt sense of emotional deprivation (Pilkington et al., 2020). One caution: nearly all of those studies were correlational, so they show a pattern, not a proven cause.
Attachment research tells a similar story. Early experiences of whether caregivers were available and safe tend to become working models of "Am I worth caring for?" and "Can others be counted on?" A meta-analysis of nearly 80,000 participants found that adult attachment anxiety and avoidance were both tied to more depression, anxiety, and loneliness, and to lower life satisfaction and self-esteem (Zhang et al., 2022).
Negative beliefs about ourselves
When researchers built a measure of negative beliefs about the self, four themes emerged: feeling helpless and inferior, feeling helpless and vulnerable, feeling unlovable, and feeling worthless (Osmo et al., 2018). Those scores tracked with difficult childhood experiences, insecure attachment, anxiety, and depression. A separate meta-analysis comparing people with mental health diagnoses to healthy controls found the biggest differences in schemas of social isolation, negativity and pessimism, defectiveness and shame, and feeling socially undesirable (Thimm et al., 2022).
A refined model of low self-esteem suggests why these beliefs bite so hard: they center on our value, either our adequacy ("I'm a failure") or our social connection ("I'm unlovable") (Rimes et al., 2023). Some of the most common statements people carry:
I am worthless, or something is fundamentally wrong with me.
I am unlovable.
I am a failure, or I am never good enough.
I am helpless and powerless.
I must be perfect to be acceptable.
Negative beliefs about others
Beliefs about others turn out to be their own dimension, not just the flip side of low self-worth (Osmo et al., 2018). In one study, people with depression viewed others more negatively and felt more socially isolated than people without it (Feixas et al., 2021). The same low self-esteem model highlights beliefs such as "Others look down on me" and "Others don't care about me" (Rimes et al., 2023). In everyday life, they sound like:
People will eventually reject or leave me.
People can't be trusted; they will hurt or use me.
No one really cares about my needs.
Everyone is judging me.
I'm alone in this, and no one understands.
Negative beliefs about God
Sociologists Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, drawing on the Baylor Religion Survey, found that Americans tend to hold one of four images of God: Authoritative (engaged and judging), Benevolent (engaged and loving), Critical (judging but distant), and Distant (neither involved nor judging) (Lofton, 2012, reviewing their work). Another author, John Jefferson Davis, notes that many American Christians say they believe in a benevolent God while their gut-level picture of God is angry, critical, or distant (Davis, 2024). That gap between the head and the heart is worth noticing in yourself.
The research on how safe we feel with God is striking. Studies in the attachment-to-God tradition find that anxious attachment (fear of being abandoned or unloved by God) goes with more distress, while secure attachment goes with less (Bradshaw et al., 2010). In a national sample, how secure people felt with God predicted well-being even after controlling for whether they described God as forgiving or wrathful (Leman et al., 2018). In other words, what we feel about God's closeness can matter as much as what we say about God's character.
Then there is spiritual struggle. In a national sample of 2,208 American adults, every kind of religious and spiritual struggle measured (divine, demonic, interpersonal, moral, and questions of ultimate meaning) was linked to more depression and anxiety and less happiness (Abu-Raiya et al., 2015). Longitudinal work suggests the relationship may run both ways: struggle can feed distress, and distress can feed struggle (Cowden et al., 2021), though a recent study of spiritually integrated counseling found struggle predicting later distress more than the reverse (Currier et al., 2025). Encouragingly, religious commitment, support, and hope can buffer the effect (Abu-Raiya et al., 2016). Faith can be part of the problem and part of the solution.
Common beliefs about God that surface in this research and in the counseling room:
God is angry with me, or is waiting to punish me.
God is distant, absent, or uninterested in my life.
God's love must be earned, and I keep falling short.
God can't be trusted to be good to me.
My sin or failure is too big to be forgiven.
The good news: beliefs can change
Core beliefs feel permanent, but they are not. In a study of more than 1,500 adults in primary-care treatment, people whose negative self-beliefs eased saw their depressive symptoms improve afterward, and improved symptoms in turn helped beliefs shift further (Smith et al., 2026). Secure, caring relationships can also gradually revise old working models of self and others (Arriaga et al., 2018).
From a Christian point of view, this fits something Scripture has said all along. Paul writes, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Romans 12:2, ESV), and calls us to "take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5, ESV). That is not positive thinking. Some negative self-assessments are simply true: Scripture is honest about sin. But it never leaves us there. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1, ESV). The goal is to sort out which of our inner stories line up with what God has actually said and which came from wounds, fear, or old experiences.
Scripture also makes room for honest struggle. The psalmist asks, "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?" (Psalm 13:1, ESV). Bringing hard questions to God is not a failure of faith; it is one of the ways Scripture models faith.
A simple place to start
We put together a free, printable guide to help you do exactly this. It walks you through spotting the beliefs you carry about yourself, others, and God, tracing where they started, weighing them against Scripture, and writing a truer replacement. You can download it now.
If a belief feels too heavy to work through alone, you don't have to. Talking with a counselor can help, and that is what we're here for at OnPath Counseling. And if you are ever in crisis, call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the U.S.).
This article is for general education and encouragement and is not a substitute for professional care.
Sources
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Abu-Raiya, H., et al. (2016). Religion as problem, religion as solution. Quality of Life Research.
Arriaga, X. B., et al. (2018). Revising working models across time. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
Bradshaw, M., et al. (2010). Attachment to God, images of God, and psychological distress in a nationwide sample of Presbyterians. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.
Cowden, R., et al. (2021). Religious/spiritual struggles and psychological distress: A test of three models. Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Currier, J. M., et al. (2025). Spiritual struggles drive psychological distress in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy.
Davis, J. J. (2024). Renovating our images of God: Neuroscience and biblical meditation. Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care.
Feixas, G., et al. (2021). Measuring cognitive rigidity in construing self and others with the repertory grid technique. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy.
Leman, J., et al. (2018). Secure attachment to God uniquely linked to psychological health in a national, random sample of American adults. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.
Lofton, K. (2012). America's Four Gods: What we say about God, and what that says about us (book review of Froese & Bader). Church History.
Osmo, F., et al. (2018). The Negative Core Beliefs Inventory: Development and psychometric properties. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy.
Pilkington, P., et al. (2020). Adverse childhood experiences and early maladaptive schemas in adulthood. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy.
Rimes, K., et al. (2023). Low self-esteem: A refined cognitive behavioural model. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy.
Smith, O. R., et al. (2026). Dynamics of cognitions and symptoms during treatment. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
Thimm, J., et al. (2022). Early maladaptive schemas and mental disorders in adulthood. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy.
Zhang, X., et al. (2022). The relationship between adult attachment and mental health: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
