THE KSCHRONICLES: You Are Enough

Inadequacy—not being good enough—is experienced by everyone at one point or another in various levels of intensity. Usually persons experience and get over these feelings very quickly, but when feelings of inadequacy—low self-worth, incompetence, powerlessness, and even shame—begins to interfere with your ability to maintain relationships, succeed at work or in school, or feel happy and at peace, exploring the underlying issues that incite those feelings may help.

I have definitely and still definitely suffer from feeling Inadequate. Inadequacy generally leads people (including me) to view themselves negatively in a number of ways, and they often assume that other people view them in the same manner.

What I’ve noticed is that some people enter intimate relationships with the expectation (often subconsciously) that their partners will fill that void, or that simply being in a relationship will cause them to view themselves as adequate. What they don’t know is that feelings of inadequacy may in fact be heightened in a relationship, as they suspect their partners judge them as they judge themselves.

It took me a long time to understand that gaining feelings of competence and self-esteem are personal processes that CANNOT be provided by other people.

People (like me) may attempt to mask or hide their feelings of inadequacy from themselves and from others in a number of ways others may isolate themselves socially or otherwise close themselves off to the advances of others for fear of being truly “seen.”
But what can we do to combat these feelings

The first thing to do is to name your insecurity. This is often the hardest thing to do, because obviously we don’t want to own our insecurities. In our minds, being insecure means we are weak, so we avoid them. But by avoiding them or pushing them down, what we are implicitly saying is that our feelings aren’t valid, that we aren’t valid. The goal is to bring our insecurities to the front of our mind – to write them down so we can see them, to make them real.

With the insecurity named, it’s now time to think a bit on why you feel this way. When was the first time you felt this insecurity. Who were you with? What were you doing? What ways does it manifest itself today? What situations do you note feeling the insecurity? Is it around certain people? What kind of people are they?

The goal is to ask yourself enough questions to be able to pinpoint where the insecurity comes from, and what triggers it in your day-to-day. Only when we see our insecurity as something separate from who we are can we begin to work through and change our relationship to it. Seeing it separately means it does NOT define who we are.

Allowing ourselves to be real and vulnerable is not always easy. However, living a life hiding from our true identity is even more painful.
Living your truth means embracing and accepting all aspects of you—bumps, bruises, and all. This is, after all, the meaning of life.

Remember: You are enough!

Ref: http://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/inadequacy

How to Stop Feeling Inadequate and Embrace Your Imperfect Self

Overcoming Feelings of Inadequacy From the Subconscious Mind

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The KSChronicles are the observations and insights of blogger and journalist Kerdisha St.Louis. Each article seeks to invoke a reaction and/or introspection from readers in Dominica and the Diaspora on various thought provoking issues and topics. The column is published every Friday.