Why You Keep Proving the Same Childhood Beliefs Right

Ale explains that Western psychology reserves "trauma" for existential threats, near-death experiences, severe accidents. But Buddhist and other ancient traditions use a broader term, translated as "impression," for something subtler: any unprocessed experience that lodges in the body. He describes the body as a constant flow of water, where each impression is a small stone in that flow, and enough stones dam it entirely. He ties roughly 90% of chronic illness in the West to exactly this kind of accumulated blockage, not to any single traumatic event. We mapped the same root-cause distinction in What Trauma Really Is, And the Deeper Meaning of Healing.

From birth to around age seven, Ale explains, your brain runs on theta waves, the same frequency as deep meditation, so you absorb everything around you without filtering it. Whatever gets encoded in those years becomes the belief you unconsciously keep confirming as an adult, a pattern psychology calls confirmation bias. He shares his own example: a childhood scolding over a lent notebook quietly installed a belief that giving away material things means being shortchanged, one that kept resurfacing decades later around money. We traced this same installation-and-confirmation loop in Why Your Belief System Is Keeping You From Success.

Ale points to the same architecture behind most of what we call overreacting. The subconscious mind runs roughly 97% of daily actions, and it stores triggers as a three-step loop: cue, action, outcome. A missing block of cheese at a stressful Christmas Eve dinner years ago can wire that loop so tightly that any missing ingredient, any time, produces the same flash of anger or shame today, even when the logical stakes are zero. The trigger is not really about the cheese, it is the old outcome firing again. This is the same subconscious-autopilot figure we unpacked in Your Subconscious Runs 95% of Your Life.

Yes, and Ale is specific about the first step: noticing. Saying out loud, or writing down, exactly what you are feeling and when, what psychology calls shadow work, is enough to start dissolving a trigger that is not deeply ingrained, because shining attention on a hidden belief already weakens its grip. For triggers that keep resurfacing despite noticing, he points to deeper subconscious work, rooted in the same acupuncture points and meridians used in traditional Chinese medicine, to release the stored charge at its source. That deeper layer is exactly what we work through in a Quantum Diagnostic Session, or across a full cohort in The Science of Healing & Enlightenment.

Below are the complete transcripts of both conversations, "Why You Keep Proving the Same Childhood Belief Right" and "The Real Reason You Overreact to Nothing," the two-part Living Room Couch conversation on trauma. Read them if you prefer text, or want to search a specific point we covered.

The experience and the perception that I have had so far working on myself first but also working with all the other people that are in the community at Wholegrain Wisdom is that when we think about trauma, when we speak about trauma, we always correlate it to a traumatic existential experience. It's like one of those situations where we really risked our life and we could talk about several like you know severe accidents or other experiences that really we can recognize instantly that we get we developed an emotional response and reaction from it. But the reality is that trauma it's much more subtle. In Buddhism, meditations and in other ancient wisdom traditions when we talk about this topic, they actually use a slightly different word.

In English, the best translation would be impression. And for me it I I actually took a lot of time to understand what it really meant impression and how to actually correlate it to the trauma and all of the sumatic healing work that is becoming more and more popular in the west. So I would start from kind of like a biological explanation of how it all works. Is it good? Yeah, of course. Go ahead. So think about your body as a constant flow of water. Imagine that the water starts from here from the top of your head and it flows down into the floor.

So first of all the very best example to give and if you have already read the work of Peter Levine and other scientists that have studied animals they understood that anytime that there is a dangerous situation for an animal that we can soal traumatic experience as soon as they terminate the the experience let's say as soon as they stop running because they they've been chased is by a lion. They take their own time to ground themselves. So they take the time to shake first of all their body. If you actually have a pet in your house, we have dogs here and you can see them shaking all the times. Even just after being laid down on the floor, after that they do a little bit of yoga, you know, dog down and bottom up and then they shake.

This is the best example of imagining that when this water flows through your body and the traumatic experience or any kind of impression blocks the flow of water, it creates a little bit of issue with the drainage. At the beginning when the things when the impressions are small, they're like little sandstones, but then the bigger the experience and the more that they accumulates, imagine all of these sandstones accumulating slowly into bigger rocks and bigger rocks. And so if you don't shake, you cannot allow the cleaning and the drainage of all of this material and the flow of water slowly starts to diminish until the point where we got sick for real and we get into chronic situations where the pain doesn't seem to go away.

And apparently no medical real explanation exists because think about 90% of the illnesses today in the western society. They're all caused by chronic situations. And chronic situations are an accumulation of all of these impressions of all of these traumatic experiences depending on the level of intensity. And if they're not cleaned then this w this with water this water flow cannot pass through our body. This is super important and I think also understanding this difference know that you said okay how does this translate into into the body and what we can feel and grasp when something like this happen.

I do believe though that we just for the people to understand that are following us that we haven't really defined what is a good example of trauma then because we said okay the trauma is not per se it could it definitely can be an accident something major that happens to you but it could also be something subtle that you don't really understand that it's happening in the moment that is happening. So can we maybe provide a clearer example on a daily life experience of something that could be converted into a traumatic experience for somebody? Yeah.

So I would say let me connect back to the work and the topic of the subconscious mind that we touched in our previous videos because once you talk about trauma once you talk about the impressions that are being saved kind of like you know kind of like an error log of your computer that is saved into the the database right we need to talk about where they go where do they get saved and the location is our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is also the location where we save the all of the files of our belief systems. So all of our beliefs, what we believe in and therefore what we do unconsciously because we believe it's it's normal to be to do these kind of things, they all reside in the subconscious mind.

And the impression, the negative impression, the traumatic experience when it gets kind of like a bigger problem, they all get to be saved in the very same location. So in my own personal work, I can I can I can describe and relate what I've done in the past. So I I started to work on myself and through the methods of subconscious energy release, some cases hypnosis, in other cases just very deep meditation states and journaling. Then you go and ask your subconscious whether what you're doing right now is triggering you a positive emotion or a negative emotion.

This is already the very first step to start to understand whether there is some kind of negative impression saved in your database versus there is nothing to work on because anything that triggers us it it's connected to a belief that we saved at some point in our life and it's it's been activated any time that we find ourselves in a very similar situation. So for example, some months ago, I was working on a let's say a situation where I would have found myself very happily opening my house for cooking for my for my friends. And in another situation, in a different setting, I would find myself not happy and actually very constrained to be in a restaurant and offer dinner to my friends.

And so I started asking myself, how is it even possible that if I cook for my friends and I actually invest way more time and effort to provide a amazing meal for my friends, I I feel love and compassion and I'm happy to do that. But in the same setting, but in a different environment, if I actually have to pay out of my own pocket, then I would find myself in a situation of discomfort. This is already kind of like one of those perfect examples where okay, there is something triggering me. There must be something there that I saved in my belief system that is being triggered. It's kind of like this rock that is inside that is blocking my natural flow of energy.

The natural flow would be being abundant, being happy, being generous and offering to everybody. But in this case, I couldn't do it and I couldn't justify logically why this was happening. So I went deep into meditation. I've done some other exercises that the people at Wholegrain Wisdom are trained to be learning how to do for themselves. We're talking about subconscious communications, energy release, muscle testing, etc., etc. And I discovered that this situation, this trigger was a belief, was a memory that I saved when I was younger. When I was in primary school, I lended a notebook to a friend in the classroom and I expected the same notebook to be coming back after the day that he bought a new one.

And then the day came and this friend of mine brought me the notebook, but for some reason it was not the same quality that the one that I gave him. And for me it was not a big problem. But when I got home, my mother started to yell at me because she said, "Oh, Ali, my gosh, you've been cheated because, you know, this quality notebook that I buy for yourself and it it's there there's so much care behind this and you just gave it away and then this friend of yours gave you a lowquality book." So, for some reason, that situation in my subconscious mind got saved as an impression. Imagine like a photograph of a a picture and you save it into your database.

Somehow that impression made me believe that if I give away my material wealth to somebody then either I don't get it in return so I'm kind of in limitation or even worse I get it less than before. So I get cheated. Say but of course in the situation where I was cooking for my friends I was not giving away my material wealth I was giving away my time and in that case for some reason I never created any limiting belief about my time I always think that I can do everything and I even if I'm overwhelmed I always find a way to make it happen and so in this case for me it's like I have unlimited time but I don't have unlimited wealth material wealth and so in this is that's the reason of the trigger.

Okay. But I mean I this is interesting because I was thinking what you were saying no and also that in the western society when we talk about trauma in many cases we connect the trauma to something that happened to us when we were kids and also the example that you just gave us is connected with something that happened to you when you were at the elementary school. So also a very young kid. So I wonder is it true that the majority maybe of these traumatic experiences are built up in the first years of our life or maybe when we're adults or when we are older we kind of relate to these experiences in a different way and therefore we kind of build up this little pieces of sense in our subconscious in a different way.

Can you does it make sense what I'm trying to Yeah. So we need to make a little bit of a step backward first to answer because first we need to understand that when we are born until the age of 7 years old our brain state is in constant theta wave. This is the same wavelength of the brain of the deep meditative states. So what neoscience says is that in this state your mind is completely open and absorbive absorbed how do you say your mind is completely open and is constantly absorbing from the environment. So you're not protecting yourself you're letting everything come in.

So from 0 to 7, these are the formative years where every single experience that you have and of course the most important experiences are usually the ones that you have with your parents, your mother and your father or just your caregivers if you don't necessarily spend so much time with your parents and everybody around you. But of course the more time you spend with the same person that the more emotional bond that you create and therefore the more absorbing you have you are with this person. So when something happens during these seven years, it's usually called you know kind of like the substratus of the belief system that you're going to build upon which after the seven years old you're going to maintain and either enrich in the same level.

So basically in this case you would continuously prove all of these patterns and all of the belief systems that in most cases are limiting belief systems. You will continuously prove them right. So you will find yourself in situations that are going to prove this is the the classical confirmation bias that in psychology we speak a lot about. So because my mother told me that this situation happens when I do this kind of action then your life will constantly repeat this kind of experience to prove you right because every time you when you when in also in the last episodes we were talking about projecting your reality. This is one of these examples.

I believe X. I project X. I get confirmation about X. So I continu continuously reinforce this belief that this is what happens. Of course, the inner work and the work that we do at Wholegrain Wisdom is exactly going back into the past, discovering them, understanding what they are, where they been stored and release them forever and re rewire them into something that serves you more. But so yes, formative years from 0 to 7 are the fundamental patterns. But of course, new things can come up during the rest of your life. Or new things can appear as new even though they are exactly the same pattern that you already established when you were younger, but in this case is a different kind of size, let's say.

So if one time you needed to learn a le a lesson about life and the lesson was you know like a simple experience but you didn't get there. So the next time it will be a little bit harder the next time a little bit harder until the point that you know you actually gets very problematic. And this is kind of the reason of why people get into burnout. The burnout is pushing through this flow of water as we said at the beginning, but you're so full of rocks that you're literally trying to go upstream against the tide and against the flow, the natural flow, and at some point you just run out of energy and you collapse because there is literally no other way to do it.

I mean, this is a bit of a controversial question, but can we say then that trauma is actually serving us? Well, again, if we look at it from an ancient wisdom perspective and we bring into a little bit of a spiritual conversation, then pain and anything that is difficult in life is of course made to help us grow and evolve. I think it's quite normal in the west to describe difficult situations, especially when you want to achieve high results from a professional level. For some reason, in a professional setting, all of these are kind of like the norm. And there even especially if you if you're an entrepreneur and if you come from the the the you know the high achievement business settings all of these challenges they're actually like you know the the benchmark to which you compare yourself against the others.

But the real fundamental truth is that all of these lessons are meant for our inner self, our real self and consciousness to develop further and further and understand the lessons that from the more you know painful experiences you slowly liberate yourself. That's what in Buddhism you would eventually say you you remove the weeds so that the garden can grow beautifully and slowly you get towards the path of liberation. The path of liberation is one of those situations where you are completely aquimos. You're completely nonattached to what happens in front of you.

So if you're still getting triggered by some events that are making you feel oh no this is mine or no I this is my right you know some kind of like all of those experiences that really go deep into your ego all of them they are actually signals to tell you there is something to work there and there is a way that you can detach completely from those experiences. I want to close this specific topic with one example from biochemistry and neuroscience. One example that really shocked me in the past and I think it shocked you too when when you also acknowledge it yourself is that 90 seconds is the time that it takes for a chemical reactions from the ba brain to the to the body during a negative experience.

So anything that happens after the 90 seconds from an emotional reaction standpoint is your own story is the ego inside of you that is telling you the story to reinforce this situation. There is absolutely nothing that would justify from a chemical perspective continuing to feel the way that you feel. So if you feel angry or any other kind of limiting emotions after 90 seconds of an event, this is a clear sign that there is an impression, there is a negative traumatic experience inside of you that you need to release.

Yeah, well, the thing is, you know, in our daily life as adults, we go around, we do things, we try to schedule and juggle multiple things with kids, pets, and friends, and And work. Work. Work, also. And at some point, I I don't know, I I feel like there are small things that happens to us, and then we don't realize, okay, why is this really what I'm feeling? What What Why this is something like super basic that should be should mean nothing to me, and still it comes of stays in my mind for the whole day, for example. So, I don't know, something like very basic could be I'm going to the supermarket, and I really want that particular cheese. I don't I love cheese, and so this is just a an example for me that really works, but it could be anything, no?

And you go there, and you look at the counter, and that particular one that you really like, and you're really looking forward for yourself, but also your family, is not there. And in a way, you get angry. Or you get sad. I don't know, you could feel any kind of emotion. Would you say that this is kind of connected with a traumatic impression? Well, yes, of course. But, why so it's a little bit more complex. And I think getting there from the traditional logical, rational perspective is a little bit difficult. Why? Because again, we need to go back to the subconscious mind. As we already told many times, the subconscious mind is what governs up to 97% of our daily actions.

So, everything that happens, literally, almost everything, is being triggered or being operated under the shadow by the subconscious mind. So, if something triggers us, and it really seems from a rational point of view very stupid, like very meaningless, but it does create an emotion, then is not meaningless. First of all, let's be very acknowledging about this topic. What it could be happening is that there is a belief inside of the subconscious mind that has been developed, who knows when in the past, that is connecting the same similar situation, the same type of event, but with a much worse outcome. I don't know.

Imagine I mean I when we made this example, my mind immediately went into past times, you know, kind of like Christmas Eve situation where super busy, my parents were getting back to work back back from work, and they were rushing into preparing the Christmas Eve dinner. 24th of December in Italy was still kind of like a working day. So, I always remember like, you know, I'm coming back home from home early today. I don't know. 4:00 p.m. Instead of 8:00. And I have to prepare this massive dinner, and everybody's rushing to the supermarket, and the cheese is gone. And you go back home, and the cheese is not there.

And for some reason, you know, you the grandma specifically asked you since 2 weeks that that cheese is needed for the menu of the Christmas Eve, and if if the if the cheese is not there, then this Christmas Eve dinner is going to be completely ruined. And so, you feel ashamed. You feel stressed. You feel angry because also, you know, why how is it possible that on the Christmas Eve dinner at night, the supermarket is empty? You know, like they they they should have thought about this. So, something like that could have happened in your life that saved this memory into your database of the subconscious mind, and every time that you find yourself again in a similar situation, so, the clue, when we talk about the habits, you always have the three steps, right?

The clue, the actual habit, like the actions that you run, and then the outcome, which is in some cases the reward, positive or negative. So, the clue is always the same, is very similar. The habit may look different, but still a little bit of the same, but the outcome this time is like completely different. So, until you don't spend a little bit of time to work and on noticing, first of all, I think the very first action that anybody can do without you knowing about meditation, without you knowing anything about the subconscious reprogramming, nothing of that, just notice it. Notice if there is an action that you keep doing and without a specific rational reason, it triggers you an emotion.

This is already the first work. Because when you notice it, you do what in psychology, you'd call the shadow work. You know, let me get a little bit into like the more technical, if I would say, of how all of these emotions and triggers and and and beliefs work. So, a negative emotion, a negative belief system, in order to exist, it does show up in a very subtle and apparently positive way. What do I mean? I mean that if the the body and the mind in nature is always looking for survival mechanisms, right? And is always looking for the safest and the most convenient path. That's why we end up sometimes eating junk food or doing things that are not really healthy for us because they're easy.

And our body is instantaneously go into the direction of easiness. So, when you have saved such an emotion, such a such a situation in your in your database, and it gets retriggered, it's like a safe mechanism to protect you from something. Now, when you notice it, you do light work. So, the opposite, of course, is shadow work in the sense that you shine like a lamp, a a a light into this negative belief system. When you shine the light, the negative belief almost automatically disappear. If it's not something very ingrained deeply in you, you already noticing is already something very powerful. Because if it wasn't for that light, it would be kept in the shadow for longer, and it would have been kept, you know, coordinating your subconscious mind without your conscious agreement.

Let's say you're kind of like willing and awareness. But, sorry, let me pause you there. Like, when you say noticing, what does it mean? Is it the person saying, "Ah, I'm feeling this." Like, what is the noticing actually? How does that happen? So, noticing means that you do a conscious action of a very specific situation, and you are very out loud about how are you feeling? How is this making you feel? Because if you don't do that, you cannot connect kind of like the dots. Imagine like a link between the negative emotion and the belief. So, it doesn't need to be that you go to a therapist and you speak about it. It doesn't need to be you speak about it with somebody if you don't feel comfortable.

It can just simply mean you write it down, you journal about it, you talk out loud alone by yourself about this. Just do anything that would kind of like ground, materialize this thought into something more concrete. Okay? This is the first action. Then when you notice that this is not going out, it keeps repeating, then first of all it most probably means that there are multiple emotions and multiple beliefs that are clustered within one giant piece that are all together and they need to be worked in different layers like an onion. You need to go deeper and deeper and deeper. In order to go deeper, the real work is working at the subconscious level.

This is the work that we do at Wholegrain Wisdom. We teach and train people to learn how they can interact directly with their subconscious mind and do several actions that are connected to the acupuncture points and the central meridians so that you can release these knots of energy because at the kind of biological perspective, all of these beliefs, all of these emotions are saved as memory, we already said, but if you really want to understand what are what does it even mean to have a memory saved in your subconscious mind, you need to think about your body as the database, as the hardware that is storing, you know, the the the information.

And in all of your body, there are there is kind of like a field of electromagnetic energy that contains all of this information. Imagine that you're like a hardware box with like a storage box that is emitting the signal of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, whatever you want to imagine, and is broadcasting this kind of information to to the people around. So, when you want to go deeper and do the clearing from this layer, from this level, you need to access it first of all. And when you go so deep that you can access it, then there are several works connected to the ancient wisdom, connected to traditional Chinese medicine. There are many traditions across the world that have been mapping exactly the same protocols and exactly the same methods.

And when you release it, that knot of energy, electromagnetic energy, it literally does like this, poof, and it evaporates. When it evaporates, it no longer triggers you because you will notice for yourself, and this is actually a really crazy experience because you have a conscious memory that you you get triggered in that situation, but your body doesn't get triggered anymore. Like the emotional perspective is not there anymore. So, when you do this work and you find yourself the next time at the supermarket eat looking for cheese and the cheese is not there, you just say, "Oh, okay, I will buy something else." And then you go back home and it's like, "Wait a second, what happened?

I was supposed to get triggered, but now I'm not." That's a sign that you've done the work. And that's also amazing because when you go back and your family is asking for that cheese, you're also like, "Huh, I don't know. I bought another one. That's also fine." And also that doesn't trigger you because That doesn't trigger you because sometimes it's the people around you that also kind of adds, you know, to that to that emotion. Yeah, this is very interesting. And of course, if they want to, you know, kind of clear a little bit of that energy, they can call you.