Why You Feel Not Good Enough (And How to Finally Change It)

Hi, I'm Laura Melrose, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the clinical director for Onsite's group practice. And today we're going to talk about why you feel stuck in negative beliefs. A lot of times when people are first coming into my office, they know where they feel stuck, but they don't always really understand where that comes from, how to help it. They just know I'm stuck in this certain thing and I don't know how to get unstuck. And a lot of times it's stuck in a relationship because what we found here in Onsite is we are often harmed or wounded in community. And so then it takes community to heal that. And so then when people are in relationship with other people and they find, gosh, why do I leave work at the end of the day? And I feel like I failed, or why did this relationship end? Or why does this keep happening to me? They're usually finding that's happening in relationship. And so that's a place we start. We look at where it's showing up in all areas of their life. Very common phrases I hear, I just don't feel like I'm good enough, or I feel like I'm too much, or I can't do anything right. So it's really interesting how I can have two completely different clients coming in with the same message of I'm not good enough, or I'm too much, can't do it right, I'm always failing, those kinds of things. Clinically speaking, I always want to be really careful and intentional in telling clients that when we come in here, we're talking about things that happened from their childhood. It is not intended to blame or shame their parents, because we are all human, and we're all showing up with what we grew up with, right? So even in looking at how your parents were with you, probably their parents were with them in that way, and their parents were with them in that way, right? This is generational wounding. I think of it a little bit more like that, and it's our responsibility to heal what happened to us so that we can break that generational wounding that happens, right? So if I picked up something from my mom and dad and I don't do my work to heal that wound, then it is potentially something I would pass on to my children. So that wounding looks like if I had to work really hard and I thought that my love for my parents only came from how well I performed, or if connection with my parents only came from being good enough, right? A good enough girl following the rules, right? If I would have picked up that message and then in my adult life, I get my performance evaluation at work and I don't hit certain marks, then I might go to a place of like, oh no, I'm not good enough. I have lost connection. This means I'm a terrible person, right? So then it's my job to go back to where that message first began, because we have to be able to in our everyday lives get feedback or hear things, you know, that might be hard to hear, but not take it to such a deep place inside of us. And when it goes to that really deep place inside of us, that's how we know we have a wound from way back from our childhood that needs some healing. It needs some repair. I love doing this type of work because it's such a personal journey for me as well. I have had to learn, you know, when the spot in my back shows up, I know, oh, I must be working really hard to try to do something right or be good enough. And so I learned that in my journey, like my body speaks to me in a way that used to, I would have thought, oh, why is that pain showing up? And now I kind of see it as a gift for me. And so I invite clients into that same space of like, well, what are these constant headaches maybe telling you about what you're carrying? Or what is your heart racing telling you about what you're worried about, stressed about? Often think about pain in our body as a light, the light on the dashboard of your car, right? So when the light comes on and you need gas, you got to go get gas. The check engine light is on, go check the engine, right? So our bodies are like, that's the car we're driving around every day. So our body speaks to us and lets us know. And it's important to listen. It's a really beautiful process. And I wish I could say that it happens quickly because a lot of my clients come in and they want to, let's get to this fast, right? But because this happened so long ago, right? It's a very precious, sacred journey. And so, you know, sometimes I'll see clients several weeks in a row. Sometimes I see clients in an intensive, but the process is the same. And that when they come in to see me, they tell me, you know, okay, I'm feeling not good enough. Here's how it's showing up in my life. And then I start getting curious about when it first began. And then I have a whole process where I map out the parts of them. And this is called internal family systems. It's my primary model of therapy. And so there's no way I could give you a full description of it today. But in summary, I map out all the parts of them, like the parts of them that show up in their everyday life. So the part of them that says always trying to get it right because they don't feel good enough. I want to get down here to when did you first not feel good enough? Tell me the story about that. Like, we know this is what's showing up here today, but I want to know the story of where this began. And at some point we're going to learn, well, there was this four-year-old or a six-year-old or eight-year-old or whatever, and this is what I experienced. And then we learn more about that story. And as I walk the client through that story, I help them get in this grounded self adult place and be with that younger version of them to reparent them in a way they needed. So again, you know, we're not trying to blame parents. We're not trying to say, well, your parents were awful. And if they would have just da da da da da when you were four, right? But what we do say is, oh, as a four-year-old or as a six-year-old or whatever age you were when that thing happened and you didn't get what you needed, you didn't get the repair from your parents for whatever reason. Now, as an adult, you can go be that safe, nurturing, kind adult. You can go be with that younger version of you and give her or him what they needed to heal. And so that's what makes it such a unique process and such a sacred process because for some clients that takes three sessions and some clients that takes 10. It just depends what the story is. To be fair, I mean, a lot of clients come in and go, you want me to what? Like, that sounds so weird and so woo-woo and so hooey or whatever. And that actually makes me laugh. I love that when clients say that because they're being honest, right? Like, I'd much rather they just tell me, this sounds so weird or this sounds so crazy. I'm like, great, tell me more about why this sounds so weird and crazy because I sat in your seat once upon a time and said the same thing, right? But it's hard to explain. What I say to people a lot is, if you will trust me in this process, if you will let me walk you through these meditations and just try it. And if you don't like it, we won't do it anymore. But it's such a unique and beautiful process of me as an adult going to be with this younger version of myself. And when clients do feel resistant to it, what I often will say is, well, I wonder how that little, that younger part of you felt. I wonder if that, if your younger self felt rejected, felt abandoned, felt like nobody was seeing him or her. And that's kind of what's still happening. So would you just be willing to try it with me and see if it works? If you don't like it, we don't keep doing it. You know, but I sort of invite them into this idea of like, the longer we're avoiding it, we're still leaving that little version of them behind, not being able to be healed. What I would say to everyone, all of us, is yes, we all have an inner child. And what often happens is, as we get older and, you know, whatever message that inner child picked up, which may be, I'm not enough. And it's not the same for everyone. But that's the one we'll use for the sake of this meditation, because it's such a popular one that I hear. At whatever age you picked up that messaging, and it will be different for everyone, right, that is your inner child wounding. However, what I would say is, we all have an inner child, right? Like, if you think about, like, going out and playing. If you were going to leave work today and go play and do whatever your inner child wanted to do, we might all pick something different, right? So everyone's got an inner child. And it's not always about this inner child wounding. And pretty much all of us had some kind of message that we picked up when we were a kid that we haven't healed yet, or that we're still in the process of healing. So what I would invite is to think about a message, first of all, today that you have about yourself that just goes on a loop. And that loop could be, you know, you hear it in your mind every day, or you hear it at least once a week. But it's a loop that shows up a lot. So first invite, what is this loop that shows up for you on a daily basis right now in your present life? And then I would invite you to think about, when did you pick up that message? Like, when did you first start thinking, I'm not good enough, or whatever that message is for you? Was there anything else going on in your life at that age when you started picking up this message and you started not doing your homework very well? People were being hard on you. Was there an event happening in your life? We have created a resource to walk you through the exercise we just went through. Click on the link in the description below and we will send you this resource. The most important two words that I give people when they're connecting with their inner child, be curious, offer compassion. Because what I hear a lot of times that people will see like the picture of their younger self and be like, oh, she was so scared, she was so fat, she was so whatever, he was, you know, he wasn't very brave or whatever. Well, those are the messages those children picked up. And so what our inner child needs from us now is curiosity. Like, tell me more about what was going on for you. And then the compassion looks like, oh, I really can see what you were going through. That must have been hard. So I would invite as they're doing that exercise all the ways they can be really curious with their inner child and offer a lot of compassion for what they were going through at that specific time of their life. So often what I will hear from clients are things like, oh, you know what, my parents are going through a divorce at that time. Or, oh, a really good friend of mine moved away, which people like to label what's traumatic and what's not traumatic. But when you're a little kid and you've got a really strong attachment with your best friend and then they move away unexpectedly, that's traumatic for a kid, right? You know, it could be something like someone in your family dying. You know, you have a loss in your family. And so these traumatic things that happen when we're younger that then cause us to behave in certain ways. Like, of course, we're not going to be doing our homework very well. Of course, we're not going to perform at the same level. And then when that happens and we start getting the feedback around, like, why are you acting like this? Why are you making bad grades? Why are you right? And we don't have language as a kid to say, well, because my parents just went through a divorce and I'm not doing so great. You know, or my best friend just moved away and I'm angry about it. Right. We just the feedback we end up getting is, you know, you're not being a good kid or you're acting out or you're whatever. And then the message we internalize is, oh, I guess I'm not good enough. When really what needed to be healed was that child needed to be seen for the event, the situation, the trauma that he or she was going through. Like, did anyone check on her around her parents being divorced? Did anyone check on him about his best friend moving away? So now that we've identified this statement and the age where we picked it up, we want to talk about what we would do next. Like, where do you go from there? Right. You've identified a statement. You've identified an age where you picked it up. But then what does it look like to heal that? And so that's where re-parenting comes in. And, you know, you don't have to be a parent to re-parent yourself. That's a question I get a lot. Well, I'm not a parent, so I don't know how to do this. And if you are in your grounded adult self, you have the ability to re-parent your younger self. It doesn't require being a parent. It requires that curiosity and compassion we were talking about and being with. That is something I say to clients a lot. Like, most of the time, you know, whatever age we were or are in this moment, we're going through something. Most of the time we need a witness. We need someone to be with. We don't need someone to fix or make it go away. I mean, it'd be great, right, to make something go away or get it fixed. But in these cases where we picked up a message from our childhood around something that happened, we can't fix it. There is no going back and fix it or making it different. But we can go back and be with that younger part of us in the way that we really needed. And usually that is through being with that part of us, being curious and compassionate toward the experience. I'm here to listen now. I'm sorry no one was there for you then. How can I be here for you now? And when I walk clients through this meditation, you know, it's inviting them to really be with that younger part of them. Not what we think they needed, but really curious, allowing that part to say, I just really needed someone to check on me. Or I really needed someone to just hold me for a while. I really needed someone to take me out to a movie and remember that I was still here. Everybody was all about my parents' divorce and they were fighting or whatever, but I needed somebody to take me out for ice cream, right? So we're getting really curious about what that younger part of us needed that they didn't get, and then we're doing it for them. I'm always really careful in situations like this of telling exactly step by step what you do because it is such a nuanced. It's why we say come to therapy, because there's so many nuanced things that can come up and show up that somebody might not be able to handle on their own, and it's good to have a therapist in the room or another person in the room to walk them through that. You know, but for the sake of what we're doing here and just describing what reparenting can feel like, what it can look like, that's a good way to summarize it. Another thing I like to do is invite clients, you know, where they take that picture along with them, right? Like, what would your inner child wanted to do that day? And then, like, take yourself out for ice cream, or go swing on a swing, or go run out in a field, right? Go do what your inner child really needed and wanted to do when they felt really connected and loved and seen. Yeah. For me, that's dancing. So, like, I know when I want to connect my inner child, I'm like, all right, let's go. Turn on the music. Let's dance. A lot of times people hear that word reparenting, and they're like, well, I'm not a parent, so how would I do that? But also what I hear, and this is kind of what I was describing earlier, there's other parts of us that show up, right? So, reparenting can feel hard for some people because when they're going in to be with that younger version of themself, some other part shows up and is like, I don't have time for this right now because I've got to get to a meeting, or this little kid in me is going to need something more than I can give right now. Various parts of us can show up in a way that keeps us from really being able to connect with that younger version of ourselves. Or we can have parts of us that are still hearing our parents' voices in our head, right? So, it's like, if I'm going to be with this younger version of myself, and then I find myself starting to say some of the same things my parents would have said, right? So, I see that a lot, too, where people are like, oh, I just can't. It's like, I don't know how to be with her because all I can hear is what my mom would have said or what my dad would have said, right? So, then we have to work with that first. We have to help kind of go, okay, that was mom's voice. Let's see if we can get a little bit of separation from that and now go back to this younger part and really find out what she needed to hear. What I love about our work here at Onsite is that we have a program that will work with your inner child. Every single one of our programs is going to really focus on where did you pick up this message, and we're going to look at your whole system, and we're going to go to this inner child work, no matter what program you choose. And specifically, where I work in the group practice, I love being able to work with people in an outpatient way. It's like an initial step that clients take. So, a lot of times when they don't know where to go, like counseling is where they start, right? Because sometimes it can feel a little scary to go into a week of something, right? And so, that's what I love about being in the Onsite group practice is we can have clients come in for an intake session and talk through it about what counseling is and how it can help you. And, you know, I love being able to work with a team where if I recognize, oh, this person would really benefit from our Living Centered Program, this person would really benefit from our Intensive Outpatient Program, or they would really benefit from Milestones. That's what I love about Onsite is we have a program for everyone, and we can help you find the right fit. So, I really want to invite you, if there's only one step you could take today, that first step would be identifying what is this message that you're carrying around on a daily basis that just feels too heavy, right? That first step of identifying, there's this thing I say to myself, and it feels so heavy. And then, if you could even identify, when did you first pick that up? Just that connection to that younger version of you is a first step in healing. Choosing to step into this invitation, I really believe is hopeful. You know, we don't have to carry around these statements every day. We don't have to have these beliefs about ourselves every day. And also, we're human. So, the reality that this statement shows up again is high, because it's part of our story. The hope is that if it shows up again, we will have new tools. We will have new ways to be with ourselves, to comfort ourselves. That's the hope. That's the goal. It's not that we're making history different. It's that we're making the present and the future different. Also, the beauty of this work is, you know, we do that healing for ourselves. We are impacting our future generations. And even just our people around us, right? Our co-workers, our friends, right? When I do this work for myself, I get to show up in my relationships differently. And that impacts them as well, right? That makes them be curious about themselves and be more compassionate for themselves. So, it's a beautiful way to not only impact my own life, but the people I love. I'm Laura, and this has been Why You Feel Stuck in Negative Beliefs.