If beliefs cause emotions, then it is worth knowing where beliefs come from. They are not chosen, and they are not arbitrary. They are assembled, by a process that is quite well understood.

Frames and Concepts

Your brain takes in experience and sorts it by how things relate to each other. A group of related data is what we call a concept. And each individual link inside a concept is called a frame.

This comes from relational frame theory, developed by Steven Hayes and colleagues, and the useful part is how ordinary it is.

Take a child learning about dogs.

The child sees a picture of a dog and hears a bark. That is one link, and it runs both ways. The picture brings the sound to mind, and the sound brings the picture.

The child sees the picture and hears the word dog. That is a second link, also two-way.

So now there are four relationships. Picture to sound, sound to picture, picture to word, word to picture.

And then something happens that appears to be close to unique to humans. Without being taught it, the child connects the bark to the word. Nobody demonstrated that link. The brain inferred it from the two it already had.

In mathematics that is called a transitive property. In a human life it is the reason a belief spreads well beyond the experience that created it.

Those links are not only of one kind, either. Things get related as equal to, greater than, less than, likely, unlikely, better, worse, safe, dangerous, caused by, before, after. Hundreds of relation types, applied constantly.

When Certainty Becomes Belief

Now, when does a collection of frames become a belief?

There is one more set of frames in every concept, and it is the one that matters most. It records how certain you are about all the others.

A concept becomes a belief when certainty is high. And certainty builds in three ways.

• By repetition. The same thing happening again and again.
• By context. Meeting many different dogs in many different places builds far more certainty than meeting the same dog in the same garden a hundred times.
• And by emotional impact. This one is the fastest by a long way. You do not need to touch a hot stovetop twice. One experience with enough intensity attached can install a belief permanently.

That third route is what people mean when they talk about emotional baggage.

How a Phobia Forms

Here is how quickly it can happen.

A child is looking at a picture of a dog. Behind them, a balloon bursts. In that instant a link is made between dog and danger, and it is made with enough emotional force that it sticks.

Then the inference machinery does the rest. The fear spreads to the sound of barking, and to the word itself, neither of which had anything to do with the bang. Nobody taught the child to be afraid of the word dog.

That is one of the ways a phobia forms, and it explains something people find baffling about their own fears, which is that the fear often has no sensible connection to anything that happened.

Neuroplasticity Works Both Ways

The good news is in the same machinery.

Neuroplasticity means the brain changes with what it repeatedly does. The pathways that built those beliefs are the same pathways available for building new ones. Repetition and emotional weight put them there, and repetition and emotional weight can revise them.

Neuroplasticity is not automatically a blessing, though. It is simply how the brain works, and it has been faithfully reinforcing whatever you have been practicing, including the things you would rather it had not.

Do Not Hunt the Origin

One caution before you go looking.

Knowing that beliefs are built this way makes it tempting to hunt for the origin. To find the balloon. Most of the time you will not find it, and you do not need it.

The likelihood of accurately identifying the single moment that installed something like general insecurity is very low. And a belief that is running today can be worked with today, whether or not you ever learn where it started.

So the target is the belief as it operates now, in enough detail that you can see it clearly. Not the archaeology.