How do I stop feeling like I’m not good enough?

If you’ve noticed that you often don’t feel good enough, you’re in good company. A study in 2019 found that 80% of millennials felt that they weren’t good enough. But it’s not just millennials who experience this sense of inadequacy.

I first noticed this about 15 years ago when I was working with people who had M.E. (chronic fatigue syndrome). Many of them revealed that they never felt that anything they did was good enough. So they were constantly trying to do more, until they reached the point of burnout. It was as if the goal posts kept moving, and like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, they had to keep running just in order to stand still.

I’ve not posted here for a few weeks because I’ve been ill. I had one of those colds that completely flatten me and I simply didn’t have the energy or brain space to write anything. I suspect that I was so flattened because I had been doing my own version of the Red Queen’s race. My body doesn’t take that kind of shit from me any more. If I overdo it, it collapses and sends me to bed.

At the age of 67, I am still fighting the tendency to think of myself as inadequate, which is kind of funny really because I have three degrees, I own my own house, I get great results with my coaching clients, I have two amazing daughters and I’m in a very successful relationship.

But these are all external markers. They’re what’s known as extrinsic sources of self-esteem. And of course if I’m looking for external markers I can find lots that don’t look so great. Like I’m nowhere near being the six figure earner that is held up as a goal for all coaches (don’t get me started on that one!), my house is full of clutter, I never did complete my PhD, I don’t own a car. I could go on, but you get the point.

As long as I measure my worth against these external markers the part of me which is always on the lookout for danger is going to focus on the things that don’t look so good. Because that’s the way we’re wired neurologically.

The rabbit hole of extrinsic sources of self-esteem

There are three types of extrinsic sources of self-esteem:

• what we’ve achieved (degrees, promotions, etc)

• money and what we own (income, investments, house, car, Gucci handbags, etc)

• social approval – what other people think of us

When we rely heavily on extrinsic sources of self-esteem, we are actually relying on the validation and recognition of other people to feel good about ourselves. Because this type of self-esteem is dependent on the judgments of others it’s fragile and prone to being buffeted by changes in others’ opinions.

Extrinsic self-esteem leads us down a rabbit hole – a perpetual cycle of seeking approval and validation from others. We feel compelled to acquire material possessions or to get that promotion in order to boost our self-esteem. But this is only ever temporary because the transient nature of such achievements means that the goal posts keep moving away from us.

By measuring yourself against these external markers and the validation of others, you put yourself at the mercy of outside forces. For instance if you only feel good enough when you own a car which is less than two years old, you have to keep buying a new car every two years. And if you have a bad year where your bonus is reduced you may have to wait another year to replace that car. Does that mean that your self-esteem is down a notch for that third year? Well maybe...

The current situation with the markets is an interesting example. I could measure my self-esteem against the size of my pension fund (fortunately I don’t). Right now my pension fund is considerably lower than it was a couple of weeks ago, because of the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on the financial markets. I know that the markets are likely to recover – they always do – so I’m only a little bit worried.

But there’s a twist here. I promised some money to my daughter, and that amount has been almost completely wiped off my pension fund as a result of the recent market shenanigans. Having to tell her that there’s no money for the foreseeable was uncomfortable. I did feel less-than when I broke the news. That feeling of being not good enough because my pension fund isn’t big enough to weather the current storm came from my own thinking about it. I can hardly blame Trump or the markets for my sudden drop in self-esteem!

However even with the C-suite job, the six or seven-figure income, the five bedroom house, and a child who earned a higher degree at Oxford or Cambridge, the external validation is only ever an attempt to fill the void within. And that, my friend, is a very deep rabbit hole.

Go inside

So if we’re wanting to have some control over our self-esteem and those feelings of being not good enough, we have to turn to intrinsic sources of self-esteem.

This is a bit like a magic trick. Because when you look into it a little deeper you’ll realise that even while you were attributing your self-worth to the validation you were getting from others for your C-suite role or your Harvard MBA, you had been taken in by the oldest trick in the book – the ‘outside-in’ illusion.

You might be getting that validation because of your well-stocked allotment or your skill at dressmaking. But if it looks like your self-esteem is a result of that validation, you’re still suffering from the outside-in illusion.

That’s because you are the only source of your own self-esteem. You are the only person who can decide whether you’re good enough. Even if you’ve been told all your life that you’re not good enough, you have to believe it in order for it to have any effect on you.

It may not be easy to change the habit of a lifetime, but it’s not impossible. Just as the magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat, you can pull your self-esteem up from inside of you, independently of what anyone else thinks of you.

Now I’m not suggesting you should start pissing people off in a deliberate attempt to prove that you don’t need their approval. The trick is to be kind because you want to be kind, not to get their approval.

How the Red Queen’s race gets started

Like most things it all starts in childhood. Most of our parents fell into one of two camps:

• Dismissive: They told us over and over that we weren’t good enough and that we would never amount to anything.

• Conditional: They showed us love and approval, but mostly when we achieved something. Some of those parents weren't satisfied with straight As - it had to be A stars all the way.

My parents were in the second camp. It wasn’t that they didn’t love me, but doing well at school and then at University was really important. So I came to believe that I was only lovable when I was doing well academically.

I’ve met plenty of women whose parents told them they wouldn’t amount to anything, so I’ve always been glad that my parents encouraged me and believed in me. It just took a long time to notice the hidden message that I had taken away – that love is conditional on what I achieve. Maybe that wasn’t what they really wanted to convey. They probably never realised that was the meaning I had taken from it and would be horrified if they had known I had. But that's the meaning I gave it.

So it is that we take on these messages from our childhood, which may be explicit or implicit, and integrate them into our sense of who we are. The neurobiologist Juliane Taylor Shore talks about our ‘felt sense’ of safety. By that she means that it's an embodied sense of being safe (or not safe). Those of us with low self-esteem may have a felt sense of never being good enough. It may take years to become fully conscious of what is happening just below the surface. But once you notice it, you can start to do something about it!

You get free of the Red Queen’s race by loving yourself

My client, Fiona (not her real name), came to understand in her 40s that she always puts herself last, that she couldn’t seem to give herself what she could give others: love, care, understanding, kindness. Part of the work she needed to do to make this possible was to start to parent herself. If our parents didn’t give us what we needed in childhood, we can do this for ourselves as adults.

I helped Fiona separate her child part from her adult part, so that the adult part could provide what her parents never had: unconditional love which told her that she had equal value to her friends and family. She could tell little Fiona that she would always be there, she would never leave her and she would protect her.

This kind of inner child work can have a profound impact in a short space of time. When you realise that certain behaviours are coming from that child part you, can change them. This includes the negative self-talk: the put-downs and self-recriminations. When you say to yourself ‘that was silly’ or ‘what on earth were you thinking,’ it may sound like a parent speaking, but it’s your child part – the one who evolved into your inner critic. Because believe me the inner critic and the perfectionist are all aspects of that part of you which thinks you’re not good enough, and it’s all rooted in shame. But let’s leave shame for another day.

You can flip the script on self-worth and feelings of not being good enough with self-compassion. It may feel awkward and unnatural, but that’s OK. When you notice yourself doing the negative self-talk turn towards that part which is so down on you and speak compassionately: ‘I know you’re worried that I’m not doing so well, but I’ve got this. You don’t need to get involved, because I’m here.’ You are always good enough, whatever you do, because you are moving towards health. It's an inside-out process and luckily we all have an inner drive towards health. It just needs a little activation!

You can make a start on that inner child work, with my mini-course, HeartBridge Inner Child Process. Start a conversation with little you (your inner critic) and begin the transformation from feeling not good enough to knowing that you really are worth it!

References

https://studyfinds.org/inferiority-complex-8-in-10-millennials-believe-they-arent-good-enough/

Interview with Juliane Taylor Shore: https://therapywisdom.s3.amazonaws.com/Neurobiology+of+Feeling+Safe/Webinar+content/NFS+Live+Call+5+5.11.21.pdf