There are three
kinds of “not good enough.” An athlete may not have the skills to be in
the Olympics; a pianist may not have a mature aesthetic sense: They are
not good enough. There is the “not good enough” indicted by parents – usually fathers
– of their sons. Donald Dutton (The Batterer) notes that this kind of shaming of boys – “you’re
not good enough, you’ll never amount to anything” – is the primary factor that
will grow them to become domestically violent. And there is the subject of this post: The client who feels or fears she is “not good enough” to pursue a
career or academic plan for which she is entirely qualified, or could become
qualified.
When a client tells
you she doesn’t feel good enough to be a personal trainer, or a nurse, or to go
to college, and is clearly coming from a place of low self-esteem, don’t apply the Cognitive Therapy techniques: asking her to be realistic
or to “vigorously dispute” an introject or to de-catastrophize, or mindfulness or skills training or whatnot. Let her know this: “Not
good enough” is not a feeling. There is no emotion of inadequacy, and inadequate
is not what she feels. The client does have a feeling that is bad – “bad” in
the way one wine is a $4.99 Mogen David and another is a $5,983 Screaming Eagle
Sauvignon Blanc: a “product” or result that has complexly different chemical contents
and histories. She has been made to feel bad about herself in a particular
way, far back in her history, her childhood. That feeling has nothing causal of,
equal to, adult-stage incompetence. Yes, it might have led to a depression that
limited her motivation and later put a damper on developing a proficiency. It
might as easily have goaded her to excel beyond the norm. But it is not a
feeling of “not being good enough.”
Now you will point
her to the feeling. If she can, she needs to regress to that abysmal pain of being
labeled insufficient or defective by her sick caregiver, because a “B” grade was
not acceptable or a chore was never done to a parent’s vengeful standard. Or regress to the sad inertia of
living in a depressed home of helpless parents, where she absorbed futility.
What makes a child feel better? Crying it all out to a listening, believing,
caring person. Your client needs to remember and cry, finally grieve the loss.
Nothing else can change her bad thinking.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.