444. Why You Feel Like You’re Never Enough and What to Actually Do About It.

Are you tired of that voice of inadequacy, having such a profound impact on your life? Whether it's limiting you from opening up to people or feeling at peace when you're around others or it gets in your head at night or it's fueling your scrolling wood, whatever it's doing in your life, if you struggle with thoughts that you are not enough and you know it's impacting you, then today we're going to talk about how to stop it, how to walk out of it and no longer give any power to that voice. Are you ready? Let's go. Something inside you knows there is supposed to be more than this, more than going through the motions, more than the patterns you keep repeating no matter how hard you try. Hey, you're not broken, there's a root beneath it all and there's a path through it. Come to the Made Hole podcast where biblical wisdom and psychology meet to finally get you unstuck. Hi, I'm Brittany, a former therapist and someone who is sat in the same place you're sitting right now. You don't have to stay there, this is where you're made whole. The broken place has become beautiful and you finally come alive. Hey friends, so excited to dive in with you today and we're finally, if you've been following this series, going to get to the how we've been talking in this little mini series just about inadequacy and what a profound impact it has on so many of us, myself included and that's kind of what inspired this series and just what kind of impact it has and all of the things it touches and how to even understand where this voice initially came from. We went back all the way to the garden with Adam and Eve and talked about how this is an identity wound in us and that it's just playing out and wreaking havoc on our lives in so many ways. And so today we're finally going to talk about, okay, what do we do about it? How do we stop it? How do we shut it down? How do we no longer live under its influence? Because it's so frustrating, right? It's at times debilitating and you want it to stop and you try everything you know to make it stop, but yet it still has a hold on you and today I want to give you six strategies to help you finally shut down that voice. Now knowing me, this might turn into a couple of different episodes because six is a lot, but we'll see, but we're going to dive into the actual practicals of what does it look like to walk this out, okay? Before we dive in, make sure you are applying for the Made Whole Academy. If you know that everything we're talking about today that you are struggling with inadequacy and you want something to change, I hope this podcast changes things for you, but often we got to go deeper. And so if you're ready to go deeper, the Made Whole Academy is for you. It's a 10 week live group coaching program with small groups. I'm not talking like hundreds of women, I'm talking about like about 10 women in each group where you get to share your story and learn these actual strategies that will change everything for you. So it launches on September 10th, spots are limited, so make sure you go and check out the details at MadeHolePath.com. And I just can't wait to get to know you over there and get to hear your story. But everything we're talking about today is what we go through in the Academy. I give you exercises to work through this and videos and worksheets and I give you direct feedback to help you apply everything we're talking about today to your actual life so that you can live this out. So if this is resonating with you today, know that this might be your next step. But first of all, we're going to dive in with step number one. And this is the quintessential step and actually is called the four steps. So step number one is called the four steps, seems ironic. But if you've been around here for a minute, you've heard me talk about this, but we're going to go over it for a minute because these are the four steps that change everything. They are so simple and yet they're so life-changing and you can ask anyone that has been through the Academy, what the experience has been like to learn their four steps and they will tell you that it is a game changer for your life. So I'm going to unpack as much as I can in this moment today with you, but again, if you want to go deeper, the Academy is waiting for you, or if you're not quite ready to dive in, but you just want to put a foot in the pool to see how the temperature is, you can go and get the unstuck workshop. It's low cost. You can complete it in a day if you're super motivated. And that will give you just a little bit deeper eye into what we're talking about today. But I'm going to go through it as much as possible so that you can hopefully begin to understand this a little bit. So the four steps is based in a pain cycle. Pain cycle is part of restoration theory. This is a theory that I used to use as a therapist. I now use as a coach created by Dr. Terry Hargrave, based in God's word, as well as a neuropsychology. And it's the premise for everything that I coach on. Every time I coach someone in the Academy or otherwise, I always start with the four steps because it helps give us clarity over the situation. Often when we're walking through life, it's confusing. There's so many layers going on and we don't know what's the other person or what's us or what we're doing wrong or what's the enemy or what's us or, you know, it's just a lot of layers. And so this kind of just, it just weed through all of that. And we can clearly begin to see and understand ourselves and other people in our situations. And so the pain cycle is essentially compromised of your core wounds. We just talked about this in the last episode, but you're three to five core wounds. So you have an example, my core wounds are, I feel alone, I feel inadequate and I feel out of control. Those are the things I feel again and again. And research shows that we don't feel a bunch of different things. We feel the same things in a bunch of different ways. And so we have our core wounds that started when we were little babies and have been caring with us most of them throughout our whole lives. And then when those core wounds get triggered, it leads us to a fight or flight response, which is good. God made this in us, but only if there's an actual bear in the forest. And most of the time there's not an actual danger, but our brains can't distinguish between a real danger and a perceived danger. And so we see so many things as a threat, which leads us to our fight or flight response, which is our coping response. Coping is essentially our sin response. It's the bad things we do to try and deal with the feelings that we don't want our brains like, I don't like these bad feelings. I don't want to feel this. I don't like pain. So I'm going to do anything to shut that down. And so we go to our go to coping responses. So as an example, my go to coping responses are anger, control, and anxiety. Some variations I've had over the times aren't like people pleasing or hopelessness or escape. And so, you know, though, but I've kind of narrowed it down anyway. So there's just some more examples so you can know what we're talking about here. Okay. So that comprises your pain cycle. And then other people when they respond to your pain cycle, most of the time will respond from their pain, which then will reinforce your pain again. And you can see that you can see this all visually mapped out in the unstuck workshop. If you want to kind of know what I'm what I'm talking about. But all that being said, so in order to do the four steps, we need to know our pain cycle. And then we also need to know our peace cycle, which is exactly the opposite of the pain cycle. And so this is comprised of the truth. So it's not true that I'm alone. It's not true that I am inadequate or out of control. What is the truth? And so we identify specific truths. And then we identify a new action. So instead of getting angry, what do I actually need to do instead if I believed the truth? And so I help you flesh all of that out. There's really some like specific language that we need in order to create this. You can try and create it on your own, but it's just not going to have the full power to it. And so at least get the unstuck workshop if you're like wanting to go a little bit deeper because it gives you the core, the core feeling list and some coping examples and just walks you through it more specifically. But I just want to go over that briefly. But basically this is where we get our four steps from. So this can be applied not just to feeling inadequate, but to any feeling that comes up, right? So I use this when I feel alone. I use this when I feel out of control. But today I am going to give you an example of what this looks like with feeling inadequate. So even if you don't have your pain cycle developed, you can begin using this today with simply what I'm about to share with you, okay? So here's the four steps. Now these are so simple, they're so simple, but yet they are really challenging. So here's the four steps, number one, we're going to name it. So you probably heard like name it to tame it. We've got to name the feeling that we're experiencing. Otherwise, it's just taking over us and we can't recognize it once we recognize it almost removes it from us. And by the way, these four steps, the goal is to say them out loud when we do that it removes the emotion from the amygdala into our prefrontal cortex, which is used for logic and reasoning. And it helps just by saying them out loud helps us to get regulated, okay? So we're going to say out loud, how we do it is I feel inadequate, that's what it would sound like. Or you know, we talked about there's different variations. So for maybe for you, these feelings of inadequacy, it might sound like I feel like I'm not enough. I feel like a failure. I feel worthless. So whatever your version is, you're going to say that. And then number two, we're going to name what you normally would do, okay? So check out the last episode, talked a lot about some of the different ways that we cope with inadequacy and how that can show up in surprising ways in our life. So figure out what you do when you feel inadequate, what do you tend to do? Do you scroll on your phone, which I would put in the category of numbing? Do you spiral in your thoughts? Do you get angry at others, right? What do you normally do now? There can be a few different responses and this is when it gets a little more complicated That's when you need a little bit more training, but for today just keep it simple. What's the main? way, the main way you respond when you feel inadequate. Think of one example. Otherwise, you're going to get lost. So today, I'll go with anger because I think anger is always a great example. It's very visual. Everyone knows what anger looks like. So I'll say for today minus anger. So I would say I feel inadequate and I would normally get angry. And when we say this out loud, it kind of tricks our mind into not doing it because we're kind of like calling ourselves out. And so that can really be helpful. All right, number three, remember, this is so simple. We're going to say the truth. Okay. Now this is the hardest one, not because the truth is complicated, but because we don't want to believe it. First of all, our brains have been wired to not believe it because we have all these experiences that have reinforced the pain year after year, decade after decade. And those, those neuro pathways are very strong and deep. And our brain likes the simple path. And so it doesn't want to believe something new. It doesn't want to think something new. And so this is the biggest challenge. And that's why I have a lot of different exercises in the academy to really help you strengthen this new neuro pathway that we're trying to develop. And so I have some just repetition and experiential exercises to try and help rewire your brain in the process. But this also happens over time. So we're going to say the truth. Okay. So it would sound like this. I feel inadequate. That would normally get angry. But the truth is I am more than enough. Okay. And you can have your own version of what that truth phrase sounds like. Maybe it's that you're adequate. Maybe it's that you are enough or minus more than enough or you're full of worth or you're priceless or whatever, whatever you would put there. And it needs to be specifically tied to your pain word. Again, where some people get lost. But join the academy. I'll walk it there. But yeah, make sure it's directly directly connected. The goal is to cancel out that feeling. A great strategy here is to add one of a part of God's word to this to back up that truth. Because we're not just talking about any truth. We're talking about the truth, right? The only truth, which is found in Jesus. And what does he say about us? Okay. And then number four is what are you going to do instead? So instead of getting angry, what do I need to do if I actually believe that I was enough? I feel remember in the last episode I talked about in terms of inadequacy, what the area where it goes to anger is usually in parenting. And so for example, in parenting, as I'm parenting my kids, when I feel inadequate, if I actually believed that I'm enough and God called me to this and he's going to quit me for it. I don't have to be perfect, but he's chosen me for it. What would I do instead of getting angry? Right? And so that might sound like something like, you know, mine is I'm going to peacefully communicate. So I'm not going to shrink back and just pretend like this kid didn't just sin. I'm not going to scream at them. I'm not going to just make them feel better, right? I'm going to communicate and be direct, but do it peacefully. Okay. This might look like a lot of different things for you depending on your coping. Okay. So again, the new action needs to be directly connected to the coping. So if, for example, your coping was anxiety, then your new action might be to let it go. Like give it to God and let it go. Or mine for anxiety as relax and let go. Or you might have prey and give it to God, you know, whatever, whatever that opposite might look like, or it might be form a realistic thought. Sometimes our anxiety can look like just really unrealistic, wild, catastrophic thoughts. And so for you, that next step might be form a realistic thought, like, for example, in the parenting, you know, sometimes in those moments, I'm like, I'm a horrible parent. I've messed them up. There's no coming back from this. I've totally screwed it all up, you know, whatever. And then that next step might sound like, okay, I can always change, you know, these are God's kids. And I can get some more resources to help equip me to be a better parent. I can apologize. There is always hope, right? So just reminding myself of these realistic thoughts of, okay, I might have messed up here or there might be some things I need to adjust. Or it might be simply like, this kid is on his own journey with Jesus. This kid is a human that's going to sin and it's my job to help steward that journey with Jesus. That doesn't mean that they're never going to sin while I'm, while I'm, you know, leading them. But, you know, there, it's my job to steward that journey through those moments of sin. So that's what I sound like, because we put it all together for you real quick. I'm trying to go through this fast because I know it's a lot. And yeah, I just want to give you a taste of it so that you can hopefully begin to understand how this is working. Okay, so it might sound like I feel inadequate. I would normally get angry, but the truth is that I am more than enough. And by the way, I need to hang out there until you believe it. The truth is I'm more than enough. So instead of getting angry, I'm going to peacefully communicate. Okay. And then the step five, if you will, is to do it. Okay. So if I'm with my kids and I'm frustrated, I'm going to go peacefully communicate. Maybe that starts with an apology if I've already gotten angry. And I, you know, apologize and ask for forgiveness from me losing my temper. And then I address their sin and what happened. And I peacefully set a boundary and say, Hey, this isn't okay. And, you know, maybe we need a moment of discipline, just all depending on the circumstances. But I would then do that peaceful communication. Okay. So those are the four steps. That is it. And when it's working right when you get kind of all those little nitty gritty things working, and that's that's why sometimes it's this requires some coaching and practice. Because we don't just coach you to create this way, then help you learn to apply this in every situation, every setting, every relationship so that you can understand how this plays out in every aspect of your life. But when it's working right, this will regulate you in the moment. And over time, it will rewire your brain. Just like I was saying, it'll help strengthen that new neural pathway where you're actually believing God's truth for your life. Okay. And over time, it'll weaken that old neural pathway of what you used to believe about yourself or whatever that was. So yeah, that is it. Again, simple and complicated all at the same time. I'm not going to keep going here. Obviously, I could have 10 weeks that address this. But we're going to leave it there for today. And you know where to go if you want to go deeper madeholdpath.com, you can find out the options there. But I want to go into some more strategies to kind of just give you some more things to think about in terms of helping you overcome this voice of inadequacy. I would always start with the four steps. That would be like my first go to. But then there's just some other things to more broadly keep in mind. And by the way, all of these we address in the academy, I either have exercises, helping you kind of go deeper on each of these or figuring out how to apply them. So just so you know that's there. But we're going to go number two. This is to understand that it's not about you. Okay, let me explain this so often when people are not kind to us, whether they're speaking death over us, whether they're betraying us, whether they're leaving us out, you know, whatever like that bad thing is the way that people have hurt you. It's so easy to internalize that and begin to believe that it means it's proof that something's wrong with you. That you are flawed. It's proof that you're an addict quick as look at what all these people have said and done. But here's the reality. When people act in those ways, it has nothing or usually very little. Maybe you did something to hurt them, but that it's really still even not about you. It's about them and their own pain. They are acting out of their own pain cycle. So just like I walked you through what a pain cycle is and how what yours might look like, every single person has a pain cycle. And so anytime we see ugly behavior, right? So when puffing up and acting like they own the world, someone betraying, again, all those examples I just gave, it is stemming from their pain cycle. It is one of their coping, right? They're going into some kind of coping, which is rooted in pain. It all comes from the way that they were wounded at one point in their life. And it actually has nothing to do with you. Nothing to do with your worth. Nothing to do with who you are. Nothing. Truly nothing. And that can be so hard to absorb and to really believe that. But the more that you begin to see life and people through the lens of the pain cycle, the more this makes sense to you. And again, I have some cool exercises to kind of walk you through this and help you to see it in a different way. But this can be so freeing because what once felt like it was a label over us now suddenly becomes, it's gone. We're free. Right? And now that doesn't mean that we are okay with people's bad behavior. And we're like, oh, it's because they're in pain and, you know, I feel bad for them. Here we can have empathy. And actually having empathy for those that have hurt us is one of the best ways that we can heal. But empathy doesn't mean no boundaries. It doesn't mean we keep letting people hurt us. It doesn't mean that we just let people do whatever they want to us. No. And boundaries, I feel like I have to color it every time I say that word. In culture, it's gotten a bad rap because people are having essentially I think culture is preaching rigid boundaries where we just throw our walls up the second anyone hurts us and we cut them out without any kind of conversation without any sense of forgiveness without just because we're like, no, we just don't need that in our life. I'm protecting my peace. And that's just not what boundaries mean. I'm not going to keep going down that direction today. But boundaries are God's idea. We just aren't doing them the way culture is doing them. We do need to have conversations. We are called to forgive and even when we have maybe extra boundaries put in place, we're still called to forgive. And so all that being said, those things are a part of the healing process, but that doesn't mean that we, we just let people have a free for all of us. But what I want you to hear above all everything I just said is that whatever was done to you, whatever was spoken over you has nothing to do with you. It was someone acting out of their pain cycle. And acting from their place of woundedness, okay? Now, that doesn't mean you're innocent. You have a pain cycle too. And if they're in their pain cycle, you're most likely in your pain cycle. And so it doesn't mean that you were doing everything right. You very well might have some things to apologize for as well. You very well might have been operating in a pain cycle. But it doesn't mean 'cause we're each responsible for our own wounds, for our own sin. And that's the beauty of this, is that even when someone else acts out of their pain cycle and hurts us and does something against us, we have a choice. God has given us that responsibility to steward our feelings, to steward our actions. And so we have a choice what we do with that. And so even if you did something wrong to this person, they're still responsible for how they responded to you and back and forth there, okay? But I just want you to know, it's not about you. And so if you can begin to kind of peel back those things that were done to you, those things that were spoken to you, and sometimes that means one by one, like thinking through those lies you've been believing, thinking through those thoughts you've had because of what people have done to you. And looking at it with fresh eyes, go and do that work one at a time because it's not about you, okay? And when we begin to believe that, that's going to not give so much voice to this feeling of inadequacy in our lives because we have clarity over what's happening. All right, that's something to do. All right, number three, this is to know who you are. Okay, so remember at its core, inadequacy is an identity wound first. So in order to fight it, we have to have our identity solid. Okay, so we talked a few episodes ago about identity wounds versus trust wounds or safety wounds. Now inadequacy can stem from both, but primarily it's an identity wound. And so in order to actually not walk in this feeling of inadequacy, we have to have a solid sense of our identity. Now the world would tell you that this happens externally. You need to go into the world and discover yourself and find out who you are, right? And I think there's a partial truth to that. I do think as we get to know ourselves, we begin to understand our gifts and the way we operate best and the way our brain works and that can be so freeing it can be, it can really even fight that voice of inadequacy. Like for example, just because I don't think the way other people think that doesn't mean that I'm inadequate, just means that I think differently. But if I see I have all these other gifts over here, I'm like, oh, I just have different gifts and it's just so freeing 'cause I went through so much of my life feeling like I was good at nothing. I was generally good at a lot of things, like a little bit, but not really good at anything specifically and just felt out of place in so many, pretty much all of the places, all the areas, all of the situations. And over time I've learned just how to understand that that my gifts were different and I hadn't discovered how God wired me and what he was calling me to. And as I've done that, it has bought that sense of inadequacy in me as well. But this isn't even like the fullness of what I'm saying that can help, but apart from the gifts who you are, even if you do nothing good, nothing cool, even if you have no gifts, who you are has already been decided, right? Scripture tells us this. You were created on purpose by a good God and he designed you every part of you. He designed it intentionally. Before the thought of you even occurred to your parents, right? He chose you to come into this world and so if a good God designed you and brought you into this world, don't you think we already know who we are? Hey, people always say it like you know who you are 'cause you know who's you are. I love it, like that's it. Exactly, first and foremost, we have to remember above everything else that we do, we are first and foremost a daughter of the high king. That is who you are. You don't have to go in the world to look for it. You don't have to go anywhere else to discover it. You, this is already, already determined and God has paid a high price to have you be his. And I know sometimes when you're like, "Well, he did that for everyone." And then everyone's like, "Well, he did it just for you, but it's true." It's like, it feels cheesy 'cause we've said it so many times but you would do it all over again just for you. And so we've just got to see ourselves through that lens. It's so easy to just see ourselves from the lens of like, "Oh, I'm awkward or I don't fit in here or I messed this up." Or, "I feel like I'm failing in this area." Versus just like going to the core and remembering that God doesn't make mistakes and He created you. So we can trust that He did good when He made you. Okay, so I want, I want to leave you with that one today. We're gonna do a second episode on this because I just think it's so important and we're gonna talk about the next three things is how to really fight that voice of an adequacy. But I want you to think about those this week as one, your four steps, I encourage you to go deep on these, come join me in the Academy September 10th, may hold path.com, go and apply. But either way, work on your four steps. Number two, understand it's not about you, it's about someone else's pain. And number three, know who you are. Make sure that identity is solid so that you can see yourself clearly instead of it being a distortion that the enemy or the world is bringing, okay? All right, let me just pray for you as we go and I just hope that I'm just believing that God is just gonna do a work in some of you today. That is helping you for the first time, maybe ever, begin to see yourself clearly. That maybe you've lived under this distortion for all of your life, but today, you're finally going to begin to see that this is not who you are. Let me pray. God, I just thank you for each and every woman listening. God, I thank you that you crafted her intentionally God on purpose, Lord, that you are so in love with her God and that you have died for her so that you can be with her. I pray God that you with help her to see herself differently, God, help her to see herself the way that you see her. In fact, since we have a little extra time today, as we're praying, I just wanna do an exercise with you. I want you all, if you're not already, close your eyes as long as you're not driving or walking, close your eyes for a minute and I just want you to ask God this question, God, how do you see me? God, how do you see me? I want you to ask him that and just pause, just be still. And whatever comes to mind, just take note of it. Maybe there's something random 'cause you're hungry, some pizza, but just take note of what comes to mind and then just begin to, if it doesn't make sense that first ask God, what does this mean? Sometimes there's a deeper meaning to it, but I want you to just ask God to show you, okay? It's a pause and do that. And God, I just pray, Lord, that you would speak to your daughters today, God, that you would show her specifically, Lord, how you see her, God, and she would grab hold of that vision, Lord, instead of what the world says about her, instead of what she's made up and her mind, God, that you would help her just to feel whole in you. And we just command this lie of inadequacy to flee from us, God. In the name of Jesus, God, we rebuke it. God, we take power and control over it, God. It is not your voice, God. And we choose to listen to your voice today, Lord. And we just thank you for the work you're doing inside of us, God. We're thinking that you are not finished yet. We love you, and we praise you. And Jesus, and we pray. Amen. Love you. (upbeat music) Hey, friend, I hope that God used today's episode to speak to you or encourage you in some way. And if he did, don't leave it just with you. There is someone else in your life that needs to hear the encouragement that you heard today, so be sure to share it. And maybe you're still feeling stuck, and you're realizing that you're in the same place day after day, and nothing is changing, and you need to take it a step deeper. If that's you, then the unstuck workshop is your next step. You can finish the whole thing in a day and begin getting unstuck. You can find out all the details at madeholdpath.com. Lastly, if the show has meant something to you, I can't tell you how helpful it is for me if you leave a review. I am deeply encouraged, and it also helps other women find the hope and tools that you found. I'm so very grateful for you, friend. I can't say it enough, and I can't wait to see all that God has in store for you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)