There’s a point, a stage if you will, of awareness. To describe it, you have come to know yourself intimately, the construct you’ve been living within and identified as ‘you’ all your life. This awareness includes understanding the notions of self you’ve adopted from early life, adopted and created, added to over the years. You’ve built an intricate prison and that prison is also you. It’s made up of thoughts and feelings based on a fictional story. You understand it’s not you, at least intellectually.
You know it comes from your inner child’s reactions to family influences, circumstances and environment - the emotions and thoughts created from that. This is the loop tape that is your construct. It will have lead you to the realisation of a see-saw of reactions from you to this construct. You’ve ‘done’ much to delve deeply into those painful, limiting feelings best described as ‘I’m not enough’. You may even have sat in presence with (allowed yourself to fully feel), the pain that created it, all the reflections or echoes of it in your life. To name some, they include:
(*Note: For all of these points, it’s what at root motivates or informs our actions or inactions (the energy underlying:, our feelings, thoughts and responses that reveal whether we are on this see-saw or not.)
At one end, the so called negative reactions, what we think of as dysfunction*
avoidance (of whatever has triggered feeling it)
paralysis
blame of self or others
doubt and indecision
feelings of and identifying with being a victim
apathy
self medicating (food, drugs/alcohol, exercise - potentially, literally any activity)
escapism (too numerous to name all forms)
seeking fixing or validation from others
self hatred
intense focus on self image, whether in the form of self consciousness/judgement or simply vanity
aggression
lying
manipulation
need/lack
shame
At the other end of the see-saw, the so called positive reactions (what psychology and society supports) which are considered functional behaviour/responses*.
setting boundaries
setting and achieving goals
ambition
self care
confidence
assertiveness
excessive attentiveness to word and deed
believing that anything outside of or inside this idea of you is going to make you better, happier or more in any way
faith
buying things to make a life or to make you feel like you
self expression
need (this one ends up on both ends of the see saw as society is constructed around a plethora of approved of needs)
self help/self improvement
affirmations
Everything that exists is created from energy, is energy. Our feelings and thoughts, our beliefs cannot exist without the energy that creates them. We’re all energy sensitive beings even if we don’t realise it. From childhood we experience adults telling us one thing at times but we feel/sense another. They do this to protect us it’s said but the energy reveals what underlies.
In the same way, the energy of ‘not good enough; is distinctive; the ways in which it shows itself in our lives is clear. It’s popular to counter this with many ways in which one might come to feel enough. The power of positive thinking, affirmations and behavioural modification are all part of counter measures. To feel enough seems to be so desirable, our glimpses of it confirm this. It’s often said that as long as we invest in/believe that anything outside of ourselves will fix us we shall remain unfixed. What is we’re not broken though? (We’re not.)
Read the list at the other end of the see saw of so called positive reactions again. Consider that they too are a reaction to feelings of ‘not enough.’ We’re driven to feel enough by not enough. It’s the energy that reveals and on this see saw, no matter where you sit, the energy is lack/abundance. It’s created by a desire to be more; happier, better and it’s created from need. Where there is need there is never enough. I frequently say, we are so much more than enough. We are.
I do not affirm but rather, share; I am not revealed by enough - I am.
~ Stephanie Marian