No-fuss anxiety tips #5:You ARE Good Enough
Welcome to this fifth blog in a no-fuss series on anxiety, made up of 20-short articles with simple tips and techniques for managing anxiety, drawing on therapeutic thinking from a range of psychological and psychotherapy theories. In this blog, we’ll explore how remembering, or at least attempting to believe that you are good enough can be a step towards feeling less impacted by anxiety. You don’t need to be perfect - good enough is good enough.
What these tips won’t do is explore the origins and purpose of anxiety for you – this type of deeper exploration is what counselling offers. That said, having strategies for managing anxiety is a great place to start. Each article is designed to be quick read, no-fuss. So, let’s get into technique number five: believe that you are good enough.
Anxiety and a feeling of not good enough
Anxiety can stem from a fear of being “not good enough”. Of course, different people will have different answers to the question it means to be “good enough”? Taking time to reflect on what “good enough” means for you can be a helpful way to challenge your own automatic thinking and assumptions which can be a factor in maintaining anxiety. This can be a starting point to changing your mindset to one in which you accept yourself as you are, and that you are good enough.
An Internal Locus of Evaluation
Carl Rogers, the founder of Person-Centred Therapy noted that people make value judgements about themselves. Rogers called this the ‘locus of evaluation’. Our locus of evaluation can be either internal or external. An internal locus of evaluation is where we make value judgements based on what we think and believe for ourselves. We trust our own instincts. If we sense we are good enough, then we are good enough!
An external locus of evaluation is where the judgements we make about ourselves are based on the expectations of significant people in our lives. Without always realising it, we can absorb their expectations as if they are our own. For example, if an important role model in your life – for example, your Mother, showered you with affection when you did well at school, you may begin to judge yourself as unworthy of love when you slip up, or fail to pass a test. Without realising it, the expectation of the other becomes your own expectation for yourself.
Rogers believed that cultivating a more internal evaluation was an important step of growth as a human being. Feeling more at ease with your own evaluation of your worth and importance can be a powerful way to tackle anxiety.
So, an internal locus of evaluation allows you to decide for yourself what “good enough” looks like, regardless of what other people have said. It allows you to step free from conditions that tell you we are only good enough if……
Prompt questions to support reflection upon being good enough
Today, you might find it helpful to ask yourself the questions:
What does good enough look like for me?
What are the expectations people held about me that I now want to let go of?
Is there a statement about yourself that you want to create – ready to call to mind if you begin to doubt your own “good-enoughness”?
Your answers to these questions may be the beginning of you adopting a different mindset - one in which you can practice greater acceptance of yourself as you are, so you can lay down that anxious niggling feeling that you’re not good enough.
Next steps?
If you’re keen to break free from anxiety, then look out for more blogs within this anxiety-themed series. The next blog in the series, #6, focuses on how paying attention to your ANS (your Autonomic Nervous System) can help with anxiety.
And, if you’d like to talk through how counselling can help you towards a deeper exploration of your anxiety, do get in touch with me, Claire Law.
I’m a BACP Senior Accredited Psychotherapist offering professional counselling and psychotherapy in Preston, Lancashire and online for adults based in the UK.
We can talk through how online counselling or face-to-face counselling at my therapy room in Preston could be helpful for you in managing your anxiety and getting to the roots of what lies behind your anxiety. I’d love to hear from you.
References:
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.