Dear Mother, You are Enough.
Every day we talk to women who are stressed out. These are women who might look a lot like you or important women in your life. They are mothers, wives, business professionals, sisters, daughters, church members, community activists, and a host of other “things”. These women fill a lot of roles in a number of different areas.
A common theme with all of them is stress, exhaustion, feeling emotionally drained, and not good enough. Not good enough for their children, or their jobs, or their families, or the number of other roles they fill.
At the root of all of these women is the never ending feeling that they are not good enough or not what people need them to be.
This continual struggle to do and be more is exhausting. Women come in to therapy totally exhausted, unable to name support systems or anything they do just for them.
Women who are everything for everybody but may not feel like they excel in anything. This also presents itself through being a “people pleaser” or “doormat” as some clients call it. People can ask anything of you and “count on you” to do it because they have learned that you are willing to sacrifice yourself to make their lives better because you need the validation of others. These people are scared of conflict and would do anything to avoid it.
The Comparison Trap
The bad news is there will always be someone “better” than you. Whether it be fitness level, education, work experience, or in relationships. You may arrive at this conclusion that they are “better” than you through social media, surface level conversations, or just observing other women.
The truth is, these women probably feel just the same as you do! The result is everyone is striving to do more to feel like they are valuable. Sometimes we get the temporary “high” of achieving a new goal- maybe you lost weight, hit a new goal at the gym, hit new numbers at work, your children listened, and your husband complimented you. However, as we know, these are very short lived highs and then we are back to striving to do more. We might find ourselves thinking “Since I did that, I wonder if I could do this…” and the cycle continues.
The good news is you are not alone and you are believing a terrible lie. The idea that you are not enough or “too much” in some cases, is a lie! You. Are. Enough. You are valuable. There is nothing you could do to make you more valuable and precious than you already are.
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