Middle-Child Meandering
Have you ever felt trapped in your own thoughts, struggling with self doubt or emotional barriers? Your brain operates on deeply ingrained programs – beliefs shaped by past experiences. But what if those beliefs no longer serve you? Our resident therapist & coach James Jackson explores how to identify, challenge & reprogram these mental patterns.
Dear James,
I’ve often felt overshadowed within my family, and social circles, struggling with the feeling of being invisible. Also being the middle child can sometimes feel lonely. I am 45 years old and feel that i’m still carrying baggage. How can I overcome these feelings and find my own voice and presence?
Sincerely,
Seeking Visibility
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your email.
One of the first things we address in cases like yours is what I call a surface-level analysis. By case, I mean blocked or unprocessed emotions and limiting beliefs. The way out of this inner smog is to review, reframe, and process the former, then restructure the latter. Stay with me—it’s easier than you think.
In this surface-level analysis, we look at two things:
1. How much of what you are feeling is within your control?
2. What is the function of your feelings or beliefs? How are they serving or hindering you?
The wonderful news is that this situation is 100% within your control, which means change can occur immediately. Its effects can blossom into a liberated future—if you truly want that. I presume you do.
If you want to change your life and find freedom, you must change your beliefs.
What are beliefs?
Your brain has three main data input channels:
1. Words
2. Images
3. Sensory Perception
As soon as data enters, it’s converted into thought, feeling, and resulting behaviour. Your brain has one mission: your survival. It doesn’t care about your happiness, success, or fulfilment. It doesn’t care about balance or hope for the future. It simply executes programmes it has written to guarantee survival in the present moment. That’s all. Tomorrow, it will execute the same mission based on new data.
It writes these programmes based on the first-level Thought-Feeling-Behaviour triangle. But it also has a subconscious department, where it stores deep coding in the form of beliefs.
Your brain allows these deeply coded programmes to keep running by default because they have been reinforced so many times that it considers them perfect. It believes they are serving and protecting you. That’s right—your brain thinks it’s doing a great job! It confidently executes its programmes every day, like Fonzie in Happy Days.
But the unease you feel in your daily life? That’s a sign that while these beliefs serve your brain, they do not serve your soul. There is a misalignment between your brain, mind, body, and soul.
Talking with the brain
Until you sit down with your brain, thank it for the great job it believes it has done, and then explain that its programmes (beliefs) are no longer helping you, it won’t change them.
The saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies here. Your brain resists change because these programmes have been running for so long, it doesn’t trust you to know better.
Did you know you can talk to your brain? You can ask it things. You can request that it serve you in a very specific way. The quicker you want it to pay attention, the more emotive your words must be.
Your brain measures the volume of your words not in sound, but in emotion. Want to get its attention? Make it feel! The more you make your brain feel that your new thoughts serve you, the quicker it will recode your beliefs. That’s the work that’s required.
Here’s just one example of what your brain is currently working with:
Belief:
“I received attention when I was little until my baby brother or sister showed up. They stole my limelight as the baby of the family, and since then, I have felt neglected, unseen, and unheard. I must do everything I can to perform in order to regain attention.”
Coding:
- Perform at a high level and strive to be seen.
- If successful, continue without limit.
- To sustain this, the core belief must be: “I am not enough, and I’ll never be enough.”
- If performance fails, recoil into protection mode, increase hypervigilance, and reinforce victim mode.
Without ever having carried out a session with you, dear reader, I’d make a safe bet that you have spent much of your life feeling either:
1. Highly successful but never valued, seen, or heard – resulting in burnout, or
2. Like a failure – worthless and delusional, unable to trust yourself or others, preferring to retreat into isolation.
Notice how, in both of these polar opposites, there’s a common thread? You feel disconnected from your own voice and presence—the very problem you highlighted in your question.
This is a clear sign that the programming was faulty from the beginning. It’s just taken years of performance and retreat for you to realise that changing your beliefs is absolutely necessary.
What you need
I could talk to you for hours about your childhood. We could discuss trauma, middle child syndrome… But I’m guessing you’ve already done this.
I could reference Alfred Adler’s Birth Order Theory, or Judith Rich Harris’ Nurture Assumption—but for what? Most therapies that look backward will not help your brain rewrite its programmes. In fact, they often reinforce the idea that you are a product of your past.
I say stop! If you want freedom and hope, change your beliefs. And if you want to change your beliefs, you must engage in a forward-looking therapy, not one that dwells unhelpfully on the past.
This does not need to take years or cost a fortune.
I offer a free session to all readers who write to my column. If you are interested, you can claim your free session by writing to penny@brainmindandbody.com
I hope this helps.
Take care,
James
Do you have a question or concern that you’d like to share with James? Please submit it by email to askjames@brainmindandbody.com
Any advice provided in ‘Ask James’ is intended for informational and general guidance purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or legal services. Readers are encouraged to consult a licensed professional for personalised advice or treatment specific to their situation. All letters are anonymised to protect privacy unless explicit consent is provided to include identifiable details. By submitting a question, you agree to its potential publication in anonymised form, unless you explicitly request otherwise. Advice is offered within the scope of James’ expertise, and all health-related claims are verified with credible sources to ensure accuracy. If your submission is selected for publication, you will be notified by email before it is published. Due to the volume of submissions, we cannot guarantee a response to every letter. However, priority will be given to topics that resonate with a broad audience of readers.
