The Struggle of Never Feeling Like You’re Enough
This is a limiting belief for many people, and I see it come up time and time again in the work I do with my clients.
So why do we never feel like we are enough? When did we acquire these beliefs and how do we begin to overcome it?
You have hidden core beliefs that are running the show. The thoughts we actually hear in our heads are far less powerful than those that lurk in our unconscious. Low self worth is inevitably connected to the buried and hidden assumptions about the world, others, and ourselves that we mistake as fact.
Most likely, we have created these core beliefs in our childhood and they have remained with us because this is what is familiar to us. When we were children we had limited perspective on the world, and as adults we don’t realize that this belief is really keep us limited on how we perceive the world.
For example, a child is raised with a parent that abandons them at an early age. This child than creates the belief “ if you love someone, they leave you” and this trickles down into every other relationship they may have.
Your inner critic is actually working against you rather than for you. Sad, but true many of us think that we are positive thinkers and doers, but the inner critic is constantly showing up and putting us down. We are our biggest threat to being confident, and feeling like we are enough because we are constantly putting ourselves down.
If we were more mindful and paid closer attention to our thoughts we would recognize that we are more critical and negative about ourselves than we realize.
The average amount of thoughts in a day is 50,000- 70,000 thoughts, which equates to 35-48 thoughts per minute. If we can just imagine how often we may be thinking more negatively about ourselves, than positive we could start to reframe this limiting belief, and many others.
Are you surrounding yourself with toxic, negative people? It’s true what they say, “ you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. So take a minute to reflect on who you associate with, and how they benefit you or drag you down. This can be a contributing factor to you not feeling good enough.
You had critical , aloof parents that didn’t meet your needs. Yes, perhaps you had a ‘good childhood’. You lived in a nice house, your parents never divorced. You never wanted for anything. But then again, perhaps you did. Perhaps you wanted for the approval and love that every child needs. If your parent(s) always wanted you to smarter, or quieter, or sportier, or if they favored your sibling….?
Whatever it was, the message was that you were not enough as is. It might have just been that your parent was not good at loving due to their own unresolved issues. As children we naturally seek approval and love. So we learn to suffocate our real personality and become the ‘good’ child, at the price of turning into an adult who never feels a sense of worth. We learn to not show up as authentically ourselves, and this makes us into the people pleasers that those that don’t feel like they are enough become.
You experienced trauma in your past. Childhood trauma decimates a child’s sense of worth. Most children feel responsible for the trauma, particularly if it is physical abuse or sexual abuse. They internalize the idea they are bad and worthless, so deserved it.
SO IS FEELING NOT GOOD ENOUGH ALWAYS ALL ABOUT THE PAST?
It is inevitable that the environments and experiences of our childhood affected us. Of course there are other factors. Some of us born with a naturally more sensitive personality, for example, so suffer more. And sometimes it is a marked trauma as an adult that leaves us not feeling good enough, such as a betrayal. Even then, though, we will find our confidence and self-worth suffers more, and we take longer to recuperate, if we had previous trauma in our early life or poor parenting.
Next blog I will discuss how we can begin to feel as if we are enough, and reprogam, reframe and become our most CONFIDENT selves. Until than keep telling yourself, I AM ENOUGH, anytime you can to make your mind begin to believe it!
As always thank you for being here with me!
