Overcoming the Belief "I am not Enough" A Worthless Worm Syndrome

For many many years, I lived with this belief that “I am not enough”. It hurt me, stained me and damaged my self-esteem. Where did it come from? Of course my childhood! If you ask me to recall how many instances I had, I can't even recall but they all made me feel that I was not worthy. My siblings were much better. I heard dark skin, fat, and ugly. I do have many memories and these memories caused feelings of shame, rejection and low self-esteem. I did not see my worth and of course, no one was there to help me overcome it. Fast forward to today, in my work as a Therapist, I learned a lot of things, connected dots with my childhood and now I can help people overcome the “I am not good enough” belief through certain techniques and modalities. Surveys show that 1 in every 5 people feel they are not good enough, hence the need to write this article. Given below is my understanding of the belief and certain modalities that have worked in overcoming the belief.

In my opinion, the notion of not being good enough needs to move out of the cognitive realm and should be attached more to the cultural environment. In today’s times, since we are born, our bodies are always in a state of defence, and we are constantly trying to prove our worth and value, be it in our careers, relationships or any journey we live.?

We learn the norms of acceptable behaviour through the conditioning of other people's responses to our behaviours (especially parents), to our emotions, and ourselves. We learn how to fit in and we need to be someone first to be accepted by our parents, and then comes the world and the huge pressure of acceptance.

That belonging is what keeps us regulated in our social engagement system with the group and with our window of tolerance. If we sense that we're violating those precepts or rules, the SHAME and the GUILT together with the belief of “not enough” will tend to get us back on track and we practice that belief and every single day we live by those feelings to reconfirm our belief.

So when a client comes to me with a core belief of “not feeling enough”, I am just trying to find the inner critic or child so that I can create a landscape of their inner self.

The journey often starts with questions and understanding:

THE WHAT - Why do they feel they are not good enough? Looks, smartness, intellect, love, like literally “WHAT” is it? ?

IS IT TRUE? What's the evidence? And they often say that they feel this way. People who don’t feel good enough often construct pieces of evidence confirming why beliefs are right to protect themselves from facing the outcome, and most of the time, it's guilt and shame.

Once I have found out what exactly it is all about, I further drill things down to either Talk Therapy or Hypnosis, which is basically to get the experiences – WHY, WHEN, WHERE & HOW it all started, including understanding everything like Emotions, Triggers and Actions (ETA). I want to know what feelings attached to the experiences concluded that belief. It usually looks like this:

WHY – I don’t feel enough because no matter what I did, I never received validation from my parents, and I continue to prove my worth to them and also to the outside world. It keeps me under pressure and I am trying to win in everything I do.

WHEN – I did well in 10th grade and my Dad never appreciated me, he never saw the hard work I put in. I was always told that I had to do better. There was no reward. I felt so rejected, and dissatisfied.

WHERE – In my childhood home. I can only recall the scenes where I was compared to my siblings. I don’t know why but the expectations were set on me. I usually spent my time studying, and working hard and had no time to even think about what my passion was in any extracurricular activities.

HOW – In every instance where I expected appreciation, I only received “can do better” feedback. There was no celebration, the house looked gloomy and silent when I had exams. I still can hear the buzz in my ears of loneliness, whispers and the burden of expectations.

In this case, the feelings were:

• Unloved
• Invalidated
• Rejected
• Sadness
• Numbness
• Anxious
• Shame

Now, various people will have different theories, but I look at this from a very different perspective. Not being good enough puts you under pressure, and the pressure is to prove your worth and be perfect in what you are doing because you want to prove your worth. The recovery starts with acceptance and compassion I usually work with clients and validate their small wins to make them understand their self-worth. Now no one technique helps people overcome the belief of "I am not Enough" so a combination of various modalities would take them on a journey of self-love, acceptance and self-compassion. Some of the things I do:

1) Writing their Belief Story

I encourage them to write every day their belief story for 20 minutes about not being good enough, their feelings and their experiences. Even though there is no work done internally to change it, after a few days, a significant change in themselves is noticed. ?The effect of doing this for 20mins it changes something internally and changes their biomarkers. This is because while they are writing they are becoming aware of the subconscious program and next is because everything comes from childhood, they know that they are carrying the burden of experiences from the past, meaning they are still in the past. Next, write a different kind of story, at times where they made mistakes where they have learned something. By doing this, you are shifting their narrative from being self-critical to a noticing positive perspective or a mindset. ??

2) Maintaining a Belief Log

This is powerful as when they start maintaining a log, they also write down pieces of evidence confirming that belief. Again, usually, they force themselves to find pieces of evidence which reconfirms the beliefs coming from the past, and not the actual life that they are living. Also including emotions is quite powerful as they tend to become aware of their subconscious program.

3) Embracing Imperfection

This is a funny exercise as it shifts their perception and makes them see that nothing in the world is perfect. I give them assignments like “go take a perfect shower”, “write a perfect poem”, or “cook a perfect spaghetti”. Of course, they can't do it and in the next appointment, their explanation revolves around things that “could make” the experience enjoyable and not the outcome alone. Letting them focus on the journey, and the experience and stressing less on doing things to remain in the circle of validating themselves is the objective here.

4) Shift the habit of Self Judgment and feeling worthy

These are the little wins through journalizing where the client is self-rating not on being self-critical, but working on their self-worth. I have seen a major shift in not just their temperament but also their overall personality. The exercise is basically to shift the perspective to a more positive mindset in seeing worth in one’s existence. I also focus on interdependence (with people connected in daily lives) and evidence which also shifts focus on what other’s journey has been which further could just switch the picture to yourself as an example.

5) Embracing Compliments

To validate ourselves for feeling not good enough, we discount people’s positive feedback and compliments. Someone says, Oh, I love your dress, and you respond "Well, thanks but it's quite old". I make them compliment themselves every single morning and learning to accept compliments opens their heart to a whole new level. The rigidity in body and mind goes down and so does the belief system.

6) Meditation – End-to-End Journey of Inner Child Work and Acceptance of Feelings

This by far has been the most effective source of healing in my practice, of course, coupled with other techniques. In this, a bespoke meditation is prepared for the client who specifically has their inner child story and feelings and it is mainly curated to encourage healing, acceptance and compassion.

All the events resulting in any beliefs get stored in our somatic memory and it is important for us to feel those feelings and accept them. When you feel the feeling and work on your heart centre, it synchronises your ANS. Compassion here is the key as a lot of people shut down and become numb, hence things like putting your hands on your heart while breathing through the feelings could calm your vagal tone and work on self-acceptance. Feeling the feelings also releases the tension in your body in terms of stiffness and rigidity that allows you to elevate your energy which further compliments the recovery.

7) Attachment Drama / Dialogue

This is best done in hypnosis but can also be done in Talk Therapy with eyes closed with some REM technique. Here we explore certain attachments in clients' lives and work on having a dialogue with the purpose of expressing the feelings which were never expressed and suppressed in the heart. The aim is to release and let go. This is also quite a powerful tool to heal and develop compassion not just for yourself but for others who hurt your feelings (maybe unintentionally).

8) Working on the Missing Core Belief

So people with the core belief often come in pairs “I am not good enough” but they also have a belief that "I am enough" (sometimes). So the main purpose is to bring the positive belief to shine. What I would do is work on their positive core belief. How would you like to see yourself? Use methods to strengthen that positive belief. What did I do today? I did something that’s moving towards my own goals, small tokens of appreciation could help build a solid foundation.

9) VIA Strength Test

I encourage people who are highly critical of themselves (people who believe that they don't have anything to be proud of in them) to take this test to make them understand their signature strength which defines their character.

Just a snapshot of some of my signature strengths looks like this. I love it!

10) Nutrition and Exercises to Reduce Inflammation

There is a lot of research highlighting the effect of exercise on the brain. I have personally seen brain scans and how they increase the energy in different cortexes of your brain

The impact of the neurotransmitters and upregulation of certain proteins in your internal chemistry does affect the neurons in your brain and of course the overall neural chemistry. I am not an expert in it but I did learn a lot about exercise and nutrition from my friend Diego Carrete. This was during my post-sugar research study where I gained 8kgs and his guidance worked wonders in helping me get back to my health goals. If you follow his LinkedIn, you will be shocked to see the mistakes we are making in nutrition exercises and other areas and will allow you to turn these right.

11) Validating the Feelings and taking in Compassion

This is a rare technique, where I use breathwork while activating the feelings of the client through their personal story, while I validate every step of their feelings and express compassion. The main fear of people with the belief of "not being enough" highly self-critical of themselves is to accept compassion if they are experiencing shame and find themselves not worthy of it. This helps them to open their heart and let their feelings in, and when the heart centre opens, the recovery begins.

It would be important to note that clients respond differently to the techniques and there is no one size fits all. The modalities and techniques are to allow them to develop self-acceptance and change the lens through which they view themselves.

?Years of feeling something repeatedly makes us numb and silent. I have lived a life of low self-esteem, and self-worth and worked hard to overcome it. It is a journey and even today I get triggered sometimes, and when I do, I remind myself of who I am.

I doubt the doubt, but never myself!

I am Enough!?

Gulneet Chadha

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