Many clients have a quiet but deeply held belief: I’m not good enough. Where does it come from?

Almost universally, this originates in childhood. When a child doesn’t receive the love, attention, or presence they need, they unconsciously search for a reason. By a primitive logic, they unconsciously choose between one of two explanations:

Explanation One: My caregivers can’t give me what I need. This may indeed be the reality, for whatever reason. But for a child, it’s an intolerable admission. The child can’t leave or choose new parents. Admitting their failure means facing the powerlessness and desolation of their situation.

Explanation Two: It must be my fault. “If I were more lovable, better behaved, less demanding,” the child says to themselves, “then maybe I’d get what I’m missing.” This is certainly painful, but it at least preserves a sense of agency: if the problem is me, I can try to fix it.

Children invariably choose the second explanation, which provides a sense of control at the price of a false belief. The first explanation – i.e. the objectively correct one – is simply too terrifying. The child that is completely dependent on its caregivers; admitting their inadequacy world be catastrophic.

British psychoanalyst Donald Fairbairn recounts a little girl whose arm was broken while under her mother’s care. The girl explained this by saying “I am bad.” He called this the moral defence, by which he child protects the image of the parent by taking the blame onto themselves. The child would rather feel wrong than feel abandoned; their self-criticism functions as a shield, a way of preserving the hope that the parent is still dependable, still available, still capable of love.

It works in its way. The child develops behaviours in service of securing connection, such as performing, achieving, pleasing, and over-functioning. A cost, amongst others, is that they will almost certainly carrying a false belief into adulthood: I’m not good enough.

While this belief was never true, it was a successful psychological strategy – an imaginative attempt to make an unbearable situation feel manageable. A moral defence designed to protect the bond at the expense of their own sense of worth.

The work of therapy is often the slow unwinding of this old logic. Recognising that the “badness” you may have taken on was never yours to carry, and allowing the essential truth of your own adequacy – long disavowed – to come into view and become the new truth.

Image credit: Caleb Woods