Am I Enough: Pursuing Value in a World that Constantly Demands More

This one feels icky to write. Even glancing at the title is enough to make me wince. Mostly because I have worked so hard to ignore or “manage” that inner voice whispering, “I am not enough”. Growing up, it didn’t matter how many verbal affirmations I received; how polished I attempted to present myself; how many A’s or “atta girl’s” I heard - I still felt as though I was not enough.

While it presents differently now compared to my younger years, the whisper of deficiency has continued to whisper even now as I approach my mid 30’s. As I’ve recently begun engaging more with this part of me, I’ve learned that it hasn’t only felt not good enough...it’s felt defective…Ouch.

It is not uncommon for me to allow society to accentuate the reminder of feeling defective and not good enough. Modern day society provides a consistent barrage of deafening messages to feed this narrative. Our culture promotes the idea of attaining perfection no matter how impossible or elusive. No matter our health, image, tax bracket, relationships, performance - I can always be better.

I had no idea how much I had been totally buying into this narrative. While self-improvement can absolutely lead to health in a variety of ways, I was not quite aware how much I was attributing my value to the impossibility of being enough - a bar of indefinable perfection. My insatiable pursuit of always wanting to be better was a foolish attempt to find value within myself.

Sitting with this part of me has allowed me to see just how I’ve been my own bully to this inner voice in an attempt to manage it, minimize it, intellectualize it, hide it, numb it, debate with it, make it conform…or just waving the white flag in defeat and accepting my defective title.

I have engaged in actively reinforcing this part of me by not valuing it through my attempts to manage it. I haven’t always engaged with this part of me in a way that speaks to this part’s innate value – I have inherent value simply because I exist which is unrelated to my journey of bettering myself.

In the past, I avoided this part of me that adopted the label of “defective.” Recently, I began to develop curiosity and compassion towards this part of me that felt not enough. I’m learning to listen to its burdens and reasons as to why it feels this way. I grieve with it and I’m growing in my understanding of how much I was not speaking value to this part, when I work so hard to dismiss its impact in my life. I make efforts to demonstrate care, love, and value to this part rather than demand it be different than it is. Taking this part’s hand and leading it away from the ghosts of yesterday that contributed to forming the inner narrative of not being enough.

While this, and I, will forever be a work in progress, I am finding myself able to better care for this part of myself. I’m making daily choices to operate from a place of self-improvement because I am enough, rather than an anxious journey of self-improvement hoping to at some point believe I am enough.

You may ask, what does this look like for me currently? I’m learning to celebrate the wins in parenthood rather than hyper-focusing on my mistakes. I encourage myself to be human and fully present with my family and others. When I go shopping for a new pair of pants, I buy the bigger pant size because I deserve to feel comfortable rather than define my worth based upon my waist measurement. Lastly, in an act of vulnerability, I wrote this blog post - in hopes that someone else who has adopted an inner script of feeling “less than” may also find freedom in experiencing being enough.

  Written By: Lauren Salazar, MA, LMFT, LAC