Section 1: Whole

Every single person, no matter how confident, fears not being enough. Not pretty enough, handsome enough, smart enough, strong enough, rich enough, funny enough, capable enough, important enough and so on. Because if we are not enough, what we ultimately fear is not being love, or of losing the love that is most important to us. 

This fear is so primal that our nervous systems register losing love as comparable to the presence of clear and present danger. Our brains are over 7 million years old and have not evolved in 2 million years. Life for the homo sapient 2 million years ago was obviously very different. Physical survival was a daily pressure. Clear and present danger was a daily reality. Today in our culture, we thankfully do not commonly have the threat of clear and present danger before us, but we have the threats of rejection, failure, emotional abandonment, and unreciprocated love.

Our brains, therefore, are our survival software. 

The first threat of losing love began when we were very young. When we’re babies, we received love. No baby can survive without being touched and looked after. But as we grew into toddler years and beyond, we unconsciously realized that we weren’t going to be praised for everything we did. Instead, we would be scolded, punished, and reprimanded for certain behaviors. Equally so, we unconsciously recognized that certain things we did also got us attention, love, and praise.

PARENTS:

You may have had very loving parents and a stable childhood, or you may have not. Either way, there is always one parent or caregiver who we strove to impress, get noticed by or please a bit more, or a lot more than anyone else. Perhaps it was a parent who’s presence you did not feel as much as your other. Maybe yours passed when you were young, or he or she abandoned the family. Or maybe, their attention was just a tad more (or a lot more) scarce.  

*this doesn't mean that your parent’s intention was to be scarce or harder to please. It doesn't mean that he or she MEANT to pressure you. It simply means this was your perception as a child.

Deeply embedded into ALL our subconscious was the understanding that we had to be a certain way in order to get love - (which could have been in the form of attention and the various manifestations of “attention”) from 1 or maybe both of our parents. We also learned who we could NEVER be to get that love: For example: lazy, messy, sad, independent, and the list goes on.

Examples:

To the child who learned that pleasing everyone got her love and attention. The pleaser.

To the “good girl” whose perfect grades and excellence in sports inspired closeness with her father. The perfectionist.

To the child who had to mother her mother: The giver, who can’t give to herself.

To the child who could never be herself: The anxious one.

To the kid who had to achieve, be strong, achieve more: The achiever.

To the one who couldn't freely express emotion: The over-thinker.

INVENTORY

1. Who’s love, attention, or admiration did you crave most when you were a child? (even if you didn't know or even like this parent, if it was scarce, you craved it subconsciously)

2. Who did you think you had to be in order to be enough?

3. Who could you NEVER be?

4. How is who ‘you had to be’ part of you today? How does it show up? For example, if you had to be perfect, are you a perfectionist? Did you have to be strong, and if so, are you? Go in to detail about how it impacts you today.

5. How has life rewarded you for this part of you? What have you achieved because of it? What have you survived?

6. What parts of you do you suppress more than you would like? For example, if you’re perfectionistic, is there a wild, fun, carefree woman inside you as well? How often do you let her out?