How to Handle "I'm Not Good Enough" Thoughts

In one of my group coaching sessions, a client told me she was having a lot of anxiety about getting back into dating after years of just focusing on other aspects of her life.

She was worried about putting herself out there and getting hurt again.

We talked about her last relationship, and one of the things that we uncovered was that part of what was so painful about the breakup was how she treated herself during it.

In dating, we can basically be our own worst enemy.

We fear dating because we don't want to meet somebody who's going to hurt us, but we are also afraid of how incredibly unkind we can be toward ourselves when we get hurt.

For my client, a big part of overcoming the fear of putting herself out there again was starting to rebuild trust with herself.

The first step is learning how to handle the voice in our head that is always telling us how we are "not good enough."

Because the voice is in our mind and it's saying specific things about us, it feels very personal, but it's actually something that everybody has.  

It doesn't matter how beautiful someone is, how successful, how old or how young, everybody hears this voice sometimes.

The voice can start to be like a bully that we're avoiding on our way home from school.

If you know where the bully hangs out, then you might just start walking a different direction to avoid them.

We know if something goes wrong, we might run into the bully… so we choose a path that doesn’t lead us to where we want to go.

We have brains that are always scanning our environment for risks and weighing those risks. Part of us wants to go out and experience connection, and then another part of us wants to stay in and watch Netflix because we don't want to get rejected.

Our brains just tell us we're not enough every day to prevent us from doing scary stuff.

All of that's really important so that you understand that nothing has gone wrong if you feel insecure.

When we actually have this awareness, then it gives us a choice.

You can choose to think, “Putting myself out there is important to me. I can create the things I want in my life and feel scared at the same time.”

With my client, I suggested just making an online dating profile and told her she doesn't need to swipe or talk to people for now.

Just create the profile and deal with the thoughts that come up at that stage.

You can work through the fear and rebuild trust with yourself as you take each step forward.