Originally published by: The Healthy Compulsive Project

The Varieties of Insecure Experience

Throughout my book, blog and podcast I suggest that insecurity leads to unhealthy, compulsive behavior, behavior that’s intended to compensate for that insecurity. The three sources of insecurity that I’ve witnessed most often are about being loveable enough, morally good enough, or competent enough. These could all be present in the same person, but one usually predominates.

Most compulsives have scarcity mindset, which may manifest as feeling we don’t have enough or do enough. But the real insecurity is about who we are, and we may try to compensate for that by having and doing (e.g. overcorrecting, overworking, overpleasing, and overanalyzing).

This strategy–however unconscious–leads us to try too hard and overshoot our goals.

Overshooting Your Goal

Imagine you’re playing basketball and you’re standing at the free throw line with a chance to get a couple of points and win the game. In case you don’t know basketball, when this happens everybody has to get out of your way, which makes it easier to shoot the ball into the basket. But the pressure is on and everyone is staring at you, which makes it more difficult.

You’re worried your shot won’t go far enough, you get tense, push too hard and your shot arcs over the backboard into the stands. Not only do you miss the opportunity for points, the ball hits your partner smack dab in the kisser.

Never Enough

Growing up Roman-Catholicish, I made a pilgrimage to St. Mary Magdalen Church many Saturday mornings to confess my sins.  You couldn’t just show up empty-handed. Find something bad to say about yourself or it was obvious that you’d done wrong and were way out of communion with the Divine.

Or at least that was my take-away. So, despite being a basically Good Boy, I’d be sure to dig up some of the usual transgressions: angry feelings, thinking bad words, and wondering about the cute girl across the aisle in Mass rather than the Mysteries of Transubstantiation. For better or worse, you don’t have to actually do anything wrong to come up with a quality sin. “Bad” thoughts or feelings were perfectly good transgressions to trot out for confession.

“You’ve been a bad boy. But you can make up for that by saying ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers. And BTW, it’s urgent that you do so now because if you die now, you’re toast.” Nothing like, “Hey, it’s OK. Jesus still loves you.”

My family’s version of Catholicism was pretty mild. And our church didn’t offer the hellfire and brimstone preaching some churches do.  But still, the rules of confession conveyed a powerful message, and, interpreted by my young but burgeoning perfectionist personality, it left its mark: Life is a test of your goodness and you will fail.

My point is not to question the theology or rituals of the Catholic church. Read the gospels and you’ll get a very different message. But that wasn’t my takeaway: I could never be enough. Ever. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t supposed to keep trying.

As a result I sometimes overshoot.

The Search for Assurance

But how do we get to a place where we do feel secure and don’t feel the need to overshoot? There is no foolproof way for me to assure you that you, personally, are a good enough person and that you don’t need to engage in unhealthy obsessions and compulsive behavior.  Psychological research indicates that humans are more likely to be basically good than not, but there are no guarantees that you are basically good. And that leaves you vulnerable to overshooting to try to prove yourself.

We need a different way to feel secure enough. More of the same perfectionism, achievement and self-control to prove that you are enough only make it worse. Witness the effect on your partner when your shot went too far.

Assurance does not come easily to people with compulsive tendencies. We seem to have developed an immunity to the idea of being enough that knocks it down. And all the memes on Instagram can’t put it together again. How do we decide that we are enough?

Am I smart enough? Kind enough? Scrupulous enough? Cool enough? Strong enough? Tough enough? Soft enough?

Do I have enough money? Enough friends?

Do I do enough, work enough, exercise enough, give enough?

Always Enough

Two experiences have inspired me to believe that it makes sense to always see ourselves as “enough.”

1. Hearing a Buddhist story about our nature impressed on me how tragic it is to live as if we are not enough.

2. Observing that when I find myself pressured and urgent, simply reminding myself that I am already enough has been remarkably helpful in slowing down, achieving my potential, and enjoying life.

Let’s explore these in more detail.

Reason 1: Basic Goodness is Your Undiscovered Treasure

Despite my early experience with Catholicism, if we look in the right places we can find the message that we are enough in many wisdom traditions. They have different phrases, but the same point: “Chill out. You’re basically good.”

Here’s the Buddhist story that struck me as both tragic and inspiring:

There was once a pauper who struggled his whole life to care for himself and his family. For decades he toiled, always straining just to survive. When he was old, a wise man stopped at his shack to ask for a drink of water. He gave the man a drink and the man asked him why he had lived in such poverty when he had such riches at his disposal. The old man was incredulous, but, when the wise man instructed him just where to dig, he figured he had nothing to lose but a smooth mud packed floor. Within a short time he had dug up a chest filled with gold. Unknown to him, there had always been a treasure buried beneath his humble home.

The story is about discovering our Buddha Nature, which we could discuss for a very long time. But for simplicity’s sake we can say that it is the pure mind-heart we all possess. This is more essential to you than whether you can throw a ball through a basket and make it go swish. I don’t think that the Buddha would disagree with me in saying that Buddha Nature qualifies us as “enough.” It would be a downright shame if you didn’t discover your treasure before you kick-off.

Really?

I hear some of you saying, “You must not be talking about me. I’m no saint. And it’s actually dangerous of you to imply otherwise. When I’m at that free throw line on the basketball court I undershoot rather than overshoot. I don’t see any treasure.”

“And besides, I really don’t have enough. All I do have are student loans up the wazoo, an old car that needs $4200 worth of repairs, and medical bills that insurance companies somehow just can’t comprehend. How could I possibly feel good about myself?”

It’s good to recognize your shadow and be realistic about your situation. But if you’re trying to decide whether you are “enough” based on what you do and what you have, you’re missing the point. That sense of “enough” comes only when your sense of goodness is unconditional. If it’s based on achievement, it’s very fragile. A secure sense of ourselves is not based on what we do or have, but who we are.

And, what if believing that you’re not enough is what led to your “sins” and your situation? What if your outbursts, your drug use, or your affairs, were caused not by thinking that you are enough, but thinking you are not enough?

And what if accepting who you are in the moment is the best way to prevent those “sins?”

Reason 2: It Works

You may not be convinced that either spiritual traditions or psychological research point specifically to your lovableness, goodness or competence. And your inner critic may shout down anything positive they have to say about you.

What we can say, with certainty, is that if you start with the premise that you are basically good enough, you are more likely to reach your potential and feel secure enough so that you don’t have to engage in unhealthy compulsive behavior.

So here’s why I argue that you should think of yourself as enough, even though I haven’t met you.

It works.

If you go to that free throw line knowing that you are enough even if you miss, you’re more likely to make your shot.

When we feel that we are “enough,” it reduces our sense of insecurity and stops a lot of unhealthy compulsing and obsessing in their tracks. That’s the treasure you’ve been sitting on all this time. It’s a sort of Holy Grail because it removes the need to be perfect and productive. We can then choose goals inspired by what we want to do, rather than what we think we need to do to prove that we are enough. Like the Holy Grail, the concept of “enough” has power to heal and sustain us.

Believing that you are enough is the most effective tool you have to succeed at whatever it is you want to succeed at. If you are haunted by the belief that you’re not enough, it will distract you from being, doing and having whatever is possible for you.

The Distraction of Inadequacy

Many years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I were going to a friends’ apartment for dinner in Brooklyn. We were just about to enter the lobby of the apartment building where we would locate the buzzer for their apartment, give it a good push, and enter the safety of the building.

My girlfriend noticed a couple of sketchy looking guys following us. As I searched for our friends’ buzzer she started urging me to move more quickly. I wasn’t finding it quickly enough. But her urgings only distracted me from my task. Sure enough, the muggers caught up to us in the lobby, pulled out a gun, and demanded everything we had. They ran off with our money, keys, wallet and purse.

My point is not to blame her. I would probably have done the same. But I offer it as an example that your belief that you’re not enough distracts you from the task at hand. And it robs you.

More mental health issues arise from a sense of insufficiency than from oversufficiency.  More shots are missed by self-doubt than by self-assurance.

Moving Goal Posts and The Never-Ending Quest

A friend slams his laptop shut after losing an online chess game. He’s only in the top 26 percentile of players on the app and that drives him crazy. He tells me he’d settle for the top 10 percentile. Hmmm. Isn’t that random? Would he really accept being in the top 10 percentile as “enough?” Something tells me that a critical voice in his head would demand higher ratings and keep him marching forward.

When being enough is based on achievement, the goal posts keep moving further away. The mental machinations that tell us we’re not enough are invested in keeping us under the spell of “not enough.”  I suspect that it’s because we feel that if we tell ourselves we’re not enough, we at least know it and keep trying harder. It’s as if we tell ourselves, “As long as I’m down on myself I won’t go too far off.” It’s meant to preempt attacks from others or our own conscience. “Not enough” becomes a sort of good luck charm to keep us motivated and moving forward so that no one, ourselves included, can accuse us of being lazy or selfish.

I think we also tolerate this because it’s the nature of compulsives to delay gratification with the conviction that some day we will be enough and then we can relax. We like to imagine that there is an algorithm we enlist to decide when we are enough, when the reality is that the algorithm is set to constantly demand more and more. And we keep putting off fulfillment.

We have a habitual drive for more which overrides what we had thought would be enough to satisfy us.

But there is a big difference between needing to accomplish more and wanting to accomplish more.

Enough. Already.

I’ve been playing with the phrase “enough already,” the complaintive groan intended to put an end to repeating, offensive behavior.

Put a period in the middle of the two words “enough already” and rather than lodging a complaint it offers compassionate comfort. That period separates who I am from what I do. It signifies unconditional acceptance. This is often what we long for from lovers, but that’s an unrealistically tall order. I’m afraid you’ll need to get it from someone else, and you know exactly who that is.

The idea is that you are, already have been, and always be, enough. Enough. Already. It’s all the moral and judgmental crud that we accrue over the years that keeps us from recognizing this fundamental truth. And unearthing our treasure.

Don’t take my word for it. Experiment with it yourself. What happens when you can momentarily manage your way into feeling that you are enough? It may make you nervous at first. Be very curious about that anxiety. What is it that you’re afraid you’re going to lose if you let yourself feel adequate?

In the end, no-one can convince you that you’re good enough. You need to decide that for yourself, and to find the courage to take the chance of letting go of the self-critiques and over-working that seem self-protective but are really self-destructive.

I can only tell you that it works.

As for me, heaven knows this post won’t be as entertaining, insightful, concise, or empathic as I’d like it to be. I always have to force myself to press “Publish” before it does reach those standards, because it rarely does. But that doesn’t mean I am not enough. Already.

References available in original article on The Healthy Compulsive Project.