Jump In the Fire: Core Beliefs, Head Trips, and the Battle for Your Sanity

There’s a private war raging behind your eyes and chances are, you’ve mistaken it for your personality. You think you're in the driver's seat, but in reality? You're that hapless little kid with the plastic steering wheel in the passenger seat, white-knuckling through life while your core beliefs—the invisible wiring baked into your psyche before you could tie your shoes—do all the real driving.

Charlotte Joko Beck, a Zen teacher with the calming voice of a librarian and the insight of a samurai, once said that by the age of five, we’ve already locked in the basic operating system for our misery. Not because we’re dramatic, but because we’re human. A baby can't afford to blame mom or dad when they scream or neglect or disappear. That’s too dangerous. So the blame turns inward. “I’m worthless.” “I’m unlovable.” “I don’t belong.” These become the background music of your life—your “core beliefs.” And they don’t go away just because you go vegan, chant Sanskrit, or get a black belt in Pilates.

It’s not exactly groundbreaking, either. Carl Jung—Swiss shrink, beard enthusiast, and spiritual hitman—called it the unconscious. His warning shot rings out across the ages: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” That’s not a quote, it’s a red flag on fire.

And then there’s Alcoholics Anonymous, whose Big Book slices through spiritual pretense like a boxcutter. “Some of us tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.” That’s not a metaphor. That’s your brain on autopilot while your life bleeds out in the ditch.

So what do these three have in common? Beck’s Zen swordplay, Jung’s depth-charge psychology, and AA’s trench warfare against the spiritual malady? They're all pointing to the same ugly truth: you’re not as in control as you think. Your life is being quietly but thoroughly molested by old psychic graffiti you didn’t ask for and likely don’t even know you’re obeying. And if you don’t drag it into the light, it will take you down.

This is not optional work. This is triage. People burn their lives to the ground over this. They self-destruct, drink themselves into hospitals, jump into bed with wrecking balls in human form, or isolate so hard they forget what sunlight feels like. Why? Because down in the basement of the psyche, something’s whispering, “You’re not enough,” and they believe it.

Beck says most of us live in a permanent state of low-grade upset. Polite. Smiling. Numb. But underneath, we’re seething, particularly around the people we want to be close to. Relationships, friendships, coworkers—suddenly we’re haunted by expectations we never voiced and betrayals that never happened. You ever walk away from someone and replay the whole conversation in your head like a court case? That’s not reflection. That’s a core belief playing with matches.

And if your inner wiring tells you that you’re a fuck-up? Guess what kind of people you’ll gravitate toward. Users. Ghosters. Half-formed wrecks who will reenact your childhood trauma with Broadway flair and a Spotify playlist. You’re not broken. You’re programmed. And you’re handing out front-row tickets to your own slow collapse.

Here’s the cosmic joke: once you see the damn thing, you can’t unsee it. The jig is up. You notice how much of your suffering isn’t coming from reality, but from the war stories in your head. You stop blaming everyone else for not living up to standards you never communicated. And maybe, just maybe, you realise you’ve been giving VIP passes to your heart to people who shouldn’t even be in the parking lot.

The revelation is brutal—but it’s freedom. Because if you are the common denominator in all your relational chaos, then you’re also the solution. That’s power. Not the cheesy self-help kind. The kind that makes you want to meditate not because it’s trendy, but because your life depends on it.

And it might. Because unless you’re willing to haul those old ideas into the light, they’ll keep driving the car—with you in the passenger seat, screaming at red lights that never change.