When It’s Never Enough: EMDR for Core Beliefs
Keep on pushing, because it's just around the corner. When you get that promotion, when you hit that number in your bank account, when you have the home and kids and social media posts to prove it, you will have finally arrived. Then it will be enough. You will, finally, be enough. The ghosts of your old life gone. Naysayers and bullies from childhood conquered. It's just around the corner.
Then the goalposts move. Or, really, the whole accomplishment just felt anticlimactic. "I thought this would feel better than it actually does." And here it goes again, you are scanning the horizon for the next goal, the next way to be productive, to prove you belong, to fulfill your sense of destiny.
So keep on pushing if you want, but it might be worth taking a beat to understand what you are truly seeking. What is truly missing in your life. Where the love and respect you are striving for is actually missing. Because if it's absent from you then the constant pushing, running, and chasing — the exhaustion — is going to go on forever, until there's no more time left. My bet is that at some level you are already aware of this. Maybe you just don't know what to even do about it.
This isn't about working harder
If you found this article searching for how to problem solve your way out of this, I'm going to invite you to ask the striving part of you to sit next to you through the rest of this piece rather than taking the wheel. That impulse is understandable and I relate, I'm guilty of it myself. However, you are striving to heal what can't be healed through striving. The striving is part of the problem, because this is the part of you that believes the next achievement or relationship will finally get you to the finish line, and doesn't fully understand that there is no finish line. The marathon has no end. On and on you go.
The belief that you will cross some threshold in your life that finally leads to a lasting sense of, "I made it," is called the arrival fallacy. It's that flickering sense of attainment that feels so good (or for some people, it doesn't; it can even feel disappointing!) but is so short. Ultimately the wick burns down and you light the next candle.
It's not that you shouldn't aim for and chase down bigger and better things for yourself, you absolutely should. Professional growth, life milestones, achievements — these are all vital to our sense of autonomy and well-being in the world. They are also necessary just for survival. So I would never tell you that these things are problematic in and of themselves.
The problem is when it's never enough. When no achievement or milestone ultimately leaves you with lasting fulfillment, yes, that is a problem. If you can't be with your loved ones and simply...enjoy...experience yourself fulfilling your promise and purpose, feel joy in being intimately tied to and connected to others, that is when you've got a major problem on your hands. This is a sign that it's actually not so much that "it's never enough," but that "I am not enough."
Where "I'm not enough" comes from
It's not a single moment and it's often not even overt. Your parents (probably) didn't sit you down and say "your worth is conditional on your performance." Nor was it an older sibling calling you "worthless" or the bullying or competition in school that you may have grown accustomed to. It's all of the above. Over and over again. Our brains run on repetition.
When we hear a message often enough, even if it's subtle and expressed from a loving place (as it usually is from parents), core beliefs are programmed in. Even positive praise becomes a type of reinforcement learning. We take immense joy in our parents' pleasure and can develop the idea that I am loved insofar as I achieve and attain. Again, it's not necessarily intentional (though sometimes, unfortunately, it is) and it's usually not malicious, but intent doesn't matter to young neural pathways that are learning how to help you survive. As the old saying goes, neurons that fire together wire together. And your brain and nervous system's main responsibility as a child is to help you figure out how to survive in the family, culture, and society that you are being raised in.
In other words, your system worked the way it was supposed to. For some people, this could even be true of their caregivers, since part of loving children is helping them achieve and learn to move past their barriers. Regardless of whether you consider your childhood home environment to be excellent or abusive, the task now is recognizing that the old way of surviving and thriving has run its course. Because now you are running. And running. And running. Even when you've achieved. Even when you are financially stable or better. Even when you are surrounded by all the love you could have fantasized about as a child...something is still missing. It's not enough. It never is. Somewhere along the journey, your programming never adjusted. You are running Windows '95 in 2026. And, naturally, you feel stuck.
Why Working Harder Can't Fix It
It makes sense that you want to problem solve this. It's what you have always done and it's what has made you a successful professional. It's just what you know. The pathways our neurons choose are the ones they are used to traveling. Those, at first glance, are the fastest and most efficient. But with this problem, you are going to drive into a proverbial wall. The issue with this one, in essence, is that working harder is the problem.
The striving part of you that we talked about earlier came into existence for good reason. It was there to answer to judges. Judges being parents, family, neighbors, church communities, and so on and so on. Whether they were actually judging you so voraciously is a topic for another time, but if that's how it felt to you, then that's how it felt.
Eventually, what happens is that the presumed external judgers aren't even needed. They are replaced by your internal judge. And this one is a tough son-of-a-bitch. This judge often takes a compassionate stance towards others but metes out harsh punishment to you. Nothing pleases it. It's always there. And think about what it judges you for. Seriously, take a few moments with it.
The judge inside of you is still observing and critiquing as if you were a child or a teenager. Like you are still in high school and actually have to worry about what people are whispering about in the halls. Or your mom's anxiety about the way you look before that family wedding. Or what dad can brag about to his friends. Yes, the people in your life may have changed, but the core worries are still essentially unchanged.
But the truth is you are an adult now. Again, take a few seconds with that. You are in charge. You get to choose now. So why run an outmoded program that is sapping you of energy and leaving you miserable? The rub is that it's very difficult to let old programming go. Your system has run the same program over and over again for years and...well, you are still alive and pretty successful, so what's the problem? But you are exhausted. In those moments when you are not running and the mental cacophony actually turns down, it's incredibly painful. Because you are not fully living. And your time to actually live is running out. Every passing day is another chance gone. So if you still find yourself lamenting that "it's never enough," and, therefore, "I'm not enough," it's worth asking if the old ways of doing things are really working.
What Clients Tell Me
"I'm not enough," or a version similar to it, is a refrain I hear over and over again in my office. It's one of the most common core beliefs I hear folks struggling with in my practice. Alternate versions of it can look like "I'm unlovable," "I'm a failure," or "I must be perfect." For people who suffer with complex trauma, this belief can be especially pernicious.
That's because people often try to overcome this fear by unconsciously recreating past patterns and relationships thinking or hoping that they can actually conquer it this time (this is called "repetition compulsion," if you want to be fancy about it). This might look like a person who time and time again finds themselves in unhealthy relationships (possibly abusive ones) that mirror earlier ones from the past, even if they're not aware of it at the surface. Maybe that's the combustible partner or the highly critical friend, or maybe it's the self-absorbed boss who requires constant ego massaging.
It's a natural pattern to fall into because who doesn't want to release those old burdens and raise their fists in redemption. "I conquered it this time!" Sometimes we try to free ourselves of the past in all the worst possible, dysfunctional ways. "I'm not enough" lets us know there are parts of ourselves that need healing. But doubling down and trying to charge through the problem only exacerbates it.
Since "I'm not enough" becomes the water people swim in, identifying it's happening can be hard at first. The negative thoughts and beliefs, the need to work harder and keep on striving, they just become axiomatic. Therefore, if you are trying to figure out if you have a problem on your hands, it may be more helpful to pay attention to what you notice physically.
Possible physical manifestations include:
A knot or drop in the stomach before checking email, starting work, or receiving feedback (the body bracing for the verdict before it arrives)
Restlessness or physical discomfort during unstructured time
Nausea or stomach upset thinking about past "failures" or someone else's success
A stomach drop in response to praise or celebration
Tension headaches that continue even after completing a task
Trouble falling asleep because the mind is already rehearsing tomorrow
An inability to sit still without resorting to the phone, a task, or something to work on
So What's the Problem?
Not feeling good enough has driven you to "success" in the professional world. It's been a key cog in the productivity and competence machine. So what's the problem? There may not be. If you are reading this piece and thinking suffering is the price of success, it's not that you are wrong. It's a matter of your priorities and values. If you are feeling great about life, what are you still doing reading this piece? Close out the tab and be on your way.
But if you are still reading, I am betting that you have realized the cost of "not good enough" is becoming unsustainable. Because it's relationships in life that ultimately matter. And "not good enough" is a relationship killer. It keeps you from being fully present with the people you care about or from even being able to feel their love.
And when the focus of your life is how you don't measure up, well, that means the focus is on you. It's hard to step outside of yourself and truly see others minus the incessant anxiety about what they need or want from you, or what they are thinking about you. Or what you need to do to not lose them. It's hard to see them for who they truly are. Ultimately, arriving at "good enough" isn't so much about ourselves. It's about our relationships.
What Do I Do About This?
We've already established that powering through, striving harder, 'working smarter,' and being ever busier isn't where it's at. So where does one begin? We've also established that this pattern was "incepted," so to speak, long ago and over a long period of time. So that narrative and those experiences are crucial, but what's most important is what's happening in the present moment.
When the "not good enough" memory network is triggered, it activates not just the narrative track of past memories, but also an entire system of somatic (or in the body) mobilization. Each time a child gets feedback, implicit or overt, that the way they are doesn't meet the mark, there is sensory input recorded — a stomach that drops, the feeling of being 'punched' in the gut, bracing against the storm.
So, when that neural network is activated in the adult body, not only does the adult re-experience a version of that same bracing or stomach dropping, but also the encoded protective mechanism wired in as a child (something like, "work harder to make so you never feel this awful feeling ever again"). That's why treating trauma stored in the body is so important.
Therefore, successful treatment means interrupting this automatic, and very fast, process. By slowing down, bringing attention to the minute shifts in cognition and somatic affect, while in a state of present safety and awareness, the memory network can be accessed and re-encoded with a different experience in real time; one of security and calm that alerts the nervous system that it is finally safe to drop the shields, that the wolves aren't at the gates.
When the nervous system doesn't feel under siege, adaptive information that you already know in your logical mind ("I'm enough, regardless," "I'm accomplished," "I am loved," "I have lots of love to give") can actually take root along that same neural pathway. There are different therapeutic modalities that are effective with this. In my practice, I have found EMDR to be one of the most reliable ways to update and reprogram old beliefs. EMDR involves bilateral stimulation (eye movements, alternating taps on each shoulder or leg) that helps the nervous system feel safe and grounded enough to encode a different experience of accessing that memory network; one of safety, respect, and acceptance right there in the moment, therapist and client together.
While some people can experience an immediate drop in tension and a relief that is like putting down a bag of bricks, the changes are often subtle and develop over repeated desensitization and reprocessing. This looks simply like feeling a little less charged the next time "not enough" is triggered, and a little more certain and confident in oneself. Bit by bit until "not enough" feels like a memory instead of something still alive.
Where to Start
It's a painful experience to recognize you never stopped running and still aren't where you want to be. That you've done everything right yet always feel as though that's a lie. Maybe even that you are a lie. If you recognize "not enough" in your life, I offer a free initial consultation to talk through what you're experiencing and whether my treatment approach makes sense for you.