Inadequacy is difficult to push back against because it’s often rooted in childhood trauma and negative thought patterns. Parents who withhold praise and love, trading it for their children’s efforts, cause their children to feel inadequate unless they earn it.
As a result, those who feel inadequate often have poor boundaries, making them vulnerable to malicious people. Not to mention their thoughts and opinions about themselves will not be positive either.
But you can push back against those thoughts and feelings. You will likely need a therapist to address the root issues, but in the meantime, these are some of the ways you can disrupt and push back against those feelings.
1. Challenge the self-criticism in your head.
Do you have a voice in your head that’s constantly telling you that you aren’t good enough? That you’re not worthy? That you need to perform to earn affection and love? Those thoughts are echoes of old wounds, traumas that you’ve survived, and you have to challenge them. You have to remind yourself that, “Hey, this isn’t true. These are old wounds trying to drag me down.”
The thoughts that we focus on tend to gain strength, much like a hurricane passing over a warm ocean current, picking up warm water and adding power to it. You can lessen the intensity of the storm by using counternarratives and mantras. Instead of focusing on how inadequate you are, use a mantra like, “I am valuable. I am worthy. It doesn’t matter what other people think of me. I do not need to earn approval to feel good.”
And then repeat these to yourself until they derail the negative thoughts that are swimming. Yes, it’s hard, but it gets easier the more you do it, in my experience. Self-compassion is the path to healing.
2. Speak to yourself kindly.
The most important person you can give compassion to is yourself. Why? Well, you have to live with yourself 24/7/365. Being down on yourself becomes a vicious cycle when you don’t take the steps to interrupt those negative thoughts and change your self-talk.
You shouldn’t tolerate name-calling or dwelling on what you feel to be your negative habits. As Psychology Today informs us, speaking kindly to yourself makes it easier to improve your self-esteem and self-worth.
In my case, I had to reframe a lot of things that I was just in the habit of telling myself. For example, “God, I’m stupid.” I would instead think, “Okay, I just didn’t know. A lot of people don’t know things; there’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t make me stupid. I just didn’t know.”
Another example would be, “Why are you so weird and awkward?” with a heavy negative connotation. And while it hurts to feel that way, because I’ve never actually been able to feel fully comfortable in groups of people or with people I don’t know, I understand that there are some parts of my wiring that other people do consider weird and awkward. I remind myself, “Hey, everyone is unique in their own way. My glitches just happen to be a bit glitchier than normal.”
3. Make and keep small promises to yourself.
Big changes and improvements often come from small steps. One small step you can take is to commit to keeping promises that you make to yourself. It’s harder than it sounds, because if you’re used to giving up or not trying like you should, it will require a realignment of your efforts.
Now, if you don’t know how to do something that you promised yourself, the internet has a wealth of resources to help you. You have a world of information and experiences at your fingertips, and someone has undoubtedly faced the same issue.
What this does for you is encourage you to trust yourself more often. The more small wins you accrue, the more you teach yourself that you are competent, valuable, and worthy. It helps exercise those mental muscles and will subconsciously encourage you to keep trying.
That kind of approach will also help you mute some of the discomfort you may experience when you decide to tackle bigger goals.
4. Surround yourself with positive, uplifting people.
The wrong people can make you feel inadequate about yourself and what you have to offer to the world. Sometimes, we just find ourselves surrounded by the wrong people, people who aren’t good for our mental health. They may not accept you as you are, forcing you to shrink to fit their preconceived notions and expectations.
That’s not a good way to live. You may need to change your social group if you find you are surrounded by people who don’t uplift and support you. It’s much easier to change your vibe when you’re around people who are at the level you want to be. That makes it easier for you to rise to that level and not get held back by negative people dismissing your progress.
5. Stop chasing and trying to earn external validation.
There are two types of validation – internal and external. People who feel inadequate often chase external validation. That is, they can’t feel good about themselves unless someone else tells them that they are good.
That can turn into people-pleasing, and for those without solid boundaries, it usually means you get taken advantage of. Why? Because to earn their approval, you have to make them happy. But what if what they want will harm you or make you unhappy? What will win out?
Internal validation, however, is a peace and understanding that you are good enough, worthy enough, adequate enough, regardless of how other people feel about it. They aren’t living your life. You can’t make your life’s decisions based on what will make other people happy. If you do, you can lose touch with yourself and forget who you are and want to be.
External approval and praise from others are nice, but internal validation and self-acceptance will sustain you.
6. Celebrate your progress over perfection.
You’re not going to become the best version of yourself overnight. Your progress will be measured in small steps along the way, and you want to keep that present moment in mind. Celebrate your small wins, because your small wins will eventually lead you to a much bigger win.
For example, you may tell yourself you are valuable and worthy enough to have some joy in life, so you start enacting some self-care to help your mental state. Every week, you take an afternoon to do something fun that makes you happy or fulfilled. The more you do that, the more joy and happiness you’re building up for yourself. That kind of progress leads to an overall shift in perception and mood.
But you’re not going to be perfect. Sometimes you’re going to get derailed. You may miss a week, not feel as good as you hoped, or whatever other eventuality pops up. Regardless, it’s okay! Just get back to what you’re doing, and keep going. You don’t have to be 100% perfect. Hell, 50% better is still significantly better.
7. Let go of comparisons.
You can’t spend your time comparing your life to others. If you do, it will only deepen your feelings of inadequacy, making it harder to recover and grow from it. The issue with comparison is that someone will always have it better than you, so what’s the point of making yourself feel bad for not having what someone else has? Anywhere you look, you’ll be able to find someone doing better at something you want to be doing.
The saying “Comparison is the thief of joy” is true because there is no endpoint to it. You’re not making enough money? Envious of someone that is? Well, you get a new job, make more money, but wait! This other person just bought a boat and has a nicer house! That’s what I want too!
Now you just made yourself unhappy again by thinking what you do have isn’t adequate.
Final thoughts…
You are more than good enough, and you’ll only get better with the more time and attention you put into it. The difficult part is coming to terms with yourself, recreating those narratives that undermine your self-confidence and worth.
Those negative thoughts and feelings don’t accurately represent reality. Don’t give in to them. Talk to a therapist, get to the root of the issues, and get them resolved. Life is too short to feel bad about yourself.
