It Ain’t Necessarily So: We Can Challenge Our Assumptions

Lyn Reed October 28, 2015

When we take time out to reflect on our past, as therapy often encourages us to do, repeated patterns of behaviour often emerge. We may have been vaguely aware of them but for one reason or another paid little attention to our reservations and ploughed on regardless.

Good therapy can bring them to the surface.

Through exploration with our therapist, it may emerge that in the past we have sought approval and love from our parents and caregivers. Yet despite it all we have fallen short: we have not been good enough. We often carry this judgement with us into adulthood.

We can come to believe we are never going to be good enough.

So we follow the script which has been written for us. We have to be good enough for others, please others and suppress our own needs and wants. It’s almost as though we think we cannot change, we cannot take a different path and everything is set in stone.

When we are able to face ourselves in the mirror and take a long hard look at our emotional well-being, it is often then that we feel able to make a decision. We feel strong enough to take a different route. We discover there are other ways ahead, other opportunities. We discover we are indeed worthy: good enough to take our own path.

It is then that we discover our new identity, our sense of purpose. And we come to understand that the way we have behaved in the past may not have served us as well as we had been led to believe.

And then we have the confidence to make the changes we once thought we were not worthy of. We are GOOD ENOUGH.