By Emily Kusunoki
“I just feel like…I’m not good enough.”
Sound familiar? The feeling of not being “enough” is a struggle for many who walk into the counseling room. Sometimes, it’s invisible. That is, until the way one feels “good enough” no longer works, and it causes so much distress a change is unavoidable.
Curt Thompson, psychiatrist and author of The Soul of Shame, provides an example in his book of a patient struggling with feeling “not good enough.” The patient was referred to him for insomnia, but it was quickly evident a sleeping aid would not be sufficient. In a moment of surprising indifference, the patient revealed she was having an affair with her boss. She went on to describe her marriage as boring, with a husband who no longer seemed interested in her after their second child was born. Over the course of several weeks, a narrative emerged in which one emotion seemed to reign rampant over her life, and that emotion was shame.
The affair between her and her boss began with a message, one this woman interpreted as, “You are the answer to all my questions. You are what I need. You are…enough.”
Thompson adds that what she was not hearing was the implicit message: “I need you to meet my needs. My needs are more important than you or your marriage or your children. My needs are really all that matter to me. Your needs matter as long as meeting them is a way for me to meet my own.” These words, though insensitive, were implied despite what was spoken.
We are constantly receiving messages from influential people in our lives, whether through explicit words or the implicit meaning hiding beneath them. And these messages can, well, hurt. What is so striking about this woman’s experience, however, is the familiarity of her shame. When we sense rejection in the relationships closest to us—from those we are the most vulnerable—we often tend to want to withdraw or run away. In an attempt to protect ourselves, we travel deeper into what we feel is under our own control, and away from those who could possibly (and painfully) reject us the most.
Shame divides us. It lives in the big and small moments of our lives. As Thompson writes, “It emerges in the emotional neglect that seems so minor until its accumulated absence leaves that neglected child with no option but to imagine a story, mostly as a silent movie, in which he is not important…”
It is critical to recognize that this feeling of “not being enough” draws its power from shame. In an attempt to protect the self, shame may have detained you in the process. Or, like in the case of this patient, caused you to seek after unsafe solutions to pain that only compound the shame.
For those who see vulnerability as a weakness, they must be reminded of its power to heal. Vulnerability is the only state we can go to deepen our connection with others. When we isolate, we attend to the parts that contain our shame. But we were created to be in relationship. From infancy, our brains await the moment we can finally attach to another human being. Our minds are wired to live in the context of relationship. Without it, we don’t survive.
Thus, we must acknowledge our shame and the role it plays in our lives. Chances are it is closely tied to our greatest vulnerabilities. But, when we can be vulnerable once more, what follows is the opportunity to be authentically accepted and genuinely loved.