Feelings Of Inadequacy

Do you struggle with feelings of inadequacy? If so, in this episode, Life Coach Lisa A. Romano will help you understand why. Feelings of inadequacy can fuel our need for perfection and cause us to suffer from anxiety as well as drive our propensity to abandon the self for the sake of keeping others happy. If you ever felt inadequate, this episode is for you.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

So today we're going to be exploring the feelings of deep personal inadequacy.

I would like to start this session off by asking a couple of what I think are pretty profound questions.

And if there is anything in your life that will help you,

It will be the exercise of asking self-inquiring questions.

We are conditioned to look outside of ourselves for answers,

For clues,

For love,

For acceptance.

And when we become hypervigilant and fixated on the opinions of others,

We're hooked,

We're attached,

Our egos are in full operation,

And our spirit is forced then to fall asleep.

Spirit is free,

Ego is attached.

So I'm going to ask a couple of questions,

And I'd just like you to sit with the questions.

And as I'm asking the questions,

See what happens inside of you,

And specifically in the area of your solar plexus.

Do you feel judged by others?

Do you ever catch yourself harshly judging yourself?

Have you since childhood felt not good enough?

In relationships,

Do you feel more like a passenger than a partner?

Do you feel like your life is dictated by others' rules and others' needs?

Often times when we are dealing with feelings of inadequacy,

We don't realize what we're doing.

We don't realize that we aren't taking our eyes and looking within our third eye,

Our external eye.

They're externally focused.

We're looking for someone else to give us permission to feel our feelings.

We're looking outside of ourselves for someone else to validate us,

To give us a clue as to how to be so we can become what this external being in the 3D world,

Which is an illusion,

Which is the world of the material,

Which is terribly flawed.

We look to this external world and these 3D beings who are just like us,

Just as human,

Just as imperfect,

For a clue that we are enough.

Deep feelings of inadequacy make it difficult for us to follow our intuition.

It makes it difficult for us to do what we love.

We don't even know what we love.

We are living below the veil at level one consciousness,

Not questioning what we're doing,

How we're behaving,

What we tolerate,

Or how we feel,

Not even questioning where our thoughts originate,

From where do they spring,

And who,

By the way,

Is observing these thoughts.

These are very profound questions that every single human should be thinking about,

And every person,

Every parent,

And every teacher,

And every coach should be encouraging young children to think about.

When we have feelings of inadequacy,

It's difficult to be the self.

You live in fear of disappointing others,

And that can have devastating consequences.

You have a fear of setting boundaries.

Again,

Devastating consequences.

We all know people who we hear other people talk about,

Or maybe we know them personally,

Where the rhetoric is,

She was such a nice person.

He was such a good guy.

I can't believe he has cancer.

Only the good die young.

Well,

This person may have lived their life detached from the authentic self,

Giving and giving and giving energetically until there was nothing left to give.

And make no mistake,

Givers end up with takers,

Takers who are self-absorbed and who also are living at level one consciousness below the veil,

Or worse,

They know what they're doing.

And that is why it's so important to put to bed deep feelings of inadequacy.

When you look around you,

It feels like others have freedoms you don't.

And when you have feelings of inadequacy,

This frustrates you.

This causes you to feel negative emotions,

Sad emotions.

It may cause you to feel angry,

Overwhelmed,

Depressed,

And eventually resentful.

You look around and think,

How come she can go to the gym?

How come she can ask for a raise?

How come he can do those things?

Why is it that he's able to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go for a jog,

And I can't even get out of bed?

No,

That person doesn't have the responsibilities I have.

All of these mental constructs have become handcuffs.

We're behind bars in our own mindset.

We don't even understand from where these feelings of inadequacy come from,

Nor then do we understand the consequences and the cause and effect nature of feelings of inadequacy.

As you awaken to these feelings,

You will notice that much of your life that you have sought external validation from the outside.

First,

All children seek a connection and validation from parents.

Then in time,

If there are siblings or cousins or other family members involved,

They will seek a connection and a validation from them.

As time goes on,

Children will seek the attention and the acceptance of teachers and peers.

Eventually,

As they age,

Romantic partners.

Then at work,

Perhaps coworkers,

Bosses,

People that represent leadership in their communities,

Maybe even clergy,

Neighbors,

Friends,

And as life progresses,

Perhaps even children and grandchildren.

This feeling,

If you are someone who feels inadequate and it is stemming from a deep sense of a lack of connection since childhood,

I don't want you to be surprised if on your personal growth journey,

Your spiritual awakening,

It's really all the same thing.

As you grow personally,

You evolve psychologically,

You evolve emotionally,

And ultimately,

Spiritually.

Intensity is tied to shame,

Guilt,

Not feeling good enough,

And oftentimes,

An intense need to feel like you belong.

So if my body was deficient in salt,

I would crave potato chips,

French fries.

Why?

Because it's something I need.

It's something I haven't got.

It is so important that those of us who are on this path,

Who are trying to figure out the self,

Who are deeply committed to personal growth and spiritual development,

Emotional intelligence,

And improving the way that we are,

It is absolutely critical that you put to bed shame for not feeling good enough.

Because the reason you crave feeling good enough is because something went wrong.

There was a deficiency in how you were nurtured and dear one.

That is not your fault.

So if you crave validation,

That is because you didn't get validated enough or properly as a child,

Something went wrong.

There's a deficiency there.

And I think that lesson alone is extremely helpful.

I know it helped me transform myself.

When I realized it was not my fault that as an adult woman with three kids,

I was seeking external validation by way of codependent relationships,

Trying to be good enough,

Needing to be needed,

Looking for an identity,

And taking care of someone who really had no interest in taking care of me.

It was a one way relationship.

It was a spiritually,

Emotionally,

Mentally,

Physically,

One way relationship.

And I didn't understand my feelings of anger and sadness and depression and ultimately resentment until I understood codependency,

Tied it to shame,

Tied it to being raised by adult children of alcoholics who had their own traumas that were never resolved.

And then suddenly it hit me.

It wasn't me.

It was my programming.

My spirit,

My psychological self was behaving precisely like it was supposed to based on the situation,

Based on the circumstances that I had been born into.

It literally could be no other way.

That freed me and allowed me to go deeper.

So the root causes of feelings of inadequacy are abandonment,

Rejection,

Emotional neglect,

Emotional,

Psychological,

Spiritual deprivation,

And even over praise as a child that the child knows is not justified.

You pat your child on the back for being a wonderful football player and all they did during the game was fumble.

They can't trust you.

They distrust you.

They feel like you're placing a band-aid over the truth.

It's embarrassing to them.

You're teaching your child in that situation to not see the truth.

Maybe football just isn't his game.

Maybe it's something else.

But parents who over praise do not realize the damage they do when they avoid the truth,

When they miss the opportunity to help their child accept the truth and accept failure because failure is a part of life.

There's a lack of a connection to the family of origin when you have feelings of inadequacy.

Again,

This could happen in a family where there are a lot of children and you just get lost in the numbers.

Mom is spent.

Dad is spent.

There is no true intentional malice.

It's just a situation in which it's very hard to manage and give all of the children exactly what they need.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a painful consequence.

It just means that as adults on the healing path,

We sort of have to roll up our sleeves and forgive,

Understand,

Look at the big picture,

Peel back,

Peel back some more,

Peel back some more and recognize it wasn't about malice.

It was about a situation of overwhelm.

On the other hand,

There are parents who are malicious,

Sadly,

Who are malevolent,

Who are narcissistic,

Who are abusive.

And it's really hard to wrap your mind around,

But there are parents who intend to oppress and suppress and to wound their children and to cause them to become extensions of themselves.

In that situation,

It is still important to understand the big picture,

To understand yourself.

That is the purpose of this work,

Which is very painful.

There is light at the end of the tunnel,

But you have to do the grunge work first.

You have to develop the ability to become an emotional marine,

An emotional warrior,

To go into battle.

And the battle is not outside of you.

The battle is inside of you.

And it is not ego's fault that it has been conditioned to live in fear and to distrust.

The ego will cling to whatever defenses are natural for human being until spirit is allowed to step forward.

And once spirit is allowed to step forward,

Then your mind is able to let go more and more of ego defense mechanisms that arrest you in your life.

So there's something missing when you have deep feelings of inadequacy.

There's something missing.

And you're right.

You are missing the mark.

You're missing a conscious,

Yet non-physical attachment and connection to the divine self.

On the other side of this recovery work is the divine self waiting for you to tuck in all of the lower selves with grace,

With surrender,

With acceptance,

With emotional intelligence.

The more you surrender to what is,

Including the pain of the past,

Understanding it's a natural consequence and sensation that may have been locked away in your body because no one in your life taught you how to process,

They ignored you.

And as a child,

You learned that you needed to detach from the self.

It was too painful.

You would have imploded,

Dear one.

And so bizarre coping skills like mine,

Hair pulling,

Obsessive counting,

Memorizing license plates and daydreaming are ways in which we abandon the self because the pain in our bodies,

The trauma of daily abandonment and rejection and scorn and criticism and detachment from the family of origin is so triggering for a human brain,

Especially a child's brain,

Because it absolutely goes against survival.

In other words,

Your brain knows it's not you that had all of this anxiety.

It's your brain telling you,

You need to attach,

But your brain is also aware it's not attached.

And that causes a primal brain to freak out.

And so a very limited consciousness,

A child's mind is not aware of how the primitive brain reacts to rejection.

It is only aware of how it feels.

And then the double whammy is that poor,

Innocent child assumes blame,

Which is where shame comes from.

So if you're struggling with deep feelings of inadequacy,

I hope you understand that it's not your fault.

And the way out is through a conscious,

Nonphysical attachment to your beautiful divine self.

Namaste.

Namaste.

Reviews

I asked myself how I was feeling today and inadequate came to mind. I tried to convince myself that's not a feeling and I must be doing something wrong. Thank you so much, this has clarified a lot, includin where my daydreaming comes from.

This is another amazing bull’s-eye of insight from Lisa! I’m going to share this with my estranged spouse.

another amazing talk. i to hair pull (trichotillomania), obsessively count and memorize license plate numbers 🙃) i am healing from childhood trauma little by little by listening to your talks, meditation and 12 step groups- thank you 🙏

Thank you 🙏🏼

Thank you Lisa, I struggle with this. Will listen a few times to make sure I get what you are saying to better myself. 💚

Thank you for validating my deep feelings of inadequacy and for education as to why I feel that way. Love all of your talks ❤️

❤️🙏🙏

You defined who I am and how I react in the world. I know I have to write my own story and not live others life’s. Thank you ❤️

WOW You never cease to awaken me to truth. I honor you Lisa got the work you have done on you! I honor you for not judging, not assuming and for you big heart of compassion. I resonate with this so much! Thank you thank you and thank you 🙏🦋🌺

Thank you for all your insight and direction. 🙏

Lisa, that was impactful. I felt like you were speak to me. Thank you