Feeling Not Good Enough: The Link with Trauma

I’m not good enough. It’s one of the most common things I hear in therapy sessions. When I ask what people believe about themselves when they’re upset, a majority respond with some variation of feeling Not Good Enough. I hear it so often that I developed the shorthand “NGE” for my notes.

So many people I see are I likable, intelligent and competent. And yet they’re overwhelmed with anxiety and stress, feeling like they’re failing as they try to do all the things at home and work. Two interrelated causes of feeling not good enough are cultural and interpersonal. 

In our culture even self-care has become an arena for optimization. To many people, true relaxation feels threatening, like a step on a slippery slope to failure or losing a tenuous sense of control of the to-do list. And underneath it all lurks the insidious fear that despite it all you’re just not good enough.

One one level it’s understandable. We live in a competitive culture that seems more cutthroat every day. A winner take all mentality dominates many areas of life, from school to work to politics. We’re drowning in social media messages manipulated to falsely project perfection. In the new political era, we see a rise in discrimination and hate speech dripping with racism, sexism, and intolerance of LGBTQ+ folks. No wonder so many people conclude they’re not good enough.

Roots in Childhood Experience

Pervasive feelings of not being good enough often have deeper causes, with roots in childhood trauma. If something from your past has lasting and serious effects on you, it’s trauma. Childhood trauma affects your self-esteem, relationship patterns, and ability to regulate emotions. 

Growing up in a dysfunctional family is the most common cause of childhood trauma. Unfortunately, many families under stress in our competitive culture develop mental illness, addiction, or simply don’t have time to attend to their children.

Sometimes dysfunction is obvious. Children in families with violence, alcoholism, sexual abuse, or mental illness live with high levels of chaos and fear. Some children from dysfunctional homes end up mirroring their parents’ chaos. 

But other children become hyper-responsible. They try desperately to avoid triggering their caregivers and make things more predictable. Common strategies include people pleasing, avoiding conflict, and over-managing. Of course this fails. 

You don’t have the power to change anyone else’s behavior. But children don’t know this. You may conclude it’s your fault, there’s something wrong with you, or you’re not good enough. And verbally abusive parents will compound the problem with criticism and contempt. 

Feeling Not Good Enough: The Damage from Emotional Neglect

What’s harder to recognize are the damaging effects of emotional neglect. Your parents may have stayed together, had stable finances and were not violent or unpredictable. Yet you felt something important missing. Maybe one parent worked so much you rarely saw them. Or one of your caregivers struggled with depression. Maybe your mom was self-centered and narcissistic or your Dad well-meaning but an undiagnosed autistic.

Emotionally immature parents also cause damage. If your parents lacked emotional intelligence, they couldn’t help you talk about emotions or teach you how to handle your feelings. That means that as child with a undeveloped brain, you were left to handle big feelings on your own. Many kids from emotionally immature families learn to stuff their feelings. Then they’re surprised when feelings build up and they explode.

If parents repeatedly show they can’t handle hearing about your inner world, invalidate you or ignore you, it’s natural for a child to conclude it’s their fault. The reality – that parents are flawed and limited — can be too much for children to bear. The point here is not to blame parents. But it’s essential to understand how emotional neglect helped shaped your self-concept and nervous system as a child.

Your Body Holds the Stress

When you live for years in situations in which you feel over-responsible and undervalued, your nervous system is under enormous stress. Humans are adaptive and resourceful, and so you find coping strategies to deal with the horrible feeling of Not Good Enough. Maybe you engage in compulsive escape behaviors with alcohol, cannabis, food, shopping, social media, or phone use. Or you stay busy all the time, to the point where your health is starting to suffer. Perhaps you lose a sense of self in trying to make everyone in your life happy.

With childhood trauma, intellectual understanding of what happened to you is important but not enough. You may already know this if you’ve done talk therapy but still struggle with big emotions, low self-esteem, or problems in relationships. You may have emotional tools but can’t access them when you’re triggered. Or you have intellectual knowledge about what happened in the past but at heart still feel it’s your fault.

EMDR for Childhood Trauma

If you’ve done talk therapy but still struggle with not feeling good enough, it doesn’t mean you failed in therapy. Trauma is stored in the body, not just the brain, and therefore requires a somatic (or “bottom-up”) approach to healing.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is one of the most effective therapies for trauma. EMDR offers lasting healing by helping you reprocess old memories that hijack your body when you’re triggered. It has gained popularity as celebrities such as singer Miley Cyrus have spoken out about how EMDR changed their lives.

EMDR harnesses the body’s natural ability to move toward healing. A skilled EMDR therapist helps you access past memories and have a new experience in the present without being overwhelmed.

When you reprocess old memories, you experience an adult understanding of what happened to you. You also get freedom from traumatic images, thoughts and sensations. For example, you may no longer be triggered into lashing out or freezing when feeling like your relationships are threatened. You gain a healthy sense of self-esteem, a realistic sense of control, and are better able to show up in relationships as your authentic self.

You may know at an intellectual level that you are good enough, but your heart doesn’t quite believe it. If that’s the case, consider giving EMDR a try. EMDR can be a gateway to letting the past go and living the fulfilling life you deserve. Check out my blog post here on how to find the best EMDR therapists in Raleigh, NC.