About feeling not good enough

Psychology for Dummies #4: Feeling not good enough

If you got interested by the headline you might be exactly knowing what it feels like..."feeling insufficient"...most of the people do at some time... it's the kind of feeling that makes you really sad, maybe even depressed for a long time. You get afraid of that feeling, fearing it's coming up again and again. That's why it is letting you work really hard but you always feel the same. At the end your effort seems just worthless, nobody is interested in it or takes notice of the effort and you can't reward it yourself.

It's a vicious circle...you feel insufficient...so you think you are insufficient...so you are insufficient...and of course then you feel insufficient 😔!

In the previous post we have been talking about the camouflage of fear. We understood that all our emotional fears are based on thoughts. That's why an emotional fear could be arising out of an undercover thought like feeling insufficient.

This undercover thought feeling insufficient is a sum out of a discrepancy of thoughts as well as beliefs and emotions.

Interestingly nobody is talking about the sadness and fear of feeling insufficient. Better...when somebody tries to talk about it others normally feel ashamed, don't know how to react, they very often look for solutions for your mental discomfort, notice that they are not getting there and then change the topic!

Or they try to talk you out of it...saying "no, you are not...you are trying your best...it will be better in the future...just keep going on" and you feel misunderstood and stupid. After some situations like these you tend to keep your feelings to yourself.

Would you believe that some of the major problems might arise out of exactly that behaviour, that "keeping it to yourself"?!

Why do you decide to think that you are the one with the issue?! Why don't you decide that these people you have been talking to just didn't have a clue, what you are talking about or maybe have an issue themselves!

Because this is the case in our century. A lot of people have an issue with emotions. Especially with emotions about themselves. They learned that it's better not to show them, that emotions are hindering their goals, that they should not feel like this in a lot of different situations, just to mention homosexuality and "men don't cry". Or they should not behave like this, just to mention "hyperactive children".
Please imagine how these children grow up and what they might be thinking about themselves. In our early ages we are already set up with a lot of statements how we should not be. It's awful!

It's even more awful that as children we are dependant on believing the people around us! We have no choice, we are genetically designed to be dependent on other people and their thoughts.

When we are getting older these statements (along with a lot of good things of course) are building the groundwork of our thinking, or our beliefs. Getting older and older we tend to not even question these beliefs because they got so manifested in our brain that we actually believe them to be our thoughts. What a false friend!!!

I am very sorry to disappoint you...but sometimes you might think your beliefs might be your own...but they are not. Very often you can find out to whom these thoughts might belong to in your past. You can also question yourself to which person of your early life these thoughts could fit the best 😉. There are of course some really good beliefs as well...that's all fine but...yeah we all know about this fly in the ointment😅.

Emotional fears like "feeling insufficient" are all about...failing your belief system.

This kind of thinking has led to people feeling uncomfortable about their emotions. Most of the people are actually confused about emotions. Because they differ from their thoughts and beliefs.

They made the experience that emotions do have their own life sometimes, they just do what they want and you can't control them. When you try to hide them, the emotions get even stronger, it's very frustrating!

#To find out if your inner statements are truely your inner thoughts ask yourself the Socrates questions! Start questioning your own thinking. See what kind of material your groundwork is based on. The Socrates talk of beliefs is one of the most often used techniques in psychotherapy sessions. It is always arising out of an appreciating, caring and value-free attitude. It's quite hard to keep this in mind and do it on your own, but 🤔...you can always have a try! Why are you thinking of yourself like this? Let's start!

For example "I am not good enough"...Why do think you are not good enough?! Who are you comparing to? Why is that necessary? If you would be good enough for someone else...would that mean you are also good enough in your own view? Why do you think you should be better? What's wrong with being however you are?...Why do you think so? How did you come up with this standard of "how you should behave?" What is this standard based on? And so on and so on...at the end is always important to ask yourself...why do you believe in these other people's believes? Why don't you trust your own thoughts?!

Most people can't help you with this because they have the same problem! They just don't know how to interact with emotions and "beliefs" 😊. The very least know how to interact with "sad emotions", that's kind of the hardest kind of emotion to deal with 😅. Otherwise if they could... they would also present you "their kind of beliefs"...as I discussed above that's not really what you want...

You need your own scale, your own standard! Get out there and find out about yourself! You can of course always interact with other people to help you but at the end you should decide what's "good enough" in your opinion, based on your knowledge!

As you might have noticed this post is a chapter out of the Psychology series. If you liked reading just have a look to the other posts!

Thank you very much for reading! I hope you got some interesting questions out of it. I am happy to read your comments!