Relationships Part 3: Am I Good Enough?

In  an age of amped up comparison from social media, many of us ask ourselves  "Am I good enough?"
Comparisons and negative thoughts attack our self esteem. How do you focus on the all the good you do and chase negative thinking away?
Using the best of psychology and the best of spirituality, Dr. Tracy gives an effective solution.

Transcript

Relationships Part 3   

Am I Good Enough?

Intro: We’ve been going up the ladder of happiness and discussing how each of the 6 rungs applies to our relationships or what I call Connection, because I needed a C word.

In part 1, I talked about how a really great charity or service you can do for you kids or your spouse is spend time alone.

In part 2, We covered a great way to make connections is to emotionally support by summarizing and reflecting.

This is part 3, and we’ll talk about how gratitude and positive attitude affect our relationships. 

This podcast is for anyone who is trying to awaken their brain and believes in good and believes that to better your relationship with yourself and with others will bring happiness. 

Everytime I hear “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” I think, “Most people I know have a hard time loving themselves.”  

There’s this part of me that cringes when I say, “Yes, I love myself.”

  I see someone who’s prideful or full of themselves.

Or it sounds like those positive affirmations from the 1980’s and I hear the spa music. “Love yourself…” 

I wonder if it’s because I think too many negative thoughts to love myself.    

Negative thoughts are synonyms for worries. I want to tell you about some of the things people worry about, but remember I disguise the identity of my clients, so just the important parts are true:

My client *Cecelia Budge was 5’7 and about 165 pounds. Some kid in 5th grade started calling her “pudgy budgey.” 

She endured a ton of insults and teasing, and her negative thinking was that she was fat, ugly and worthless.

Because women are told over and over again, in a million subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that their value is determined by their appearance, she lost 40 lbs in high school, and girls complimented her and boys started paying attention.

But irregardless of how she starved and shed her weight her mind clung to the belief that her body wasn’t ever good enough.

She felt worthless and worried people wouldn’t love her unless she was really, really skinny.

She worried, “Am I thin enough?”    

Another story: I do career counseling and I’ve encountered these two men in their 30’s who were excellent musicians and chose to follow their dreams and teach high school and junior high school music.  

One even received a masters degree in music performance.  

Well, as they married, and the children started coming, they found it was very difficult to  support their family on a teacher’s salary.  

Then the administration imposed loads of achievement standards for the teachers and made their lives much more complicated and stressful. 

But the biggest heartache was the junior high students. 

They were especially rude. They caused unceasing behavior problems.

The students really didn’t want to be in a music class. They thought of this elective as social time.

Nobody could actually practice music. 

Both of these men grew to feel beat up and broken, and to decide it’s painfully hard to make music a career.  

Their years have been full of worry: “Is this career going to cut it? Will I be able to support my family? Am I doing well enough?” 

One of the most anxious clients I've ever met was a project manager in an IT company. She was in her 50’s so her technical skills were outdated, but she had to manage people who were creating and rolling out the brand new tech. She was so overwhelmed by the pressures of her job that she had a Xanax (which is a benzodiazepine muscle relaxer–highly addictive) in her pocket and she would try to hold off, make it last at least until lunch, but she had to pop that pill by 10:00 am. Most every morning. She was constantly worried about the quality of the work she was responsible for. She worried she’d be exposed as “not capable” and she worried, "Am I performing well enough?”

Justin Coulsen Australian Family Therapist recently interviewed 400 teen girls and asked things they really needed their parents to know. He said, “... (a) thing that really stood out was a plea to know that… am I worthy? Am I good enough?”

Why is our positive attitude about ourselves, our  esteem, our self worth so low?.

Why do we think so many negative thoughts?

Psychology explains that comparison is deadly to our worth. It's a natural part of human development, but unfortunately we start comparing ourselves to others in about third grade. 

When we start romantic relationships, we amp up our worry about being good enough. 

Then social media ramps comparison to epic levels.  

Dr. Jennifer Lewallen wrote a book about “The Effects of Instagram Frames on Social Comparison.”  

She says social comparison can make us unhappy or angry, can lead us to have a distorted view of the ideal female body, and can lead us to want to engage in actions that will lead to extreme weight loss. 

And I‘ve noticed a trend among males that the youtubers are pushing the marvel body, you know, ripped like Captain America or Thor.

Sadly, 22% of young men having really negative thoughts that they are not muscular enough leads them to spend too much time in the gym.  

They are calling it bigorexia.

Comparison leads to not feeling good enough. Dr. LeWallen says that there’s a constant perception that others are doing better in life than you are, which can impact how you see yourself.  

 You may feel like your efforts aren’t good enough or that you need to change something about yourself when you are bombarded with images and updates of others succeeding financially, socially, educationally etc. (Interview on darling, December 10 2018 A Scholar Breaks Down the Real Reasons We Compare on Social Media https://blog.darlingmagazine.org/scholar-breaks-real-reasons-compare-social-media/#:~:text=ourselves%20with%20others%3F-,Dr.,than%20you%20at%20certain%20tasks)

How do we stop worrying about being good enough?

Well for those of you with awakened brains who believe in good, good is the answer–to stop all this comparison and love the good in yourself and love the good in others.

And for those of you with awakened brains who believe in God, God is the Answer.  

Jesus Christ asks that we follow him, and what did he do? 

Well, he was not at the gym for most of the day. Actually, “Jesus went about doing good.”  

I find that most people do a lot of good things every day. But, they get so many self-criticisms and negative thoughts that don’t reflect on the good they are doing. 

They worry that they didn't do well enough.  

It doesn’t stick in their brain, they don’t give themselves credit.

 In order to change that, we need to focus on the good stuff and change the way we pray to review the good we are trying to do each and every day.  

Here are some ideas to do that.

I have a client who just divorced.  

Her addict husband train-wrecked the marriage.

 And he’s stalking her and attempting to convince her to remarry, convincing families on both sides that she’s at fault..

She thinks a plethora of negative thoughts. 

“Nobody believes me when I finally tell them how terrible it was.”

“Why couldn’t I make this marriage work?” 

“Maybe there’s something wrong with me.”  

“Why couldn’t I stick it out?”      

I asked her to accept the assignment of a “Focus on the good stuff” journal.  

In the morning she organizes her day, and for her that means she prays about things she’d like to get done. At night she puts a check on the things she got done. She reminds herself that she's doing good, doing things for her growth and development at work. Check.   

Doing things to help other people. Check.  

Doing good things to awaken her brain like scripture study. Check.

And doing good things for her body like exercise. Check.  

 After two weeks she said the Good Stuff journal helped her to shift her thoughts from terrible thoughts and think about the good things she is doing, and it made her want to do more good things.

A morning journal is one way, another way to focus on the good stuff is to use (CBT). CBT is the best of psychology. 

It’s been proven successful in hundreds of studies, especially in conjunction with therapy and medication. 

However, CBT isn’t the best of psychology, if you can’t even remember what CBT stands for. Then it’s just the worst of psychology because then I am confusing you with psychobabble. 

Let’s try calling it something more user-friendly. 

I call it the three L’s.  Loss, Logic, and Love. You ask yourself just three questions and you write or type the answers just as they come out. I like to put mine on a table with three columns in my journal. I’m going to use the example here of a young man who has a lot of performance anxiety, he is always worried that he’s going to mess things up. On the left is: 

Loss or worries: What are my painful thoughts about this problem? What is my anxiety and grief?
 | 

“I don’t know if I can do it myself. What if I make a mistake? I don’t know enough to do a good job. I worry about looking like a fool.”   |
 |

OK, now in the middle of the table goes the word “Logic.”

Loss or worries: What are my painful thoughts about this problem? What is my  anxiety and grief?
 | Logic or Wisdom:  |

.
 | “I know I’m not a total fool. I just helped my dad build a shed and it’s still standing.So it’s just not logical to say the word ‘fool.’ Calling myself a fool is black or white thinking, all or nothing thinking. I tried a project last month and I got a B-. I need to give myself credit for all the good I do and the efforts I make.”
 |

And in the third column I write the word “Love,” or for those who are trying to follow God, it can be “Words of God.” And you ask yourself, what would someone who loves me say? Followers can say, “God who loves you so much, he suffered and died for you. What has he said in the scriptures about this problem?

Loss or worries: What are my painful thoughts about this problem? What is my  anxiety and grief?
 | Logic or Wisdom:  | Love:  What would someone who loves me say?ORWords of God from the scriptures

 |
 | Someone who loves me would say-hey you do so many good things every single day.  Let good be good enough.
“It’s the devil or Satan that wants to lie to me and do everything he can to deceive me, destroy my self esteem, my ability to love myself. He works relentlessly to make me think dark thoughts like I’ll never be good enough, like I'm an idiot when…”  (see Isaiah 5:20) “But the Spirit speaks Truth” (Jacob 4:13.)“And I’m a beloved child of God, I have a beautiful soul of infinite worth.”
“He wants to help me grow and develop and get better at things. If I get some help, I can do this project.“”For with God all things are possible” (Mark:27)   

That third part, the Word of God, is the “Jesus is the Answer” part of the 3L’s that I added. It’s really powerful to think of what God would say for peace to thy soul! 

The 3L’s is a skill that takes a lot of practice and hard work. Why? Think of the sheer number of self-objectifying, hateful negative thoughts you’ve had in your lifetime.   

It takes a while to learn to rethink and replace them. Why would you do this? I’m going to share a profound truth here. I hope you are listening.

• If you can replace your negative thoughts with logical, healthy thoughts, you can replace the war inside your mind with peace and happiness and… love yourself. Real love, not just words.
• If you can love yourself you can love others.
• And for the followers of Jesus Christ, if you can love others, you can love God. 

Looking for the good in others

Instead of walking into the family reunion and thinking, “Oh, there’s Shawn. He’s doing really well in soccer. I’m so out of shape. I’m jealous. Oh, but he’s such a troublemaker. I heard him and his friends were arrested last week for toilet papering.

“Oh, there’s Bethany. Oh dear, she’s grown and looking marvelous with her lacrosse legs. Oh dear, my legs are so gross!  But I hear she is 17 and has never been out on a date.”

If we are really going to love other like Jesus Christ loved them, we have to become everyone’s cheerleader.

Focus on the good stuff, think, “Oh, Shawn’s area of growth and development is soccer. What question can I ask him to show I’m interested?”  

Then become Shawn’s cheerleader. Feel genuinely happy that he’s making progress.

Why look for the good in others and ask them questions?

If you are constantly looking for the good in others, it’s easier to look for the good in yourself. 

You will be giving them appropriate attention. It will feel like love.

You’ll stop competing. 

Let’s go back to an important strategy of looking for the good stuff in yourself.

Pick 1 inspired goal about your biggest problem.   

For example, like 93% of women, I’ve had negative thoughts about my weight and my body for about 100% of my life since I was 16.  

Some days are worse than others.  

Two years ago I went to a ladies Victorian tea party with two of my daughters and my sister and her daughters. 

“It’s just painful. It's not fair, and she got to ride as a beauty queen on a float because she’s a size 4 and I’m a size 14. Though I’ve been exercising and dieting all my life, she’s genetically more like my mom, and I’m bigger like my dad’s side of the family.”

“And our daughters at the tea party are also slim and look so pretty in their clothes.” 

I felt intimidated and ashamed of my body. It was a miserable experience.  

I couldn’t help comparing myself. 

About six months ago, I was writing these podcasts and thinking.

 “I’ve got to control these negative thoughts.” I started focusing on just one inspired goal on my weight at a time. 

Right now I’m doing noom and that’s all I’m going to think about, doing well on noom.  

 I absolutely refuse to let the negative thoughts stay. I snuff out those negative thoughts with Loss, Logic and Love.

 And, I’ve been writing my prayer journal for years with my list of things I need to do that day, but, I added a new twist. 

Now, I don’t get discouraged about all the things I didn’t get done. 

Now I am focusing on what I did accomplish, not what I didn’t accomplish.

So, did it work? Was I able to vanquish the negative thoughts?   

This year I went to the Victorian Tea party and I forgot to criticize myself!   

I didn’t think one single negative thought the whole afternoon.   

 I also realized my sister is so much fun and I love asking her questions about her principal job, and I noticed that my nieces were really funny and kind to their mom and other people.

I had so much freedom to have fun without my negative thoughts dragging me down.

I’ve learned to stop obsessing about my body and enjoy my beautiful soul. 

Lets review:  

To Focus on the good in others

1. Be everyone’s cheerleader and 

2. focus on the good they are doing by asking questions

To Focus on the good in yourself:

1. Pick  just one inspired goal 

2. Use Loss, Logic and Love to vanquish negative thoughts

3. Use a journal to  focus on the good stuff