You are good enough!

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Kimberley Wilson:and fresh cut fruits to go. Celebrate mom with Whole Foods Market.

0:37Kimberley Wilson:Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a counseling psychologist, and this is Complex. A psychology podcast that helps you navigate your way through the mess of information that's out there about our mental health. In today's episode, I'm exploring whether you're good enough. and spoiler alert my dear listener yes you are but too many of us just don't believe it it's easy to think when you're online that everyone seems to feel great about themselves love themselves they're all having a great time but actually just under the surface most of us struggle with feeling good enough. We tie our sense of self-worth to external things like the way we look, what other people think of us and how we're seen to perform at school or at work.

1:39Kimberley Wilson:We know from research that we want to prove we're a success because that helps us to feel worthy and valuable. And that's the trap that is so easy to fall into. But how and when did success become the measure of our value? And what is success anyway? I think this is a great topic to unpick to help us see how we can develop a quiet, unshakable sense of yes, I am good enough. And this is such a good topic for this time of year. It's spring, you know, we can see the hope of summer on its way. So let me be your guide from the bud of misinformation to the floral bouquet of understanding.

2:34Kimberley Wilson:My guest for this episode is clinical psychologist, Dr Anton Barnwell. Welcome to the show, Anton. Hello. Hello. Great to be here. Can you tell us a little bit about your work please? Yeah so I work mostly with young adults and children and I work as a clinical psychologist and that's all about well-being and helping people live lives of meaning and a massive part of that is helping them feel good enough in whatever they're doing. And when you say young people what is that age group that you're talking about? Yeah I've worked with people as young as four but it tends to be kind of young adults is what I mostly specialise in.

3:09Kimberley Wilson:And with that age group, it feels like this topic is going to be really relevant for you and the clients that you see. So thank you for being here. And I guess let's dig in.

3:25Kimberley Wilson:OK, so listeners know at this point that I do love to start with a definition. Anton, how would you define this concept of good enough? it's a feeling where you feel worthy and you're able to perform in your daily functioning whether that's at work or whether that's studying it exists in your relationships as well so it's not just about self it's about others and how you relate to those people so feeling good enough is having this sense of ourselves as valuable as being a capable person who's deserving of respect and and consideration by others yeah absolutely so how would you define not feeling good enough the way I like to think about it is it's consistent and pervasive so it's kind of a long-term negative experience where you are constantly feeling like you don't have the value of other people you may find yourself comparing yourself to others you may find yourself constantly belittling your achievements and it's very very common thank you and I think it's really an optimistic topic for us to be thinking about because I think we're going to help people to understand some of their internal experience, but also give them some tips and some examples of how they can really start shaping and shifting things for themselves.

4:39Kimberley Wilson:So with that, let's get into the complexity.

4:47Kimberley Wilson:Now, we usually hear a story from a listener that helps us to focus our minds on the topic in question. But Anton, you said you were happy to share some of your own experience about not feeling good enough? Yeah, it's something that I've experienced and struggled with a lot in my life personally. For me, not feeling good enough has been something that started very early in my life. I spent a lot of my early years as a young carer, so supporting my parents who have mental health conditions, physical health conditions, and helping them to kind of navigate life, being an emotional support for them.

5:21Kimberley Wilson:It takes a lot to be a young carer. Yeah, it really does. And it's often quite unseen because it happens behind closed doors. I was doing quite well at school, so nobody really noticed. So a lot of my life, I was essentially being conditioned that the most important thing in my world was my parents' well-being rather than my own kind of well-being, my own happiness. Grew up in poverty and kind of adopted that mindset of not being good enough. Other people are more important than me. Did you feel yourself to be very different from your schoolmates? Yeah, and it was very much a feeling, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.

5:54it just really felt like me and my sister were really not the same as everyone else. There was just this almost sense of shame of not quite being worthy of my classmates. So yeah, things were quite difficult. That carried on through school for me. Lots of worries about fitting in, not being good enough. And then yeah, ended up going to university. Still didn't feel good enough, even though I was the first for my family to go to university. I chose psychology as a degree.

6:19Kimberley Wilson:I mean, I have to say for the listeners, this is entirely unsurprising. that there is a cliche in psychology that says something like, do you really need a degree in psychology or did you just need therapy? Yeah, definitely. That's totally true for me. I'd grown up through my childhood, learning about my parents and how to support them and detecting their emotions was a real, you know, it was a survival strategy. That's like 25, 30 years experience of detecting the emotions of others. So I'm quite good at that. It's well-practiced as a skill. There's still expertise. Absolutely, yeah. But even when I found psychology and found therapy, there was still people that, having known my backstory, would tell me that working as a psychologist isn't something that people like me can do.

7:04And there are also times where I was told that, you know, in order to make it as a psychologist, you had to be popular, successful, volunteer your time, get a first-class degree. If you didn't do that, don't waste your time. So to go and ask them, what have I shown you that means I can't do it? and then their lack of giving me anything tangible. I was like, oh, it's nothing to do with what I've done. It's to do with who you think I am. You know, it was just they didn't like my background. Someone from poverty, someone with mental health problems in the past.

7:35Kimberley Wilson:But the ironic thing being that actually those features of your background and your experience and your awareness are so suited for so many of the population that we serve that actually the greatest need is in these populations where there's less access, where there's less opportunity, where there's more stress. And so the idea that actually you would be inappropriate for this work is ridiculous. Yeah. I think a lot of people listening to your story, they'll have heard the part where you were discouraged and told that you weren't right for this work, but that you still somehow managed to forge ahead, get your degree do your qualification and here you are how how did you manage to do that I had some therapy which was so helpful initially it involved bringing up my awareness of my thoughts and why I felt that way about myself but even still though I knew how to kind of recognize those thoughts and then kind of challenge them in the moment I still had this kind of felt sense of not being good enough it was like a an internal shame and it was really hard to shift we kind of referred to that as a head heart lag so a gap between your cognitive or like intellectual understanding of something against your physical embodied feeling in that moment so for me my sense of not being good enough was still there even with an understanding that oh you know it's because of my background and it's because of just life situations so for me i really needed to try and reconnect the head with the heart and it's something that I needed to practice.

9:11I need to practice a lot of that and it's still helpful for me today. Well that's an inspiring story, thank you.

9:22Kimberley Wilson:So let's start with the big question. How do we develop our sense of being good enough or not good enough in the first place? When someone says to me I don't feel good enough I'd like to know a little bit more about what that means because I'm hearing it and I might be thinking this person is not good enough at their left foot cross at football in which case ways that you can help with that could be to you know practice training and getting some coaching but more generally what people mean is it's this consistent no matter what you're doing no matter where you are in the world what you're doing in your job or your personal life you still don't feel good enough so I'd always be interested in learning a little bit more about the detail you know when does it happen more often than not when does it not happen because when it doesn't happen it's just as important as when it does happen.

10:06If there are parts of your life where you do feel good enough or maybe you don't feel anything, that might be an indication of some of the areas in your life where you're feeling in that state of pure flow or enjoyment or you're just in the moment in a really mindful way rather than in a self-critical way.

10:21Kimberley Wilson:And would you think about how early it started in life for that person or are people born not feeling good enough? I suspect it's something that we learn from very early on for most people but it can also happen through significant life events. So, you know, if you experience any trauma in your life, which most of us have in some form, but it might be leaving us with that feeling of not being good enough, or maybe someone even said to you, you're not good enough. You know, sometimes it can be as blatant as that. But in other ways, it can be subtle where maybe your needs aren't prioritized. It could be because maybe you're in a busy family, there's lots of things going on, but it might give you that message of my needs aren't important.

10:58And that can be picked up from children at a very, very early age. And they carry it through with them until adulthood.

11:03Kimberley Wilson:And also, I guess if you're a member of a marginalised group, you can pick up on the wider society differences between the way you're treated or seen or spoken about and how others are. You know, I think some of those very early studies with toddlers, I think it's three or four when young black children who grew up in predominantly white environments start to show preference for white dolls because they somehow already understand that that's better or preferred or safer. Yeah, it's a very good point. I mean, it would be impossible to speak about not feeling good enough without touching on those ideas of power and privilege and what society privileges in terms of race or religion or culture, but also education, ethnicity.

11:44There are loads of different aspects of power. There's a, I think it's called the power and privilege wheel, where you can kind of look and reflect across your identity as part of an intersectional self. And it's based on the work of Kimberley Crenshaw, which is brilliant. but it's really thinking about how yourself, you know, I'm not just Anton, I'm sat here as a white person, as a white man, I'm English, I come from a low economic background, I'm cisgendered. Lots of those aspects have privilege but lots of those are also subjugated and when you have those intersections, so you have multiple areas of disadvantage, you can receive lots more of those times where you're shown that you're not important or you don't matter and of course then it makes sense to pick those up as a message that you then carry into adulthood.

12:25Kimberley Wilson:So we thought about perhaps things that happen in childhood but as we get older what factors or experiences might chip away at our sense of self-worth? Yeah there's tons I think transitions that happen in early adulthood can really impact that you know you're thinking about setting up a career moving out of school different friendship groups that you might be dropping or refinding there's a massive amount transition for young adults are coming up. And also generally, when you get to that part in your life, you're thinking about what's important to you, rather than what's maybe important from what your parents or caregivers or guardians have said to you, or what your school has said to you.

13:02Kimberley Wilson:Yeah. And also, as you're talking, I was thinking about romantic relationships can be really formative. You know, if you have a partner who's not very nice to you, if you're in an abusive relationship, or even if you just get dumped in a kind of surprising and hostile way, that kind of rejection and unkindness can really knock the wind out of someone's self-worth and then if you have one of those moments it can really last why is it that something that happens to us at that stage of life can be so difficult to shrug off yeah in part the brain is still developing often at that age it's very much a very moldable brain at that point in time so significant experiences the brain is going to be hardwired to try and prevent it happening again I work at the moment in a university setting so students are chucked into this melting pot and just expected to get on with things figure it out there's not a lot of support it's very independent learning so there's immense pressure on young people at that age so those kind of setbacks you kind of can feel a little bit like you're on your own a bit more with them and that can be a real barrier not only for people feeling good about themselves but also in asking for help and potentially what role might social media play in our ideas of self-worth maybe particularly for adolescents.

14:18Yeah, massive. I mean, we can see lots of young people being exposed to lots of different ideas around body image, ideas around what life should look like.

14:28Kimberley Wilson:Relationships. Relationships, yeah. Pretty much every aspect of life we are presented with these examples on social media and they can lead us to do what we call compare and despair. So we see these examples and we think they're realistic when actually they are, you know, airbrushed or funded or brand associated, it's not real life. And it sets a destination that we just can't reach, which then leads to shame and can really lead to that not good enough feeling. I think so many of us, I mean, we see this in our therapy rooms, base our self-worth, our sense of value on external measures like performance and productivity and accolades that we can achieve.

15:12Achievement's an interesting one. I mean, I've been sat in the therapy room before with somebody who's got multiple degrees tell me that they're not achieving enough. And I'm like, dude, like, what do you mean?

15:23Kimberley Wilson:It can be so arbitrary. You really have to interrogate what achievement means, but also what it does. Because if all of these accolades aren't giving you that sense of fulfillment, then maybe there's something else going on. Absolutely. Why am I basing so much of how I feel about myself and what someone else subjectively thinks about me? People do that automatically which can be really imprisoning yes so if we have an internal voice that's telling us we are or we're not good enough where does that internal voice come from in the first place so there are many systems that influence us our immediate family network is is key but also the schools that we grow up in the local areas that we grow in the media we consume home local policy everything has an impact on on what we think is important so it can be a really really useful exercise to really map your system and think about okay who are my family who were my friends where did i grow up what was it like and really start to visualize what it was for me when i went through that process myself oh it was so so like revealing in a really positive way because when you're in the depths of not feeling good enough, your internal voice is just you.

16:39You just see it as you. You don't see it as, oh, it's influenced by this wider thing.

16:44Kimberley Wilson:So what we're saying is that we take in the external judgments, criticisms, moratoriums, rules of our external world and they become our inner critic, our internal bully, this harsh voice, what used to be called the superego, this internal policeman that's judging your actions and behaviours and evaluating your worth based on your performance. Yeah, totally agree.

17:17Kimberley Wilson:So Anton, I love to try to put our topic onto a scale. I think what it does is to give the listener a bit of context for where they might be in their own lives and how this might play out for them. So if we were thinking about this notion of good enough on a scale, as well as at one end we have not feeling good enough, feeling worthless, and then at the other end we might have an inflated sense of self, what would that look like? That's a really interesting question. I guess not feeling good enough is part of many different mental health conditions as well. So So maybe down at the lower end, we might think about things like clinical depression.

17:59You might have some people who don't feel worthy or good enough so much that they don't even go out of the house. They don't feel worthy of being amongst other people. Maybe the negative kind of voice that's in their mind is so consistent that it impacts their sleep, impacts their food, impacts many different parts of their life. Equally, you could see this kind of not good enough in anxiety, constantly fear and judgment from other people.

18:25Kimberley Wilson:Yeah, it's a fear of judgment, which would make making mistakes feel really risky. And I think almost ironically, not feeling good enough can show up as perfectionism sometimes. That's this kind of compensation. If I just get everything right, then I'll finally feel good enough. Yeah, absolutely. It's like, if I do everything right, then I'm a good person. If I don't do everything right, then I'm worse. It's a binary, right? It's a real binary. It's an impossibility as well. and often what we can find ourselves doing is I'll feel good enough when I just achieve this next thing but the truth is if feeling good enough is in the next thing if you're always pursuing it you never have it Okay so what is healthy self-worth?

19:07It's an ability to be kind to yourself in response to mistakes because to make mistakes is human it's a compassion, it's a humility and it's something that allows you to go and live your life with meaning it doesn't mean there's not going to be any times where maybe you are annoyed at yourself that you've made a mistake or maybe you've hurt someone close to you these are normal parts of being human but it doesn't stop you doesn't stop you achieving what you want to achieve or even not achieving doesn't stop you living the life that you want so there's something to be said about building up your ability to feel worthy without the achievement that can be a real challenge but absolutely can be worth it

19:53Kimberley Wilson:so for everyone listening who thinks yeah how can i start to believe i am good enough we know life is hard enough so anton how can we feel a little bit better about it the good news is there's loads of things that can be helpful. So if you've got some time and you want to kind of talk through it with someone, there's loads of professionals out there who can help. If you haven't got much time, there's things that you can do on your own. I think for me, one of the key things is to recognize what not feeling good enough is like for you as a more three-dimensional experience. So what emotion is that?

20:33What thoughts pop up with that? What does your body tell you when this is going on? So I think it can be really helpful just to map, keep diaries keep records anything to kind of give yourself more information about okay what does this look like because then what what i find is that when you start to understand what not feeling good enough looks like for you you'll notice it pop up in places you hadn't really thought of it will be like a person wearing a disguise it will be the same thing but just dressed up slightly differently and when you start to recognize it it then gives you the power to do something about it.

21:08So building that awareness is really the first place that I would start.

21:11Kimberley Wilson:Yeah. And it can be really tricky because those negative thoughts, they're just there and you just take them for granted. So one, they are automatic, but two, we believe the things our brain tells us. And that's the second kind of trick is actually don't believe everything you think. because you may have taken in some ideas that were untrue of you that are kind of nothing to do with you. Yeah, absolutely. Deciding what's important to us, what we value, what we like doing is something that is so, so important, especially for young adults. Maybe, you know, you've probably not realised it, but you've had certain values imprinted on you by where you've grown up, how you've grown up, what things you've been allowed to do, not allowed to do maybe.

22:00whether that's from choice of your parents or maybe financially. It's a great time to spread your wings, maybe experiment with a few different things. University can be really great to try those random clubs and societies that you never thought you would do.

22:14Kimberley Wilson:That, I think, is a really good tip, actually. I think, I mean, for everybody, just try whatever you like and see what sticks. Even things that you don't think you would like or people like you wouldn't do, give them a go because it's about being in in the action and the activity of it where you can feel whether it works for you or not i think as well some of the things that you can do are build your own self-compassion what i mean by that is responding to yourself with the kindness with which you respond to a friend often you see people that are incredibly kind to their friends and they often give lots of love and support but then when it comes to themselves no nothing nothing not a shred and it's partly because i don't think they're worthy but actually self-compassion is like lots of things a muscle it's a skill that requires practice and it might be cringe at first but the more you practice self-compassion the easier it gets so for me i think even some practices like affirmations whether that's writing down you know i'm really proud of myself today i tried today things that are more focused around your process rather than the outcome you know because if you focus on outcome there are going to be times when you don't achieve what you wanted to achieve.

23:28Kimberley Wilson:Thank you, Anton. It's really good to know that there is something, actually lots of things that we can do. I think this conversation has been really helpful. And selfishly, what I really like about this conversation is the very slight invitation to rebellion. You know, just question, question the values that you've been living by. Question that critical internal voice and maybe start a little bit of a fight back about things that don't feel good or right or healthy for you. I totally agree with that. I think rebelliousness is something that's actually really useful when it comes to unpicking some unhelpful parts of our experiences.