The ‘not good enough’ feeling is actually a wound, much like the ‘mother wound’ or the ‘persecution wound.’ Of all of the emotional wounds that we experience in our lives, the feeling of being unworthy or ‘not enough’ is one of the most common. I think its even fair to say that we’ve all felt this in some way at some point in our lives. Some of us have had this emotional wound since early childhood.

In this article, we will explore together the ‘not good enough’ feeling, how it affects us and also how to heal it.

 

What is the ‘not good enough’ wound?

When you have this wound, you have the general feeling of being unworthy or not good enough, no matter what your achievements or positive traits. 

Sometimes we adopt this wound from what other people have said or done to us or sometimes we inherit it from a parent. And if you’re extra lucky, you get it from both. We spend our lives living from a place of lack or not feeling worthy and so of course, we attract more of the things and the people that reinforce our lack or unworthiness.

This feeling then becomes a limiting belief. We adopt it as truth and therefore we believe that we are truly not good enough no matter what we do or accomplish.

This wound operates under the emotion of shame so it is highly charged (and very low on the vibration scale of emotions). Shame often leads us into secrecy and so many of us never share our experiences of this wound. Many of us aren’t even consciously aware that we have it because it is so deeply hidden in our shadow.

So how did you get this wound?

Many times this wound begins in early childhood, sometimes as early as infancy. When you cried as a baby and wanted to be picked up but your mother didn’t pick you up, you could have internalized this as “oh, I must not be good enough”.

Perhaps later, as a toddler, you spilled juice everywhere and your dad yelled at you. This may have been the start of your ‘not good enough’ feeling.

These are very rudimentary examples just to give you a few ideas so that you can start thinking back and observing memories from your own past There’s so many different ways to have developed this wound and sometimes, it’s just a bunch of these scenarios happening over and over again where finally, we adopt this belief that we are just not good enough.

Symptoms of the ‘not good enough’ wound

When one has a core belief that he or she is not good enough, often it translates to low self esteem. Other ways that this wound can manifest are:

~ Feeling like no matter what you do, you aren’t good enough (even after acing a test or winning an award)

~ Always striving to improve yourself and not being able to enjoy the journey-only thinking about the destination.

~ You are a people pleaser and have a hard time saying no

~ You may lack the ability to set good boundaries for yourself

~ You tend to be a giver. Often giving from an empty well. You also have a hard time receiving.

~ You may seek comfort measures as a way to cope with this feeling. This could include food, alcohol, drugs, tv, and excessive working or exercise.

~ May be very self critical and hard on yourself, hold yourself to very high standards

~ in severe unhealed cases, anxiety and panic can be present

~ you may ignore your self care, often feeling like it is selfish for you to do so.

This feeling is often hard to shake. Sometimes you may not even be able to pinpoint that this is what you’re feeling.

My Story

I lived almost my entire 34 years with this wound and am just now able to begin the healing process with it, now that I know what it is! I was one of those that most likely adopted this core belief about myself as an infant. I actually remember being about 3 years old and NOT FEELING GOOD ENOUGH. That’s how deep this wound is for me.

It all came to a head when I became a mother. I will spare you the gory details but I’ll just say it ended with me having severe postpartum depression. I remember one instance when I was standing in my kitchen and had to make my baby a bottle of my best friend’s breast milk because my supply was low. I felt like the biggest failure for having to do that. I was sobbing uncontrollably when finally my husband took me to the other room and said clearly there is something much deeper going on here than just this bottle.

That’s the first inkling I had that I do have this ‘not good enough’ wound and it actually started me on this journey of healing.

How to Heal

The good news is that you can heal! The first step, like a lot of healing, is to become aware that you have the wound in the first place. If you feel that this is part of your core belief system, take some time to think back and seek memories where you can remember feeling not good enough.

I will lead you through some of my favorite tools for healing.

EFT

My favorite tool for healing this wound is EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). This technique is also known as Tapping. When you use this technique, you tap along meridian points that are able to access the amygdala. You focus on a negative feeling, in our case, the “I’m not good enough” feeling. As you tap you keep feeling this negative feeling. Within a few minutes, your acceptance of this feeling will start to move into being able to resolve it. By tapping into your fight or flight system, you are able to replace those negative feelings and responses into neutral or positive ones.

You can read more about EFT here. My favorite practitioner to watch is Brad Yates. You can tap right along with him here.

Reiki

Reiki is so deeply healing on so many different levels. It not only addresses the physical body but also the emotional and spiritual body, as well. This powerful healing modality gives transformative results. You can read more about Reiki here.

Inner Child Work

Working with you inner child is so helpful when dealing with the ‘not good enough’ wound. Because often the wound begins in childhood, it is necessary to go back to this time in your life and talk with your inner child. Get her perspective. Let her talk about how it made her feel when ____ happened. Once you and her emote, then you can offer some healing and give her words of comfort like “I’m so sorry that happened to you. I am here to protect you now. You are always good enough”. You can read more about inner child work here.

Reframe your mindset and use affirmations

After doing some major healing of our wound, we need to start reprogramming our subconscious mind so that we can eradicate this limiting belief that is not serving us.

Our brains are very much like computers and will accept programming and conditioning. So if you tell yourself “I am not good enough”, that is exactly what you will believe. So it’s time to start retraining and reframing how you talk to yourself.

For this exercise, fold a piece of paper in half. Write down a few negative thoughts and limiting beliefs that you have on one side of the paper. On the other side, reframe those statements into an affirmation. So if one of your limiting beliefs is “I will never have enough money”. Your affirmation might look something like “I am open to receiving abundance”.

Other healing tools include:

~ Journaling

~ Therapy

~ Having a mindfulness practice

You don’t have to live with your wounded programming. There is healing for the taking. I hope this article helps shed a little light on what this wound is and how you can heal it. Be patient with yourself as you process and heal.

I would love to hear your experiences of your ‘not good enough’ wound in the comments below.

Thanks for reading and for allowing me to share. Through our sharing, we can process and take away part of the shame that comes with our wounds.

Happy healing!

With love,

Destiny