it is said that much of what drives us in life is our core fear or core delusion
do you believe this?
what is your core fear or core delusion?
when you feel fearful about something, do you feel you are able to core it, and get down to the thing you truly feel fearful or delusional about, rather than what is on the surface?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
12 responses to “core fear/core delusion”
All decisions are based on fear or love. I totally believe that.
Core fear is probably not being noticed. Middle child syndrome.
Yes, but I don’t really think it is supremely important to do that. Life is too short to constantly be looking for “why” all the time. I’m more of a get over it and move on kind of person. I get that some of those subliminal influences can affect me in ways that may not be entirely productive, but they are what make me, me. I prefer to have momentum going forward in the first place that will make up for the dynamic associated with pressing back that too much self evaluation can influence.
@spitfire3dc It is believed that the core delusion or fear may stem from early trauma and is often at a cellular level. it may be conscious to us or not, but if it is the driving force in our lives, and there were a way to heal that part of our brain, imagine what we could do, where we could exert energy. for me, my core delusion is that I am not lovable. Womens core delusions often center around love. SO I devote a lot of energy trying to prove or have proven to me that I am loved and lovable. it is quite exhausting, and id like to be free of the delusion.
This sounds like part of what dr. Peterson talks about in his book “Maps of Meaning”.
We consciously assess meaning based on beliefs, and this disappears down into our subconscious and into the primal hypothalamic brain, where all these little subpersonalities go to work on it.
They are called hunger, thirst pain, anger, panic, thermoregulation, affiliation sexual desire, exploration and play. They network with more advanced subpersonalities back up through the brain and come up with a map of meaning; how to get from where we are to where [we think?] we want to be. We normally remain entirely unaware of this very complex process.
But our very thought processes and even our perceptions of what is right in front of us are altered with the intent to expedite us towards the stated goal, while wasting as little of our limited cortical resources of conscious attention as possible.
The map can and does create Illusions and delusions, as well as blindness, when the abstraction of reality that is our map doesn’t line up with manifest reality. (It’s seen as an easier option than redrawing the map.) These events create low-level pain and panic.
More drastic incongruities between our abstracted map and manifest reality can break through the map or burn holes in it. This creates even stronger responses of pain and panic; plus anger starts to present itself. The map is in jeopardy, and without it we will be lost: uncertain where to direct our limited cortical resources. It would be like waking up naked and alone at night in a jungle. Everything would be critically relevant and our cortical resources would be eaten up at an alarming rate: leaving just the most primitive beast, who no longer understands the language of nature.
So what is my core fear? Those little pain, anger and panic sub-beasties love trying to go to town on all kinds of little unimportant things. So I keep reassigning them a target of “fear itself”. They are kept busy chasing their tails until I assign them something of significant meaning to react to.
The solution seems to be to have the most relevant and up-to-date map of meaning. Which would seem to be God’s map of meaning.
With fewer incongruities between the actual and the imagined, there are fewer delusions, and less need for panic pain or anger.
And updates to the map seem to be more of an automatic pre-authorized process, than a triggering event.
@griz Yeah, we kinda have to be like a mechanic and rewire our own brain. It can be done.
@Scarlett
So long as we don’t try to rewire with Haywire!
There’s different stages of generalized motivations
1st exploration of everything (orientation)
2nd biological reproductive urges…..
3rd nesting
4th Dealing with DEaTH
I would think fear & delusion as cores would be for the dysfunctional.
@luftballooneyegouge an interesting take on the life course. Did you grow up in a functional family?
@Scarlett
….for the most part.
….no violence & no drunkenness.
My Dad would drink beers at parties but not at home, & I don’t remember him ever being hung-over or sick. My Mom takes a sip & gets dizzy.
The most he yelled was when he’d run into his own shoes where he’d left ’em. They were these black old-school leather shoes that were hard as rocks.
He was diagnosed as bi-polar later, but he never took the meds. He wasn’t really that bad, he’d just get really loud when he was pissed off, but his bark was infinitely larger than his bite.
We all got along.
They were a satisfactory representation of what I saw on TV.
I used to think all my main friends were supernatural beings.
I was given evidence to show this is true.
So, no more core fear, no more core delusion.
I mean, at the core of it, I fear pain. It does the opposite of drive me though. It keeps me very *still (really tried to find a word for it, but I just couldn’t.) I fear emotional, mental, and physical pain. There are very specific moments where I push back against it, but I can’t consistently do it. It is a random thing. Like, I am afraid of pain, I am super afraid of needles. I ended up getting a tattoo though. There was a week there where I was just all about being ok with it. It has since gone away, and the thought of another one does not sit well with me. I don’t get it. I never understand myself, but I guess that is part of what this is all about.
@yin when it comes to emotional pain, it has been said that we need to learn to sit with it. Have you tried that? What happens if you do?
@Scarlett What exactly do you mean by that? If you are meaning we basically need to live with it, then yea, I do that for the most part. I sit with it a lot. I sometimes go back and recall what happened and how I felt. It never feels like it did when it happened, but I can clearly recall being very miserable (at least with certain emotional pain.) It is kind of like the tattoo. I can’t recall the pain, but I made a note that it was one of the worst pains I ever had, on the one side of my leg at least.