People constantly compare themselves against messages they receive from friends, family, media, and our culture.
And those messages often contribute to feelings of “never good enough”:
Not attractive enough. Not intelligent enough. Not thin enough. Not successful enough.
For many of our clients, they’ve encountered these types of messages from a very young age, and often from the people they looked to most for love and encouragement.
In the video below you’ll get seven powerful insights, from some of the top experts in our field, about how they counter feelings of “never good enough” in their work with clients.
Take a look – it’s about 4 1/2 minutes.
To learn even more strategies for working with clients struggling with feelings of “never good enough,” check out our full-length course.
How have you worked with clients who felt they were “never good enough?”
Please share your comment below.
How can Marsha Linhan say that feelings aren’t facts when the fact is her own mother didn’t love her well & was abusive to her?? FACT her mother was abusive & abused Marsha telling her she was never good enough. Fact: Marsha suffered greatly due to the parental abuse.
my feeling of not being good enough stems from being a spaced out/ distracted / add child. Not sure which of those is true but there isca feeling of defective but loveable. Sweet but slow. Humourous but a bit thick. My not being good enough stems from a very angry, depressed father( Who I loved very much) and tried hard for him to LOVE me but coming from a Big family , I was shunned a little. I have no complaints because my mother was an ángel Who I adored. I was a mumny’s boy
I signed up for à couse to do with trauma and watched and listened to the start ! Then I was unable to get right back to it and now I can’t remember the name and how to get back to it. Could you help e please? My name is Lynne McGahey and I have serious trauma since childhood and ongoing ! I really this couse support !Thanks!
Hi Lynne. Please contact our support team at respond@nicabm.com and we would be happy to assist you!
Does “not good enough” mean you don’t need to improve to become the best version of yourself?
The best version of myself is to live with the consequencies of limited time, of handicap, of every day growth/increasing all my inner capacity of love. Not the capacity others want/demand/require, or said to me. As a 73 years widow with heavy trauma-history (as child, as adult), it is a permanent task that has not to do with material things. Not have but being in a loving state of myself-accepting and even all other living beings.
The function of the brain is to make predictions about meeting needs and aquiring alliances mates and resources and getting our physical psychological and social needs met. The reason telling a kid how smart they are is bad is because they eventually hit a point where they just assume they “should have been smart enough…but we’re not” and without a way to improve their intelligence in any reasonable easy way, they crumble. Now if you had been praising effort then when they hit a part they aren’t “smart enough for” their brains still able to make the prediction that if I just work hard I’ll make it still functions as valid under that circumstance. Now if instead of effort, and even in the “you’re so smart” circumstance, no one is being told that all the time and often that’s not what they get told at all. So then consider how the message that “you tried your best and it’s still not good enough” and by enough it means “enough for me to regulate and want to be close to you and give oxytocin vassopressin bonding chemicals and make an effort to meet your needs as well as mine”. Now if the brain is a prediction making machine, the problem with this repetative message is because of how humans structure themselves there is ample opportunity for it to that prediction to be consistently validated by the enviroment and at a certain point, even you would succumb to kinda collapsing and not working hard.
I haven’t been able to help my mother overcoming the fear of being alone because she can’t do the daily chores and lost control of her muscles on both legs after a fall. We have tried to find a place for her in a home so that she can get the help and support. I don’t know whether this is going to help or IF it is to late nor this is going to improve our past relationships from the hurts and abusive neglect that hasn’t fade away even with all the closeness and affection we develop and share since her fall and handicap. If only there is any hope I would love to see her recovering and regaining in confidence that she will be ok.
Yes , I have worked with them and this could be from core beliefs. If you want to help this person recognize that “ Feeling Not Good enough” is from childhood as an example that your Parents, caregivers could have abused you mentally . They might of said negative comments and were living through you . Parenting is not easy if you are not aware of yourself .
YOU could of had a very strict parent who “ made you feel you everything you did wasn’t good enough and they were very hypercritical. There are many ways in therapy to go back in some cases living in the here and now , however. Processing this can be extremely helpful on moving forward .
You can get through this and see it’s not your thoughts , and find yourself in the journey . LORI English MSW
More detail re: time, how long, day, cost would be helpful.
Worked many years as an RN in many Specialties ,now retired but interested and always learning new info.
I work with Indigenous persons and find that talking about self-worth is a lifelong struggle. Mostly because of racism and discrimination and history. I spend most of my therapeutic time looking at the good aspect of an individual and undoing the trauma so many have experienced.
I am a care giver to a gal who is 74, ha sturgewebber Syndrome and has multiple episodes of traumatic experiences and has epilepsy. She has been through many counselors before I took her in. I have been caring for her now for over 8 years in my home. We have had countless tea table talks and discovered we aren’t so different. I have my own trauma I have been uncovering as I deal with hers.
Listening to all these people talk about the different aspects of trauma has helped me a great deal in helping myself and understanding her better and how to help her. G.B.
Hi! I’ll ask my client to go back to the time when they were made to feel not good enough and show compassion and encouragement that despite what other people told them they turned out good enough. Using such imagery can a powerful way to help them understand where this feeling of not being good enough came from and it could be countered
I bring my two dogs-Shekel- a long thin lasa-poo- with bilateral hip dysplasia and Punim-a morkie who looks like Buddha. I let them be with the client and point out that being in the moment for them is different that how we perceive it. When patient’s get into the “not good enough”, Shekel will worm his way against their body and give kisses. I tell the patient ” I guess he didn’t get the memo that you weren’t good enough. I also share that Shekel pooped in Macys Dept. Store-I had a choice-leave him because he wasn’t good enough at that moment or to share the story and claim him as mine. Vicki Berkus M.D.,Ph.D,CEDS
The first dis-ease is the dysregulation of attachment. You can’t fix this by isolated individual bootstrap methods ,it takes a community!!! I am a 66yr old stonemason ,I have studied this field of spiritual/emotional healing my whole life starting after a 2 1/2 yr all expenses pd vacation otherwise know as the county jail when I was 17.I’m 7 on the ACE’s scale. I have come to understand the field of grief up close and very personal . The heavy family Experience of grief,the epigenetic’s,the whole story coming out of the neurobiology.The story of vasovagal syncope and the reptilian nerve pathway kicking in when someone feels trapped became a reality for me when my chronic lyme(35+ yrs) AND my being a compassionate witness and caregiver for 8 of my family and best friends l4 yr long process of dying happened. I lost my wife and home,my business took on way to much debt which I’m still paying off.I was having mini heart attach’s for 11/2 yrs. Then they put a pacemaker in.Grief over a one time event is very different from grief over a lifetime of efforts. Healthy Attachment is our natural state IF we can find it,attachment to/with a long term train wreck that destroys your community is another monster altogether . I have bought some of your programs and programs of teaching from many other sources.AND YES there is much good to learn from them. BUT the field of trauma healing and resiliency DOSN’T help without resources available. And the core resource is attachment!!! The meta studies of resiliency points out the need for resources that are relevant to the individual’s vision and values. You don’t and Can’t become healthy and Then have a healing relationship when the internal dysregulation is too far off. Not everyone has the money to pay for long term counseling which can fail if all you do is return to the mess you started with of good intended people in an unworkable situation. SO please give some thought to building resiliency thru community AND personal relationships that can support people While they build resiliency AND THEN share/sell information to folks who do look for help by buying programs from well intended organizations that are honestly trying to help this onslaught of growing hell we call a nation/community.The first dis-ease is the dysregulation of attachment. You can’t fix this by isolated individual bootstrap methods ,it takes a community!!!
Community as healing was what I learned from an African medicine man, Mandaza Kandemwa and his student, Deena Metzger. I spent 15 years participating in what’s called African Dare’ which brings the entire community in to heal and connect. My biggest issue with it was it didn’t carry into my daily life.
We need organizations that are willing to provide groups and places for people to gather simply to work on re-attaching to other humans. People need safe, loving, supportive community settings where there is no pressure to be anything other than being themselves.
Hi, recently I have a client who has been suffering from a diagnosed dementia. being 56 y.o. she has been through chemotherapy for a form of undiagnosed of cancer. Her confidence drops rapidly since she become aware that there is something wrong with how she repeatly asks questions to her niece about her husband. She can’t recall when was the lst time she met her. But, she can recall any events about her sister who passed away twenty years ago. She seems to be fearful and lost in appearance and shows lmuch guilt for this mental confusion and changes create a sense of loff in identity and also fo inferiority in her. So far, my work to help her is to keep a satisfactory independent living skills so that she can still keeps her level of quality of life rather than an easier access to care because her husband has left her with many support.
I find the mindfulness exercise of loving kindness helpful with clients who are down on themselves. I invite them to focus on loving kindness towards the self, to express love and acceptance of all that they are, to smile inwardly and kindly to oneself (of however they choose to show this love to oneself), to notice that part of the body that needs the love. I invite them to practice this daily even if they don’t “feel” it at first.
Hi,
Here is another one. Something about this article captured my attention and I just want to share it.
Search for “Shame, Sin and Guilt” by Fraser Watts
Often these people have had experiences they remember with emotion of either some kind of criticism, constant or otherwise, as a child, or a situation that they felt responsible for and failed. The EMDR procedure is valuable as a way of rapidly desensitizing to these memories and putting them in context, so allowing them to evaluate their relationship and responsibility with current circumstances appropriately. Any behavioral or cognitive procedures necessary become much more effective.
yes I agree, I was about to suggest the use of EMDR WHICH ENABLES a person to experience a difficult or traumatising memory and re label it
Hi –
I’ve found this article so interesting…
“Brain Activation Associated with Pride and Shame”
In the emotional aspect, shame and guilt are negative emotions that cause negative feelings and psychological pain ( Tangney, Miller, Flicker, & Barlow, 1996).
I work with my three children, five, nine and twelve who all are highly sensitive. My husband is a nocturnal and very quiet man. Cries and tears come to my nine year old easily . I am giving them another model of being a strong person who can control her emotion so that they can navigate and go through life strong. Yes, I have my temper and I have learned to control it especially when we are all driving to out of state to visit my mother, in the van. At times, it feels like my children got this personality type from my husband especially when he is around all the women in our family.
I noticed that when a child looks his or her best, he or she can reveal to the parents how they feel about themselves. With a new haircut, outfit, positive attitude, he/she will catch up on self-confidence. I like Linda Graham, Marriage and Family therapist who talked about trying one day at a time and then, go to the next and the next by increasing in the density of the task. This is really a great tool, for overcoming the “never good enough” feeling when there is self-doubt.
picked up – just now – the names of the writers, Terry & Stuart Hirschberg (Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey, Newark)
check out the book “One world many cultures” that keeps the readers interests to the culture and people of other countries through the eyes of someone from that culture, customs, rituals, and values. Thank you for sharing your authorship.
As an art and journal therapist, I have clients find through drawing and collage their Nurturing Parent within (often built on the model of someone who nurtured them in childhood or any other time). Then they have written dialogues between their dominant hand (NP) and inner child, often a vulnerable state (non dominant hand). Their vulnerable child is the result of their Critical Parent beating them up plus negativity form the outer world. We also find a Protective Parent within who sets boundaries and limits on negativity from outside and inside. And we work with the Critical Parent within who repeats the programmed messages of no good enough or “you’re downright bad”, etc.” I describe this Inner reparenting process in my book, Recovery of Your Inner Child (1991. Simon & Schuster).
I give clients some feedback about how well they are doing. This validates and provides them with facts that what they are doing is different from who they are eg. this teach and encourage them to have a reality check.
Hi Ruth,
I have used most of these ideas but part of my problem is to remember them all and others at any particular time and alsoI find spending time on each idea sometimes it is hard for the student to remember the ideas you do give them.
For me this not feeling good enough is a part that almost everyone has experienced; it’s similar to feeling like an imposter, no matter how accomplished you are. I am a certified IFS therapist and I deal with it as a part. If we get curious about a part, see what the part wants you to know or wants to show you, go back to the earliest time when this part took on the belief and we can view it with curiosity and compassion, it creates a lot of space inside. The more we accept and learn to appreciate ALL the parts of us even if they don’t always serve us, the more we can love and understand others. Connecting with the client with compassion and curiosity helps the client connect to their parts in a similar fashion.
Helpful info, thanks for the video
Shame shields.
Beautifully explained, love all… thank you for the video.
Thanks! believing your belief in anything can suffice … held hug happy or cold or not hungry …
I appreciated the opportunity to learn from caring, dedicated professionals. All of their advice resonates for me.
As a Stress Consultant, I come into ‘never good enough’ from the standpoint of “good enough for Whom?”
I love this, and I will begin to use it with the single mothers I work with. Thank you for posting! I am a Case Manager for mothers in our program….they have access to free counseling on our campus; I find that often they “save” some difficult questions or have some feelings they want to explore before they share with the counselor. I like this approach.
I used to feel “not good enough”, then I discovered the work of Stephen Porges and Stanley Rosenberg. I was not in a sustained Ventral vagal state, nor was anyone I knew. As human beings we need others to consistently send us signals of safety, if those are absent from our lives, then we go into either arousal or shut down and those states don’t feel good at all-hence the not good enough feeling. Teaching Stanley Rosenberg’s simple protocol for stimulating the cranial nerves involved in the social engagement network to friends, family, and workmates provided me with a community of people who could send and receive signals of safety- love. We all now feel good enough and can spot when others need our assistance to return to ventral vagal.
I volunteer at a therapeutic riding center. The horses were the first mammals I used the social engagement network practice with, I could help the horses feel safe with me.
All my clients come to me with this symptom of their unhealthy relationship with self. And they all benefit from first having a witness to their feelings, then being shown how to link them with the facts, so they can move through one to the other. Learning this passage helps them develop the skill for themselves. Which leads to increased self-regulation and resilience.