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If you're tired of feeling never enough, of constantly being derailed by your own fears or the reactions of others, then you are in the right place. I'm Deb, a licensed psychologist, and this is Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to women who've spent their lives trying to stay within the lines of what's acceptable, who've never felt good enough and who are ready to break free and bloom. Let's talk about how you can build a solid foundation connected with your strength and your wisdom. Before we start, I need to make sure that you know that the information I share with you is just that. It's just information. It's not meant to be a prescription for what you should do or meant to replace the advice of any of your healthcare providers. It also doesn't mean that we have a professional client-therapist relationship.

Hi there and welcome. I had a totally different plan for today and at the last minute, I decided to switch gears and continue talking about the striving we do to be good enough. Since recording the last episode, what does good enough really mean? An idea has been bouncing around in my head and I want to share that idea with you and I'd love to hear your reactions. 

I've been continuing to think about the idea that our striving to be good enough may very well be an inherited fear, one that belongs to our female ancestors and that has been passed down to us both through our genes as well as through our socialization. What struck me after recording the last episode is that if that is true, are we wasting our time in trying to solve it, in trying to be good enough? 

So, let me back up for a minute in case you missed the previous episode. The reason I suspect that this fear of not being good enough is a carryover from the past versus a personal problem for each of us to solve is how common this struggle is. Off the top of my head, I can think of maybe only one woman who didn't relate to this and said she felt good enough.

Now, I know I have a bit of a skewed sample as people coming to see me are typically less than happy with themselves for one reason or another. And it hasn't only been my clients who've shared this fear of being enough. Clients and friends alike have viewed this struggle as personal to themselves and questioned why they could never feel good enough. 

From my vantage point of listening to so many bright, capable women believing that they weren't good enough, it seemed there had to be something much larger going on than the personal dynamics of these individual women.

Noticing this pattern over the years is what led me to think about these struggles in a larger context, that of the experience of being female and to the writing of my book, Never Enough, Separating Self-Worth from Approval. I still believe the information that I shared in that book is relevant and important and that the BlOOM model can help us step

 into our own wisdom, separate from what others think of us. And what I have been thinking about since last week is that maybe there is a step that needs to come before that work. Maybe the first step before the work of separating one's worth from the approval of others is to recognize that this fear of never being good enough is not actually a personal struggle for us to work on, and instead is an outdated fear, a relic of what was once important for survival, and now is a fear that no longer serves us and in fact keeps us from finding peace, trusting our own wisdom. and finding joy.

And that as long as it feels true, that I need to figure out how to feel good enough, it will keep me striving, keep me trying to get there.

What really hit me this past week is that if this is an inherited fear, we need to approach the fear differently than how we would face other fears. I'm really hoping I can explain what I'm thinking about this in a way that's understandable and that will offer hope of freedom from this constant striving that most of us feel stuck in and trying to be good enough. 

For me, what was a light bulb moment was thinking about the mice and the cherry blossoms. I shared the study in the episode, Women, Epigenetics, and the Need to Please. And I will put a link in the show notes in case you missed that episode.

 In that study, mice who were two generations removed from the mice who had received an electric shock paired with the scent of cherry blossoms demonstrated fear when exposed to the scent of cherry blossoms, even though they had never been shocked. And so that fear had no relevance to their lives.

Cherry blossoms weren't dangerous, as that scent was no longer connected with the shock that their ancestors experienced. And yet they were afraid. I'm imagining those mice spent whatever time they had left to be alive, feeling afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms because of that fear they inherited from the mice that came before them.

So here we are. Almost every woman I have spoken with has related to the fear of not being good enough. And as I shared in the last episode, I'm not sure any of us really know what that means. I mean, what is the end goal? And if we arrived and were good enough, what would this mean? Would it mean we were a finished product?

That certainly doesn't make sense. My suspicion is that our fear of being enough is similar to the fear the mice felt when exposed to the scent of cherry blossoms. The fear in both cases is real.

The basis for the fear just doesn't make sense in the current context because it was a fear that belonged to someone else. It was an inherited fear. It totally made sense for the mice who were shocked when there was the scent of cherry blossoms to be stressed by the scent. And it totally made sense for our ancestors who lacked the rights to protect themselves or to live independently, to fear not being good enough, good enough to be chosen and protected by someone who did have rights and was able to protect them. Being pleasing and good enough kept those women alive and safe.

For most women today, if we're not pleasing or good enough to be chosen, our lives are not in danger. We might have feelings about that, and we're not in danger. Yet this inherited fear leaves us feeling really unsafe.

Our ancestors knew the consequences of not being good enough. They knew the risk of making waves, not keeping the peace, not trying to keep those who had the rights happy. Doing so would give them the best chance of staying safe and alive. It certainly wasn't guaranteed since women couldn't defend themselves in court and so if charges were brought against them, their lives could still be in danger.

What is important, I think, is that the fear for them served a specific purpose. It gave women the best chance of surviving.

Yes, some women today still live in similar situations, especially women of color or women whose sexual identity or orientation is not deemed to be acceptable. And for most of us, at least in the moment, in this moment, we have rights and we can live independently. Our survival doesn't depend on keeping the peace or being good enough.

So why is it that we don't see that or think that through? We are intelligent women, the women that I have worked with who believe this were very bright and capable women, women that in my eyes were certainly good enough. My suspicion is that because when we are feeling that fear, we have lit up the circuit where that fear resides in our primitive brain. And because that wire has been isolated, when it lights up, it's our reality in that moment. 

So when an old fear circuit lights up in the brain, we are experiencing whatever is encoded in that circuit. And if when that circuit lights up, we never bring in any new information, each time it lights up, we will have the same experience.

Think about maybe a person who was bitten by a dog. And if they never work on that fear, every time that circuit, that fear circuit lights up, they're going to feel that same fear they felt when they were bitten by a dog. 

Or if you have ever responded in a childlike way, maybe in the midst of an argument or being tipped, or observed someone you care about doing so, it's likely that you or they are on an old wire and all of the old fears and the old beliefs that were true in childhood feel current, feel accurate in the moment. 

So whatever is encoded on the wire when it lights up, is what we experience. All the thoughts, the feelings, the beliefs.

I shared this analogy in my book and at the time I felt horrified because I couldn't remember who the author was and I still don't know. I know it was a neuroscientist and he used the analogy of these old wires often fear related being like islands cut off from the rest of the world.

And on these islands, there are soldiers who were left there and they don't know that the war has ended. They have no new information. So they're still cleaning their guns and watching for the enemy. These soldiers don't need to work on why they keep expecting the enemy to arrive. They need new information from the rest of the world. They need to know that the war's over.

Similarly, when this old fear circuit of not being enough lights up, we are like the soldiers in this altered reality, believing that we still have to prove we are good enough in order to survive. We're on an island from the past with no current information. 

We feel driven to be enough because on the island we're still fighting to survive. Just like the soldiers no longer need to clean their guns, or be on watch duty for enemy planes or ships, we no longer need to struggle so hard to be enough in order to survive. It's just that when that fear lights up, because it is an isolated island in our primitive brain, the fear feels real and true.

That is what this author wrote. As long as these circuits light up and all we think and feel is what is on the circuit we will still believe the danger that is encoded there is still happening.

So the task is to be able to notice when these old circuits light up, to notice when this old fear is there, because noticing requires another part of our brain. So when we notice, we have just started to build a connection with more current knowledge.

Yes, I think it is very likely that this fear has resulted in other struggles in our lives, like anxiety or feeling overwhelmed or frazzled trying to do more and more to feel good enough. And those are the struggles that are well suited to the BlOOM model.

What I suspect is that we are wasting our time trying to figure out how to be good enough because those fears and beliefs are simply, and I'm not minimizing by using the word simply, I mean, they simply reside on an old, isolated, and out-dated circuit in our brain.

So what I wonder is what might happen if we were able to accept that feeling never enough is a given, as it has been passed down to us, that it isn't a problem to solve. Instead, the task is to recognize when this outdated fear lights up and swamps us with fear. to get to the place where we're able to say, ⁓ there it is. That was the fear my grandmother or my great-grandmother felt. It kept her safe. It's her fear and not mine.

Feeling responsible for fearing, being not good enough makes no sense. What would make sense is to identify that this was my ancestor's fear, to identify when it's lighting up, and to work on the repercussions of having this fear, like feeling anxious, having low confidence, appeasing in relationships or having a hard time saying no. 

This is why I say that I think the content of Never Enough and the Bloom model is still valuable as it helps to work on those repercussions and it helps us to start to trust our own wisdom and to discover who we are and what we want. And we don't need to fight the war of proving that we are good enough. We need to realize that it's an outdated, isolated circuit when it lights up.

By doing so, can then connect with our wisdom and move on to working on beliefs that are pertinent to our lives, like the branches that have formed from this core wire, like our tendency to appease or to be fearful of asking for what I want. 

As long as we keep allowing the fear of not being enough to drive our behavior, it will be really hard to work on all of those branches. So even though this book, if I write this book, will be a sequel to Never Enough. In my mind, it is the work that comes before the work in the BlOOM model.

It is the work of recognizing that all of this striving to be good enough reflects an inherited, outdated fear, not something we need to work on. And once we learn how to recognize that and start to bring in more current, updated information into that once isolated circuit, And then we can begin the work on our blooming and move toward what brings us joy.

I'm really hoping that what I've shared, I've shared in an understandable way. And I'm hoping that you're feeling possibly some relief and hope in thinking about it in this way. As I said at the beginning, I would really love to hear your reactions.

Whether you would be interested in learning how to do this, whether you would be interested in a book guiding you in how to do this, really anything that you would be willing to share, I would be grateful to receive. My contact information is in the show notes and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. So until next time, take good care and bye bye.

This has been Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to supporting you in blooming into all you are meant and wish to be. If you enjoyed it and gained value, please consider leaving a review, as it will help other women to find it and please share it with anyone who would benefit from it. And if you would like to be notified when new episodes become available, be sure and follow on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, how will you light a candle of self-acceptance? Because you deserve to be you, even if others disagree.