August 16, 2021
Survivors who struggle with complex post-traumatic stress disorder often fight feelings of being inferior or not good enough. We focus so much on our downfalls and mistakes that we lose sight of the good things we do and the positive traits we bear.
In this piece, we shall examine what it is that makes a person good enough.
Why Don’t We Feel Good Enough?
Many times, the reason we spend so much time feeling not good enough is that we have so much negative self-talk going on in our minds.
Not only does our inner critic put us down, but it also replays the messages we heard during the trauma we survived. If we were told we were ugly, we internalized those words and thus began to believe that we were unattractive and not good enough.
To counteract the inner critic’s repeating negative messages to us over and over again, we need to do is go to war.
The first battle is to rid the inner critic of the power it has over how we see the good we have done and our successes. The inner critic would have us believe that they are puny or not essential, but by taking a long, hard look at them, we can realize that we have done some incredible things in our short time here.
The next battle will be to end the ruminating thoughts that enslave your mind. Thinking over an action for a time is healthy and normal but ruminating over it, beating yourself up for a mistake in judgment or a public error isn’t. We need to remove the ammunition from the inner critic by stopping our ruminating thoughts and replacing them with solid positive ones of hope and compassion for ourselves.
The last battle entails balancing your acceptance of yourself with self-improvement. It is good to accept yourself as you are, but it needs to be offset by increasing your drive and chances to improve who you are as a person. The inner critic has no ammunition to defeat self-improvement and self-acceptance. His voice will quiet, and he will lose the war for your peace.
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