Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’ Stephen Porges, PhD and Ron Siegel, PsyD - Transcript - pg. 1

Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’

How to Help Clients Disengage from Social Comparison

with Ruth Buczynski, PhD; Stephen Porges, PhD; Ron Siegel, PsyD; and Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT

National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’ Stephen Porges, PhD and Ron Siegel, PsyD - Transcript - pg. 2

Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’: Stephen Porges, PhD and Ron Siegel, PsyD How to Help Clients Disengage from Social Comparison

Dr. Buczynski: How does environment affect our self-judgments and how do we deal with it?

According to Dr. Stephen Porges, our self-worth is bound to our cultural models— and this often has a profound effect on the body.

Dr. Porges: Okay. So, this notion of ‘not feeling good enough’: I think we have to move it out of the cognitive realm. “This notion of never being good enough is really part of We start off by thinking that if we create a justification, a model – this manifestation of our whether it’s a cognitive model or a behavioral model – that we underlying physiological state. could create a justification for how we feel and who we are.

I want to move things back to our underlying physiological stage – so this notion of never being good enough is really part of this manifestation of our underlying physiological state. And I want to really emphasize that our physiological states don’t always have to be in states of defense.

Often they are; often, because of the world that we’re in and our sensitivity, the people we interact with and even the jobs that we do on a daily basis – including parenting and being a spouse; we feel that there’s always a criticism or something that could “We feel that there’s have been done better. always a criticism or something that could In a simplistic way, what we’re saying is that our body is always in a state have been done better.” of defense. We are prepared to react in defense, whether it’s to move, to grab, to pick up, to grab your child from running into the street – everything comes up.

Or, let's say, evaluation of faculty – so, living in the university, university is designed to tell faculty members they’re not good enough because the model is, “If you’re not good enough, maybe “Our body is you’ll want to be good enough and you’ll work harder, you’ll produce more, you’ll always in a state get more grant money.” of defense.” The model is not to say, “Hey, you did a good job,” because the model assumes that if you get empowered by feeling you’ve done a good job, you’ll lose your motivation. So it’s part of the

Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’ Stephen Porges, PhD and Ron Siegel, PsyD - Transcript - pg. 3 complex culture that we’re in that does not empower an individual to be safe, to be physiologically safe, to be bold and creative; instead, it shifts the person into states of physiological vulnerability in which they are always trying to prove their worth and their value to the system.

Dr. Buczynski: It’s easy to see how society can trap a person in this cycle of vulnerability and worthlessness.

But Dr. Ron Siegel purposely avoids buying in to the whole “need to succeed” model; he believes that we can make our clients stronger by helping them do this instead.

Dr. Siegel: I think we evolve to feel like we’re not good enough.

I remember going on some – they call them safaris, they’re really jeep rides – in Africa, looking at different animal groups.

It started to get repetitive because almost every group had the dominant male hanging around with some reproductively promising females. And then there was some other group of younger guys doing the species’ equivalent of playing basketball – trying to get the talents to be the dominant male.

And what the evolutionary biologists tell us is, being dominant has a lot of evolutionary advantage in terms of perpetuating or propagating your DNA. Basically, if you’re one of the winning females, you get to have the protection of the dominant male and your kids get their protection; and if you’re the dominant male, you spread your seed around a lot.

I think Genghis Khan was – you know, his genetics were – in like a quarter of a large part of the Asian population at one point – this stuff plays out in humans as well.

So, this desire to somehow win or somehow be on top is very hardwired in us and it shows up in humans as concern with self-esteem, with these endless comparative social judgments about how I’m doing compared to other people.

And unless we live in Lake Woebegone, where all of the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all of the children are above average – of course we’re going to lose at least half the time, and that’s going to lead to a lot of feelings of not being good enough, particularly if we’ve grown up thinking that we should win all the time.

And in fact, there’s a good deal of sociological evidence showing that in Western cultures – and in America, in particular– the belief that “I should always be the winner” is growing year by year in the population.

Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’ Stephen Porges, PhD and Ron Siegel, PsyD - Transcript - pg. 4

So, we are set up for feeling not good enough. “We are set up for The other thing that dovetails with this a great deal is the relationship between feeling not good love and social comparison. enough.”

Most of us feel like we have to be winners in some way, in some realm – and whether that’s by being artistic or popular or intelligent or beautiful or physically fit, whatever the dimension is that we care about; we usually feel we have to be strong in that dimension for people to “We imagine that it’s because love us, and we imagine that it’s because of our excellent qualities of our excellent qualities that that people will love us. people will love us.” And then the reverse also operates: when we feel loved, we start feeling, hey, I must be special. I must be high-ranking. I must be intelligent or gorgeous or talented or loving – or whatever it might be.

And these two factors interact with one another, and an awful lot of times – because we all want to be loved, we all want to be connected, we all want to be accepted (and this goes back to our evolutionary history as well; to be ostracized on the African Savannah was a death sentence) – because of this wish for connection and love, we’re preoccupied with trying to feel good enough as well.

So, the reason why it’s such a common issue is because it’s built into us for it to be a common issue.

Dr. Buczynski: So, what kinds of techniques or what kind of approaches have worked for you to help people who feel like they’re not good enough?

Dr. Siegel: Well, contrary to how some people approach this, I don’t try to help people feel like they’re good enough.

In fact, I don’t try to help them to win – because, in my own experience, both clinically and personally, it’s so impossible to maintain the winning position.

So, rather than finding a way to win, I look for ways for people to connect. “Make a connection– not an impression.” Very often, if somebody is going on a job interview or for a date, my suggestion to them is: make a connection – not an impression.

Is there some way to connect as a fellow human being to this other person where your worry is they’re going

Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’ Stephen Porges, PhD and Ron Siegel, PsyD - Transcript - pg. 5 to think you’re good enough or not; is there a way to take it out of that dimension and move it into the dimension of connecting?

The other way to do it is to help people to see the whole drama of trying to feel good enough and the whole game of it and how unwinnable it is.

One technique is to have people write a self-esteem autobiography.

This involves starting very early in your life and trying to remember the very first time that you can remember a sense of self-esteem inflation or feeling like, “Oh – I’m special; I’m good; I’m wanted; I’m loved,” and the very first memory we might have of self-esteem deflation– the feeling of disappointment or, “I’m no good; I’m not good enough; I didn’t make it; I’m not loved; I’m not wanted.”

First, notice that feeling in the body and really get to know it so that you can identify these ups and downs. Then, really go through the life cycle and go through our history and see just how early this started, and what the different qualities or criteria were that helped me to feel good about myself or made me collapse at each stage – because it’s interesting; it changes at different developmental stages – right?

At one developmental stage, it’s, “Did the teacher seem to like me or not?” or, “How did I do competitively with my sibling?” At another developmental stage, it’s, “Did the attractive person of the gender I’m interested in show me favor or did they not?” At some other stage, it’s professional success or money – and we start to see how these different things lift our sense of well- “We start to see how different being and being good enough or detract from them, and this things life our sense of well- helps us to see the entire drama of it and not take it so seriously; being – and this helps us to that even though we’re hardwired to be concerned about this, see the entire drama of it and you know, we’re also hardwired to like fat and sugar and yet most not take it so seriously. of us get it that eating donuts all day isn’t a good idea.

Unfortunately, in this realm, there’s so much cultural belief that the answer comes from winning and staying on top that most people don’t see the goal as, “Let me disengage from the game”; they see the goal as, “Let me win the game.”

And the way I tend to work therapeutically with people is “How can I help them to disengage from the game?” – not entirely, we’re still going to have these reactions, but not to identify so much with these different reactions.

Working with Core Beliefs of ‘Never Good Enough’ Stephen Porges, PhD and Ron Siegel, PsyD - Transcript - pg. 6

And there’s another technique – and I’m actually gravitating more now to calling it inner compassion, so we get the self part out of this in a sense – but that’s to cultivate what some people are calling self-compassion. To be able to find a way to hold oneself, to have a sense of okay-ness or being loved in the moment of self- esteem collapse.

So, not, “Oh, I’m not a loser – I’m a winner” but, “I can feel this sense of love or self-acceptance or inner acceptance even in the moment of self-esteem collapse – not by rising back up to the top of the competitive pile but by simply feeling a sense of love wherever I happen to be right now.”

Dr. Buczynski: As Ron said, when we can help clients detach from the game, they find space to be their authentic self.

To take this a step further, here now is Bill O’Hanlon with an important thought on social comparison.

Mr. O’Hanlon: Well, you know, the most different culture that I ever spent time in was Japan, and they have this sense that you’re part of a group; it’s not just your individual ego that matters – it’s the group harmony that matters.

So, in some other cultures, I think there’s a little more of that and a little less individualism, like we have in most Western cultures. And I think that the antidote to it – how do we deal with it? – is this thing of . . . you know, I heard this a while ago, and I know you’ve heard this, Ruth . . . “Don’t compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to yourself when you’re trying to make “Compare yourself to where some progress in life.” you were – and if you’ve made Dr. Buczynski: Yes – to your past. a little progress in the right direction, you’re doing well.” Mr. O’Hanlon: And I think, Where am I, compared to where I started, in this endeavor, in my life? Am I a kinder person? Am I more compassionate? Am I a little more healthy and sane? Have I walked one time this week when I didn’t walk for the whole year before?

Compare yourself to where you were – and if you’ve made a little progress in the right direction, you’re doing well.

Don’t compare yourself to other people—but to yourself in the past, yes.

Dr. Buczynski: In the next video, we continue on this idea of culture and how it can infiltrate our clients’ self- esteem. I’ll see you then.