Why We Feel “Not Enough” (And How That Changes Everything)
On Tuesday nights a motley little crowd squeezes into a draughty room above the café. People drift in with paper cups and big feelings: someone fresh from a break-up, someone counting days since their last drink, someone who can’t stop arguing with their mum, someone who just feels… wrong. We sit in a circle, not to wallow, but to learn why we do what we do—and how to do it differently.
I usually begin with a story.
The room where shame walks in wearing different coats
Maya goes first. She’s funny—effortlessly so. The room warms when she talks. Later, she admits the first praise she ever got as a kid was, “You’re hilarious.” Since then, she’s felt she must perform or she’ll disappear. If the spotlight drifts elsewhere, she yanks it back with a better story. It works… until it doesn’t. Afterwards she feels hollow, like she’s borrowed value on a payday loan.
Beside her is Callum, all muscle and calm. When he was small, power was the only safety he saw. Now he carries it in his body: people don’t mess with him. That “don’t mess” glow is addictive—it looks like confidence, feels like control, and quietly feeds the belief that without power he’s nothing.
Priya helps everyone. She’s the sort who shows with soup before you know you’re ill. She chose a caring profession for beautiful reasons—and also, she says softly, because being needed proves (to her) that she’s worthwhile. When she’s not needed, panic nips at her heels.
Tom is a devoted dad. When his son was tiny and adoring, Tom’s chest filled with significance. Now his teenager needs him less, and Tom’s terrified value is leaving the house with a rucksack and a bus pass. He keeps stepping in where he isn’t needed. It causes rows. He can’t seem to stop.
And then there’s Jess, who built a career so impressive you can hear people’s eyebrows go up. The title, the targets, the toys—she thought they’d silence that old feeling. They didn’t. Retire for a month and she’d fall apart, she says. “If I’m not my job, who am I?”
Different coats. Same weather.
What shame is (and why it’s so sneaky)
Shame—real, body-deep shame—often forms when needs aren’t consistently met, or when a child is neglected, controlled, or humiliated. The young brain doesn’t think, “They’re struggling.” It thinks, “It must be me. I’m not enough.” That belief beds in and starts steering the wheel.
And because no one wants to live with “I’m not enough,” the brain builds clever workarounds:
Compare & conquer: Be the prettiest, sharpest, wealthiest, sportiest—anything to win the league table in your head. It works… until someone “better” walks in, or time and gravity do what they do.
Become the badge: Make your job your identity. Terrific, until the job changes.
Be indispensable: Help, fix, rescue. Lovely—until you’re empty and quietly resentful.
Chase validation: Keep the spotlight. Embellish the story. Impress. It buys respect, not self-respect.
Parent as purpose: Build your worth on being needed; shake when independence (healthily) arrives.
Power-up: Intimidation, flirtation, being the loudest voice—anything that creates a surge of control.
Short-term relief, long-term cost. Because borrowed value never quite reaches the root.
Four kinds of respect (and why this matters)
One week we map “value”. It lands best as a story.
Imagine a baby: all need, no productivity, no polish. Worthy, full stop. That’s inherent value—the basic dignity every human carries. No one earns it; no one can lose it.
Then there’s character respect (reliability, honesty), and service respect (the esteem we feel when someone truly shows up for others). You can grow both.
Last is badge respect—the authority of a role or position. Useful, but not the same as character or service.
Why the fuss? Because many of us were told to “respect” people (parents, bosses) in a way that confused the badge with character. You can keep inherent respect and badge respect and still have boundaries. You’re not obliged to pretend someone has earned what they haven’t.
When this clicks, something softens. If value lives inside, you’ve nothing to prove—and if you’ve nothing to prove, you’ve nothing to lose.
How shame tangles conflict and boundaries
If you grew up where conflict produced winners and losers (with mockery for the loser), your nervous system learned to avoid losing at all costs. Shame then fuels four common moves:
Avoid: duck every tough conversation.
Deflect: change subject, joke, shut down.
Twist: make it always the other person’s fault (the narcissistic end of this is just shame in heavy armour).
Trump: be louder, angrier, bigger—so you never “lose”.
And boundaries? If saying no makes your chest fizz with guilt, you’ll people-please until you burst (isolate or explode), then apologise, and the cycle resumes. Healthy recovery sounds different: “I respect myself enough to set limits—not to punish anyone, but to keep us both honest.”
The quiet ways shame treats you badly
Shame rarely shouts; it whispers:
“Don’t enjoy this; you don’t deserve it.”
Sabotage the good before it leaves you.
Flirt with risk. If it blows up—well, you knew you were a mess.
Run negative thought-loops; re-try the case against yourself, daily.
The doghouse: decide a sentence for each mistake, don’t let yourself out early.
None of this means you’re broken; it means your brain learned safety the hard way.
Mental health, from the inside out
In our circle we see a spectrum: the bigger the childhood wounds, the deeper the shame; the deeper the shame, the more likely we’ll meet anger that scares us, depressions that flatten us, anxieties that stalk us. At the far end, some people survive by denying shame altogether and acting superior; others go numb. These are adaptations, not moral verdicts. They kept someone alive.
Why manipulation works (until it doesn’t)
Here’s an awkward truth: the more shame you carry, the easier you are to manoeuvre. Guilt trips, silent treatments, “After all I’ve done for you,” weaponised “respect”—they hook the part of you that’s still trying to earn worth. As your self-respect grows, those hooks find less to cling to.
So what do we do?
We end each evening the same way: with small, human things.
Start at value: You have inherent worth, even on your worst Monday. Live like that is already true.
Earn your own respect: Not through perfection; through character (keep a promise to yourself) and service (show up for someone, cleanly).
Practise clean boundaries: Short, kind no’s. Fewer explanations.
Retire the badge chase: Job titles, follower counts, physiques, personas—enjoy them, don’t be them.
Notice the doghouse: When you put yourself in it, decide—kindly—how and when you’ll come out.
Swap comparison for connection: If you catch yourself performing, try telling the unpolished truth instead.
Most weeks, somebody laughs through tears and says, “So… we’re all just learning?” Exactly. A room full of messy humans, discovering we were “enough” before we ever got clever, pretty, powerful, helpful, or successful—and that learning to believe it changes everything.
