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Ms. Graham: Feeling never good enough is a big territory that has its foundations in shame . . . and ... That's what can cause us to feel not good enough.
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Dr. Buczynski: What sits at the core of feelings of ‘never good enough’? Linda Graham believes the answer lies in a deeply-rooted shame—and if we want to help clients shift away from this shame, Linda says it requires a radical “all in” approach. Here’s Linda— Ms. Graham: Feeling never good enough is a big territory that has its foundations in shame... and that's a big territory – feeling like a failure, feeling inadequate, feeling like a loser, feeling like you don't belong. It's a powerful derailer of our resilience. It's one of the biggest derailers that we have of a sense of comfort in relationship. It's a big derailer of our own sense of self-worth or personal sense of self-ease, and it's one of the biggest derailers we have of the neuroplasticity that will allow the brain to rewire itself. The shame just shuts that down. So, for me, another way of conceiving shame is that it's the opposite of anxiety in the nervous system. Anxiety is too much revving up of the sympathetic nervous system, and shame is too much shutting down. It's going into collapse and withdrawal and numbing out and hiding. That's what can cause us to feel not good enough. I do say that shame is not always toxic. There is healthy shame, and that can lead us to actions that are resilient as can its cousin, guilt. Both shame and guilt can arise when we are or feel that we've done something that might exile us from our kin or our tribe. Early in our evolution, exile was a death sentence. Nobody could survive on their own in the Serengeti. So, we use our hard-wired need to connect to socialize us into the behaviors that keep us within the norms of the tribe, behaviors that would ostracize us from the tribe if we didn't follow them.
you could do or say that would cause me to turn away from you." To do that rewiring by that acceptance, by that validation, by that embracing, the client has to be able to take that in. That has to feel real and believable to them. So, I'll often engage a shame-based client in a meta-processing of their experience with me. I'm offering them acceptance and welcome and receptivity and encouragement, and I'll ask them what it's like to experience them sharing their story with me, me hearing their story, me reflecting them back to themselves. How do they perceive me perceiving them? Can they take in the acceptance, the nonjudgment, the embracing of them? Can that feel real to them? And what is it like to take that in? What is it like to take in that self- acceptance? I'll work with the objections. I'll work with the resistance. But it's so important that they actually take in this is really happening, and they're really worthy and deserving of it. The African American writer Zora Neale Hurston says, "Love makes your soul crawl out of its hiding place," and that's what we're trying to do with helping our clients heal from feeling not good enough, offering the safety and the trust, the love and the acceptance that allows them to shift their relationship to themselves so that they no longer have to go into shame. They can go into that self-acceptance. Dr. Buczynski: What percentage of the people would you roughly guess is in that not-good-enough, never- good-enough...? Ms. Graham: What percentage of people might be caught in that sense of not good enough or not lovable or not belonging? If you look at attachment theory, the secure attachment is what gives people a sense of being resilience and being good enough. And that's about 50, 55% of people. So, maybe 50 to 45% of people have that sense of shame. I think it's much higher in a clinical population. Dr. Buczynski: One thing I want to ask is, do you think in all cases, when someone feels like they’re not good enough – that 45 to 50% of the people – do you think it's all shame-based? Ms. Graham: Yes, I do. Because people somehow get the message that whoever they are or whatever they
do isn't acceptable. It isn't pleasing. It's not wanted. It's not necessary. It's not permissible. And they wind up feeling shunned, abandoned, betrayed, neglected. When clients come in to see me, whatever the presenting problem is, I'm always listening. I'm always listening for that sense of inner critic or a shame base because most clients, if they're not able to solve their own problems for themselves, have a place inside that doesn't believe they're worthy or that they can. And so, I'm going to heal that shame-base that's underneath so that they feel good enough about themselves to begin tackling the problems that they came in with. Dr. Buczynski: As Linda showed, by bringing unconditional acceptance into the session, she was able to rewire her patient’s shame with stronger resilience. Now, let’s go to Bill O’Hanlon with one strategy for helping a client take in acceptance. Mr. O’Hanlon: You know, I just was on the radio yesterday or two days ago and they were interviewing Mark Nepo, the author who has been at your conferences, right before me, AND I was able to listen to him. And it reminded me, one of my favorite quotations — and I can't quote it exactly — but Mark Nepo, in one of his books, wrote something that really touched me deeply. He said, “There is this place that we all have that's deep inside us that's untouched by trauma and shame." And I thought that's a good thing. Whether that's a spiritual stance that you have or a philosophical stance that you have, that's something I believe. There is this deep wisdom and okay-ness within people. Now how do you get people who don't feel good enough to that? We don't talk about it too much because it takes a little longer to illustrate, but I don't trance. I learned hypnosis from Milton Erickson, and the kind of hypnosis I do isn't suggestive hypnosis. It doesn't tell people, have them do positive beliefs. It sends people to that place that Mark Nepo was talking about.
