76: Why Do I Feel Like I’m Not Good Enough? How to Heal the Feelings of Low Self-Worth, Shame, and Inadequacy

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Oct 18

Have you ever felt like you aren’t enough? Have your parents ever asked why aren’t you smarter, more athletic, or more like your siblings? Or have you ever felt like you aren’t good for your partner or to be in a relationship? Or maybe you feel like you just can’t ever get it right at work?

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In this episode, we will discuss why so many of us struggle with not feeling like we are enough. We will discuss the tough feelings you may feel and identify the root cause for these beliefs. My intention for this episode is for you to feel less alone and to help you start healing your core wounds because you deserve to feel worthy and enough.

Recommended Episode 🎙️

Free Journal Prompts

When you think of “not being enough”, where do you feel it in your body? Is there an aching in your chest? A pit in your stomach? Does your body get tight? Spend some time reflecting on where you feel the feeling of not being enough in your body.
When you feel like you are not enough, what feelings do you feel? Shame? Inadequacy? Sadness? Anxiety? Write all the feelings that arise when thinking about this belief.
In what areas of your life do you feel like you are not good enough?
Download the full list of FREE journal prompts!

Book Recommendation 📚

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't)( Telling the Truth about Perfectionism Inadequacy and Power) by Brene Brown
Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C Gibson

Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 00:15
Why Do I Feel I’m Not Enough?: 02:09
Outro: 39:43

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey, beautiful souls. My name is Amanda Durocher, and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers. I believe you have all the answers.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:27]:
You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Today, we are discussing the topic, why do I never feel good enough? This is actually a question I received from a listener on Instagram, and I think it's such a great topic for us to discuss. So today, when we're discussing this topic of not feeling good enough, I really want you to think about, have you ever felt like you aren't good enough? Have your parents ever asked you why you aren't smarter, more athletic, or more like your siblings? Or have you felt like you aren't good enough for your partner or to be in a relationship? Or maybe you feel like you can't ever get it right at work. In today's episode, we're going to discuss why so many of us struggle with not feeling like we're enough, And we're going to really dive into your feelings and identify some types of events in your past that may be holding you back in the present and may be creating this experience of not feeling good enough here and now. My intention for this episode is for us to come together and feel less alone around this feeling of not being good enough. I think this is such an important topic because I think everybody struggles with not feeling good enough in some area of their life. I know for me, I've felt not good enough in every area of my life, and this is something that I've been healing and working on for a very long time.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:39]:
I believe the feeling of not being good enough is a core wound, and we'll talk more about that today. I also wanna mention here up front that I'll also have some journal prompts that you can find on my website after this episode at newviewadvice.com/76 to assist you with processing and healing from not feeling good enough and helping you to identify where this core wound of not feeling good enough may have originated from. So with that, let's jump on in.
Question: Why Do I Never Feel Good Enough?
So today's question is, why do I never feel good enough? And for this question, I wanna start with what is this feeling of not being good enough? So when we feel like we're not enough, it often feels like low self worth, low self esteem, insecure, feeling insecure cure about ourselves, feelings of inadequacy, feeling like a failure. And what is also connected to this feeling of not being good enough are feelings of shame. So I've talked about shame throughout a lot of different episodes, but a quick rundown on shame is that shame is the belief that we are wrong in our being. So Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly and a bunch of other books I highly recommend, I'll link them in the show notes at newviewadvice.com/76. She often talks about shame and guilt together.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:53]:
So shame is a focus on self, and guilt is focused on behavior. So what this means is that shame arises when we make a mistake and we say, I am bad. I am wrong. I am a mistake rather than making a mistake and saying, I did something wrong. I did something I regret. I made a mistake. Right? So the example I often use is, say, you break a cup and it shatters all over the floor, and You say, oops. I made a mistake.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:21]:
Can I help you pick that up? That's guilt. You see that you did something that you regret. You see that you made a mistake. Right? You take responsibility for that action. Shame on the other hand is you break a cup and you say, oh my god. I'm bad. Oh my god. I am a mistake.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:36]:
This is important to talk about with this feeling of not being good enough because shame is often one of the reasons that we have trouble getting to this core wound and allowing this courtroom to the surface because shame also lives in secrecy, silence, and judgment. And it's not until we bring This belief of not being good enough to the light that we're able to heal it. I think one of the things that keeps this belief of not being good enough hidden within us is that we don't talk about it. I think so many of us feel alone with the feeling of not being good enough. We think that everybody else has it figured out, or we think that everybody else is a success and we deem ourselves a failure, or we look at in the world and we think everybody else Has it all, and we don't. Or we think that everybody else has high self esteem and thinks they're enough, and we don't understand what's wrong with us. That's a shame belief. There's something wrong with me.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:31]:
I am wrong. And we continue to judge ourselves, that judgment. We remain silent about it, and we keep it hidden in secrecy. And that's important for us to talk about because healing, shame, and healing the feeling of not being good enough requires us to stop judging ourselves, to bring it to the light and to no longer be silent about it. It's okay if you feel like you're not good enough. I think it's a very human belief. I think it's very common for humans to feel like they are not good enough. I wish that wasn't the case.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:00]:
I know how painful that belief has been in my own life, and it's been something that I've really been looking at over the last year, those core beliefs and where they originated from. So some examples of where you may not feel like you're good enough in your own life could be that you never feel good enough for your family. Maybe you feel like nobody understands you. Maybe you don't feel seen by your family. I think this Craving to be seen is very much connected to not feeling like we're enough and not accepting ourselves. And so I think that Family structures can often trigger that feeling of not being enough. Why am I never enough for my mother? Why is she always criticizing me? Or why am I never enough for my father? Why can't he see me? Why can't he be proud of me? Why can't he show up for me? What am I doing wrong? I think that is very common in family structures or maybe you're constantly compared to your siblings, and you wanna know why they seem like they're enough and you are not enough. I think another place where we see this belief of not being enough would be in relationships.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:03]:
So maybe in a romantic partnership, you feel like you're not enough for or partner. You don't understand why they're not able to love you in the way that you're craving, or maybe you feel like you're not enough to be in a relationship. Maybe you've experienced a lot of rejection recently, and we talked about rejection in last week's episode. If you're interested in that topic but maybe you've created this belief that I'm not enough. That's why I can't find love. Or I'm not enough for friends. Maybe you've been playing out this belief there. Or you could have this belief when it comes to your work.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:34]:
I'm never enough for a promotion. I'm always behind. Why can I never get anything right? Maybe you're looking for a job. Maybe you were laid off, and you're saying, I'm not enough. I've never been enough. And so we can play out this belief of not being enough in every situation in our lives. I know that that's what I've done. I have, in my life, in the past, Felt like I wasn't enough in every situation, in my family, in my friends, in my relationship, in my work, in my creativity, in my body.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:01]:
Right? That's another one we can really do is my body's not enough. Why can't it be something else? Right? There's not enough feeling is that low self worth, that low self esteem that who you are right now is not enough. And that's not true because we are enough in every moment. We're enough in the present, but it's the work. It's the healing work, the inner work to Look at why we don't feel like we're enough in every moment even though we are. Our logical brain could say, okay. I'm enough now, But do you feel like you're enough now? And if you don't, that's where I invite you to start becoming curious about where this belief of not being enough may have originated. So I believe that not feeling like we're enough very often goes back to our childhoods, a critical adult, or a traumatic experience.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:53]:
So let's start with talking about childhood. So I think in childhood, many of us take on this belief of not being good enough because there was a moment in our childhood where we were not seen or where somebody criticized us or where we took on this belief of not being good enough because in that moment, that's how we felt. And when in childhood, the beliefs we take on tend to come to adulthood until we look at them and heal them. Because when we're a child, especially before the age of 7. All this information thrown at us goes straight to the subconscious. Say you had a parent who said, you're stupid or a parent who said, why aren't you more like your brother? Or you had a parent who said, can you ever be easy? Or you had a parent who said, can you just be quiet for a second? And in that moment, they didn't understand what they did to warrant that response. So in that moment, they took on the belief, I'm not good enough or I'm wrong or I'm bad. And so then they take on that belief of I am bad, and they begin to go through their life believing they are bad.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:57]:
I've talked about this a few times now, but I view these core beliefs as glasses we wear. And so when we take them on, say we take on the glasses of I am bad, we begin to see all of life through this lens of I am bad. And so everywhere we go and everything that happens, we blame it on being bad. We say, I didn't get that job I wanted. It's because I'm bad. My relationship ended. It's because I'm bad. My mother still criticizes me.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:24]:
It's because I'm bad. And it's not until we become aware that we have this belief that we can take those glasses off, and we can begin to see situations more clearly. So for example, we can go out in the world and say, I didn't get that job. It doesn't mean I'm bad. There were just another candidate Who that job was for, but I trust that there's a job that's serving me. Or I had my heart broken, but I know that there's someone else out there for me because I am goodhearted or my mother's criticism of me has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with her. I choose not to take that on as my own anymore. So in our childhoods, these beliefs we take on often continue throughout our lives, And they can honestly wreak havoc because they create more suffering, because that shame and those feelings of low self esteem and low self worth and inadequacy are painful feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:18]:
They're feelings of suffering, and it's not until we're able to see them and heal them that we're we're able to release ourselves of that suffering. Here, I also wanna say that there are many people out there who say, well, I had a good childhood. Then. Why do I not feel like I'm good enough? I had a good childhood. I wanna challenge this and not challenge that you had a good childhood. I wanna challenge your all encompassing belief that you had 18 years, let's say, from the day you were born to when you Possibly went to college or left the house, but you had 18 years that were good. Just because you didn't experience a big trauma, such as mine, which was sexual assault and rape, or a parent who beat you or parents who got divorced, and maybe you didn't have any of that. That doesn't mean you didn't have a parent or a teacher or an adult in your life who criticized you, who talked about your body not being good the way it was.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:12]:
I think a lot of women grow up with mothers who criticize the way they look, and that can leave you not feeling good enough. Maybe you were constantly compared to your siblings, and that left you not feeling good enough. Maybe there was something you loved, and you were criticized for doing that. I know that I was criticized for my creativity. It was viewed as childish throughout my life, and that had an effect on me. I know that a lot of men are shamed out of their feelings as children, and they're not allowed to feel all the feelings they have, and they're viewed as bad. You can have a quote, unquote, good childhood, and still have moments from it that need to be healed and looked at. The healing journey is not about identifying with my life as bad.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:52]:
I have all this to heal. It's about honoring your real experience. It's about taking off the blinders and understanding that life is complicated. I don't know if anybody has a perfect childhood. That's absurd to me because life isn't perfect. Humans aren't perfect, And many of our parents didn't do the work we're doing now. I have a podcast where I talk about doing the inner work. I talk about connecting with our hearts, and I talk about our feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:20]:
This isn't something that could have existed 20 years ago. Our parents didn't have all the same resources we have today. And trauma wasn't a word that we all spoke about. And for the wound of sexual assault and rape, for example, that was something that we weren't even allowed to Speak about happening to us till a certain point in time. Women were supposed to bury and suppress that, and many of our mothers and grandmothers and relatives did suppress things that they survived. Same with the men in our lives. Grow up and be a man. Feelings are weak.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:53]:
Those are beliefs that our fathers, our grandfathers, our relatives, the adults in our life took on. And what happens with If that pain they're carrying or those beliefs, they pass them on to future generations. So I say that because you can have a quote unquote good childhood and still have things you need to heal, And there's nothing wrong with that. I think that we put this perfect childhood bubble around us as a protection mechanism. I know that I lived with that for a very long time. So it wasn't until I was 23 and my friend Dolan died, and I realized how unhappy I was that I realized there was something wrong. But my whole life, I had been told that my life was perfect. Amanda, you had a perfect childhood.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:37]:
Amanda, you grew up with money. Amanda, you grew up in a good school district. Amanda, your parents are still together. Amanda, you had this perfect childhood. Why are you upset? It wasn't until I started to go to therapy after the death of my friend where I went to resolve the grief I was feeling that I began to see that the unhappiness I felt wasn't just because of this grief I was going through, it was because there was a lot of unresolved wounding from my childhood. And so for me, I experienced sexual assault and rape, But I disassociated from those experiences, so I actually didn't remember that that happened till I was 25. Confusing process as to go through. But I mentioned that because when I started to go to therapy at 23, I really had this belief that my Childhood was perfect, and it wasn't until I began to peel back the layers.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:23]:
My father was never around. Oh, that could affect me? Oh, I don't have to feel eternally grateful because he made a lot of money, but he was absent? I'm allowed to have my feelings about what that did to me as a child. Oh, my mother's criticism of me affected me. Is that okay? Yes. It is okay. We have to admit these things to ourselves. Oh, I had a really bad relationship with my brother growing up. That caused a lot of stress for me growing up.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:54]:
That can affect me. That's okay. Yes. That's okay. I did have a good childhood in a lot of ways, and I also had a bad childhood in a lot of ways. 1 does not Outweigh the other, and one does not make one right or wrong. We're human. Both exist.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:12]:
I had great moments, and I had traumatic moments. My parents loved me, and my parents also criticized me. My parents did the best they could, and I wish they had done more. All of it can exist. We have to stop making one thing right and one thing wrong and understanding that we're complex. And many times, in most situations, there are multiple feelings that seem contradictory, and that's okay. And so when we're healing this wound of not feeling good enough, it's important for us to begin to be honest with ourselves that likely our life was not perfect. Our childhood was not perfect.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:52]:
Our parents were not perfect. Our Family was not perfect. Our school system was not perfect, and we were not perfect. But in order to heal this wound of not feeling good enough, you have to begin to be honest with yourself. And as I mentioned, this idea of having a good childhood and refusing to look at your childhood. Is it a fence mechanism? Because I'll tell you in my life, when I burst the bubble that my childhood wasn't a, quote, unquote, good childhood only, Incredibly painful. Oh my god. What did that mean for me? What did that mean about my life? I felt like this belief system was Holding this idea of who I was in place, and when I burst that bubble, it was painful, which is a reason why we build this Defense around ourselves because to admit to ourselves that our parents weren't perfect.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:41]:
To admit to ourselves that things they said stayed with us or that that really cruel teacher we had still haunts us or to admit to ourselves that that feeling of not being good enough has plagued us our whole lives, and it's not true, is a painful process. It's a liberating process, which is why we do it. Healing is incredibly freeing and liberating, but we build up these Fence is to keep us from the pain that we have to move through in order to reach that point of liberation. We have to feel the pain because that pain is I view stuck in our bodies. That pain exists because in that moment, when you took on the belief of not being good enough, you felt pain. That was a painful moment, and it deserves to be honored and witnessed. It deserves your own love. Because the truth is we're loving beings, And we have so much love inside of us, and the universe loves us.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:35]:
God loves us. Whatever word you use is perfect, but there's an all loving presence around us. And it is our own belief systems that keep us from feeling that loving presence. So that's a bit about how our childhoods create this not good enough wound. And with that, I also just wanna take a moment to really talk about critical parents, critical teachers, critical adults in our lives, and how that can really create this belief of not being good enough. Being criticized is incredibly painful, especially when we are vulnerable. So vulnerability is emotional exposure, and it's when we have that risk and uncertainty of how somebody may react to that emotional exposure. And when we're children, we are very vulnerable.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:16]:
We're showing up in states of Joy, love, happiness. And oftentimes, we can be criticized for that, or we're emotional, and we can be criticized for that, but it's that emotional exposure moment. And safe places are when you're vulnerable and somebody reassures you that that's okay. Unsafe environments are when you show up emotionally and you're whacked for that emotion. You're criticized. You're judged. You're shamed for that emotion. As I talked about earlier, I think this happens to a lot of boys growing up, that they are shamed and criticized for having their feelings, for crying, for yelling, for Any feeling they may have, they can be criticized for.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:54]:
In the book adult children of emotionally immature parents, which if you Relate to having emotionally immature parents. If that resonates for you, this is a great book to read because it can really help you with identifying core wounds and how those may be playing on your lives and how to heal your with your emotionally immature parents. But in this book, there's this example that really stuck with me of there's this boy who was so excited to see his father. He drew his father a picture. So when his father arrives home from work, he runs outside with that picture to show his dad. But when he's running outside, he knocks over a plant and the plant shatters. And the father ends up beating him for breaking the plant. And This is an extreme example, but this example shows you how he was vulnerable in that moment.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:39]:
He was so excited to see his dad. He was loving. He had this picture show him, and then he was beaten because he made a mistake. He accidentally broke a planter. And this happened so many times throughout our childhoods is that we are criticized or hurt when we make a mistake or when we're emotional. But I think that what this example shows is what can be incredibly damaging too is when we were criticized for moments of joy. When we went from feeling pure joy to pure terror or pure self hatred. I view those moments as some of the most damaging, And they are a reason we can begin to numb ourselves because we create the belief that it's not safe to be happy and it's not safe to be joyful.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:25]:
And that to me is incredibly sad. So I think that not only is it being criticized when we're feeling sad or angry or Having those feelings, it's also being criticized when we feel joy, and I think that's important to note. But I know that throughout my life, My parents' criticism, teachers' criticism, and other adults' criticisms left me with the belief of not being good enough over and over again. And I just wanna reiterate that this criticism can create this belief of not being good enough because when we're younger, oftentimes, we don't understand why we were being criticized. We don't understand why we were being judged. We don't understand why we were being shamed. So in a child's mind, the only way to cope with this is to tell ourselves that it is our fault. We created this.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:12]:
And so we tell ourselves, I'm not good enough. I'm bad. I'm wrong Because in that moment, we have no idea why we are being criticized, and we don't have the awareness yet to understand that that criticism has nothing to do with us and everything to do with the other person. When somebody criticizes you, it says more about them than it does about you. That's something that we can learn as adults, but as children, we don't understand that. So in that moment, because our worldview is pretty small when we're children, we really only see ourselves. We take it on as if that experience was our fault and that we are not enough. So the last thing I wanna touch on About where not being good enough can come from is trauma.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:52]:
So I consider being criticized traumatic. I consider that traumatic, but really use what language is best for you. You know, if you had a critical parent, but you don't view that as traumatic, don't all of a sudden take on the belief of that was traumatic because that's the word I use. I just views trauma as moments that get stuck in the body. So I don't think trauma has to be these big extreme examples. I think lots of little moments in life are also traumatic. Like, it's really when we disconnect from self, when these feeling gets stuck in the body, and when shame arises is so often traumatic. So throughout my healing, healing from having critical parents just as painful as healing from rape.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:29]:
It doesn't have to be that one is worse than the other. Both of them disconnected me from myself. Both of them made me feel like I was wrong and unworthy and worthless, so they were both incredibly painful to heal. But I want to just say that trauma also can create these feelings of not being good enough, and I wanna mention this because this trauma can happen outside of childhood. So we spend a lot of time talking about childhood and how critical adults in our childhood or just moments in our childhood can create this belief of not being enough. But I also wanna mention that trauma in childhood and also in adulthood can create this belief of not being good enough. But I do believe in adulthood, Oftentimes, those adult traumas also stem back to childhood. It's every person's own inner journey to see where this Belief of not being good enough comes from, and I'm just giving some examples here.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:18]:
But I know for me, experiencing violence and rape really created this belief of not being good enough because, again, I couldn't comprehend why this was happening, why these extreme events were happening. You You know, in the moment, it's like, what did I do to make these people so angry? But, again, I was taking that on as if I created the situation, as if I did something wrong to create this situation. When the truth is that when I was raped, it didn't do with me. I did nothing wrong. It was not my fault. I refuse to blame myself and shame myself for that. And the people who raped me, I believe they have their own inner wounding. They have their own beliefs about themselves and about the world and about what that experience was.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:00]:
Just because I survived something awful Doesn't mean I'm not good enough. Doesn't mean I deserved that. Doesn't mean I did something wrong to create that. It was a bad moment in time. It was awful, but I didn't do anything wrong to create that. But in that moment, I created a lot of beliefs about yourself in the world. And it's been a process for me to disentangle. It's like, say, in a traumatic moment, you have a straight line of yarn.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:29]:
And then in that traumatic moment, the yarn gets all tangled up in a ball of yarn. And then the healing journey is untangling the yarn from that ball. And it's all tied up in knots, and you have to just 1 knot at a time, 1 tangle at a time, untie that ball of yarn until it becomes a straight line again, until it becomes aligned again. And that's the process. That's the healing. But I will say when I was raped in my teens, I already believed I wasn't enough. And so that experience reaffirmed a belief that I had already created in childhood. It's complicated.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:07]:
Right? The ball of yarn just got bigger and bigger throughout my life. And so the ball yarn started to tangle when I was a little kid, and it just kept tangling throughout my twenties until I began to disentangle it. It doesn't mean it wouldn't get retangled a little bit, but for the most part, I've been untangling the yarn for the past decade. So I share that. Hopefully, that's helpful, but trauma can also create these beliefs of not being good enough. And having traumatic upbringings, having traumatic experiences Can definitely create that belief of not being good enough because oftentimes when trauma happens, we don't understand why it happened, so we take on the belief that we created it, that that was our fault, that we did something wrong for that to happen because it's so incomprehensible how something like that can happen when the truth is a lot of fucked up shit happens, for lack of a better phrase. I apologize for my language. I'm trying to get better at swearing.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:59]:
But I Think fucked up shit happens, and it doesn't have to be your fault. You don't have to take on that burden because that is a burden to carry. I can tell you I have carried that burden. So healing from this belief of not being good enough is releasing ourselves of that burden, that we have taken on this belief of not being good enough because we've taken on a lot of instances throughout our life that were not our fault, and we've carried them around as if they are our fault. And so through healing, we're able to release ourselves of those burdens we're carrying. So now you may be thinking, okay, Amanda, but how do I heal? So healing from core wounds takes time and patience. It's not something that happens overnight, but my first piece of advice would be to bring awareness to this belief of not being good enough. Beginning to see where you tell yourself you're not good enough in your daily life and throughout your life.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:51]:
Because the 1st step is to admit that there is a belief to be healed. Right? So as I mentioned with people with the good childhood bubble, If they're not willing to go deeper into that childhood and admitting that maybe it wasn't as perfect as they tell themselves, They're not gonna be able to get to that next step because it's gonna take popping the bubble and looking at how maybe it wasn't as perfect as you said it was. Again, that's not a judgment, and that's not wrong. It's so important for us to acknowledge all the pain we've experienced because when we acknowledge the pain, We free ourselves of the pain. We're carrying around this pain and these beliefs all the time. That's why we heal. That's why we bring awareness. Yes.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:35]:
It can be painful, but we go through that pain because we've actually just been carrying around that pain the whole time. And so this is the process of releasing and clearing ourselves from the things that no longer serve us. So awareness, admitting that there is A core wound here, if you feel there's a core wound here. And beginning to look at where in your life you yourself you're not enough. So do you tell yourself you're not enough in relationships, in your work, in friendships, with your body? Beginning to look at where you tell yourself you're not enough and then beginning to get curious with yourself. I'll have some journal prompts on my website, as I mentioned, at newviewadvice.com/76. But beginning to really dive deeper into where did this belief originate from, when did I first believe I wasn't enough, and the belief of not being enough. As I said, it's like wearing glasses.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:24]:
So many of us have gone through our lives for years telling ourselves we're not good enough. So it's a process of peeling back the layers. You're oftentimes not gonna get to that original root right away. It's going to be peeling back all the times you told yourself you weren't enough because that was never true. You have Always been enough. You've always been worthy. You've always been worthy of love. You are amazing and perfect the way you are just in this moment.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:50]:
And so the process of healing these core wounds, why they can be so hard, is because it's a process of peeling back the layers. It's a process of peeling back the layers of that Onion. I talk about the healing journey as an onion a lot, and so it's like peeling back the layers to get to the core of the onion, and at the core of the onion will be your core wounds. Oftentimes, before we get to that core wound, we have to peel back other times in our life when we told ourselves that because each experience will bring us deeper and deeper into our own inner onion. My 2nd piece of advice is if you haven't already to begin connecting with your inner child and your inner teenager. I now, at this point in my life, separate them, inner teen and inner child. We connect with them in the same way, but for me, my inner child and my inner teen were very different. They have Completely different personalities, and my inner team created different beliefs about the world than my inner child did because in our teenage years is when we create beliefs around sex, around relationships, around love, around alcohol, drugs, around what it is to be cool.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:48]:
You know? New beliefs come in for sure, in our teenage years. So for me, I've really began to separate these 2 within me, the inner child and the inner teen, and seeing how both of them took on this belief in my life of not being good enough and beginning to heal that, if that makes sense. But Your inner child, if you haven't listened to my podcast before because I talk about inner children all the time, is the metaphorical representation of yourself at different ages and events in your Hialdhood. And so your inner child holds many of your best qualities, including enthusiasm, creativity, and your playful nature, But our inner children also hold on to wounding from our childhood experiences as we've talked about throughout this episode. So learning to connect with your inner child can be a really helpful practice for healing. Because why I think inner child work is really helpful, well, one reason is that when we begin to view ourselves outside of ourselves so I do this through meditation and through journaling, but I begin to see my inner child. I begin to See myself as a child. 1, I'm able to see myself more clearly at that age.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:55]:
I'm able to see how young I was. I'm able to see how little and small I was, and I'm able to see myself in a new way. I think that's important. To view ourselves outside of ourselves helps us to See the situation more clearly because when we look at a situation with an adult mind, you could say, well, my mom called me stupid growing up, but I know I'm not stupid. And Who cares? It's not a big deal. But when you view it from the eyes of a 6 year old and how hurtful that was and how that 6 year old didn't understand what they did to be called stupid. And that 6 year old just wanted help with homework or that 6 year old just wanted someone to see them, and they were met with words of criticism. That's incredibly painful.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:35]:
So inner child work helps us to see ourselves more clearly at these different ages where these events happened. I also think it makes it a little bit easier because I know with inner child work, oftentimes, we view this child self, and we're like, oh my god. I can't believe that happened to them. We view this child outside of us. This can be helpful when healing because through inner child work, you view this child outside of you, and then you begin to integrate that this child Was you? But it can be helpful with some especially with the big traumas to keep it at a bit of a distance. There's nothing wrong with that, to view it outside of ourselves. Because through healing painful experiences, it's an integration process. And what I mean by that is that we heal 1 layer at a time as we've talked about.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:18]:
And so we integrate this experience 1 layer at a time. So oftentimes, the first step is just seeing the situation clearly. So that's the awareness phase. Right? Being in our head about it, seeing it clearly. And then once we're able to see the situation clearly, we're able to begin feeling the feelings that went with that. And we're gonna feel 1 feeling at a time. And through that, the experience begins to integrate into our own body, and we begin to call back these parts of ourselves. I view it as puzzle pieces, and puzzle pieces begin to disconnect from us and live in our energy field.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:51]:
And so inner child work helps us to first see that Puzzle piece. Right? That puzzle piece, the picture on it is a 7 year old's child, and then we begin to bring that puzzle piece back home and put it into its rightful place in our body. I hope that explanation makes sense. Inner child work is really a feeling experience and a knowing. So it's this learning how to connect back with ourselves because what we learned through inner child work is that it's not really about the memory itself. So many times our mind can You can get attached to memory and being like, is that exactly what happened? Is that exactly what was said? And through inner child work, we really learn it's not important. What's important is how we felt and the beliefs we took on. So I recommend beginning to work with your inner child or inner teenager.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:35]:
For some people, it'll be easier to start with their inner teen, and with some people, it'd be easier to start with their inner child. For me, it was easier to start with my inner child. My teen years were very difficult, and I became quite rebellious. So I used to tell myself I was difficult in my teens, and it was easier to start with the younger version of myself and bring her empathy and compassion before I learned how to do it with my teen. But I know other people had much more painful childhood experiences, so it's easier for them to start with the teen years and then begin to go back. So trust whatever arises for you. The layers appear 1 at a time. It's about trusting what arises for you, what memory or what moment or what feeling, and looking at that.
Amanda Durocher [00:34:14]:
It could be something that happened today too. The onion is about trusting the layers that arise 1 at a time because oftentimes what's happening through our healing is Everything is teaching us to help us with the next healing. So it's about learning how to trust the process. So my next piece of advice is to practice self compassion. So self compassion is being kind to yourself, and it's understanding you're human and you make mistakes. So oftentimes with this belief of not being good enough, We take on everything as if it's our fault, and we shame and blame ourselves. But the truth is we're humans. We do make mistakes.
Amanda Durocher [00:34:47]:
We are not perfect. It does not mean we are not good enough. We are always enough. We are always worthy. It's us who forgets that. God, the universe source, whatever you wanna call it, is always there, always loving us. Or if that's too much for you, your heart always loves you. Your heart is always inviting you back home to your truth, back home inside of you.
Amanda Durocher [00:35:13]:
And it's us and our minds and the ego that creates these beliefs that we're not enough. But your heart is always there encouraging you to dive deep into your own being, to peel back the layers of your own onion to remember that you are worthy, that you are loved, that you are enough. So self compassion is so important, and Not being good enough is a core wound for so many people. It's, like, at the center of that onion. So it's a process, and it takes patience. I've been looking at this belief of not feeling good enough for years. I'm just getting to that point in my life where I'm like, Oh, that was never true and feeling that in my body. I could understand that logically for a long time, but it's really been over the past couple months where I feel that in my being and where I am letting that go and where that belief is in different areas of my life.
Amanda Durocher [00:36:07]:
But it Took me looking at my childhood. It took me looking at my traumas. It took me sitting with the worst things that have happened to me, the worst moments of my life. It was painful process, but I don't regret it in any way. It's incredibly liberating. Because what this self compassion part will lead us to and this healing will lead us to is self acceptance. And I think that that is what so many of us are craving and searching for is self acceptance, accepting ourselves for who we are right now, not trying to be anywhere but right here. Because in self acceptance and accepting where we are and not fantasizing about some other place or not creating dramas in our lives or not trying to be somebody we're not.
Amanda Durocher [00:36:54]:
In self acceptance, that's where we feel that love. That's where we feel the joy. That's where we feel the happiness, and that's where we feel enough and worthy because self acceptance is feeling enough in the moment. I Set myself as I am. I accept where I am. I accept who I am. I accept I'm not perfect. I accept I make mistakes.
Amanda Durocher [00:37:16]:
I'll give you example from my own life right now. Right before I started recording this episode, I noticed that last week, I uploaded The raw audio file for my episode to the public, and what that means is it's the episode before my editor edited it. And I was so embarrassed. I felt humiliated. I started to go down a rabbit hole of like, oh my gosh. I am not enough. I am so bad. And I stopped myself, and I was like, yo.
Amanda Durocher [00:37:45]:
That's an old thought pattern. Is any of that true? Is it actually embarrassing that you uploaded that? No. It just is. It's not embarrassing. It just is something that happened. Does that mean I'm bad at what I do because I made one mistake? No. I've uploaded 74 other episodes and never made that mistake. And even if I made it 74 other times, does that make me bad? Wrong? No.
Amanda Durocher [00:38:12]:
I'm human. Not perfect. I'm doing a lot of work by myself. What can I do to change that next time? I can make a note to myself to double check the audio file. I didn't have that note anywhere. Okay. Cool. Doesn't have to mean anything about me that I made this mistake, But I caught myself going down that rabbit hole because that's old Amanda.
Amanda Durocher [00:38:36]:
Old Amanda would feel so insecure, so bad and go hide in shame for 24 hours. New Amanda's like, it's a mistake. If somebody doesn't wanna listen to my podcast again because I uploaded an episode that was a little wonky. That's fine. They weren't for me. That's cool. My work's not for them. All good.
Amanda Durocher [00:38:54]:
I trust. And that's because I accept who I am. And with that example, it doesn't mean I didn't start to go down the rabbit hole. It was just that I caught myself, and I was able to redirect because there was no past belief really clinging on anymore. I've released those. So So I was able to just see this was a mistake, and I choose not to identify with this mistake. So I hope that example was helpful. Full.
Amanda Durocher [00:39:21]:
Outro
Thank you so much for this question. I really love talking about this topic with you. Anybody has any follow-up questions, as always, you can send me an email Or fill out the question form on my website, newgoodadvice.com/question, or you can reach out to me on Instagram in my DMs. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of new Guys, as always, I am so grateful to be here with you and to be able to have these conversations. These are not conversations everybody wants to have, so I'm just really grateful for everybody who's still here and is on their own healing journey because I really believe that healing our own hearts will help us to heal the world. There's a lot of suffering and pain on this planet right now, and I've always found that the more I heal myself, the more I can show up in service of others. And so I feel really passionate about healing because I think that the world needs a lot of help, And it'll be the people who do the inner work and who heal themselves that will be able to heal the world. I know that's super cheesy, but I really do believe that.
Amanda Durocher [00:40:23]:
So thank you so much for being here. Again, I wanted to remind you that if you want some help with this episode with identifying your core wounds, and looking at how feeling not enough may be playing out in your own life, I invite you to visit my website at newviewadvice.com/76, And I'll have journal prompts, or I do offer 1 on 1 sessions where we can dive deep together through creating a safe and compassionate space. Thank you so much again for joining me for today's episode. I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.