Consider this:
The thoughts of not being good enough stem from that time when you first felt anxiety about being inadequate, or you faced a situation in life that you said you couldn’t handle, and you reasoned this to be – “It’s because I’m not Good Enough”.
If I then proposed that:
Anxiety is a weed, with the root of that weed stemming from a dysfunctional belief or thought.
Further, if it is a thought, then it likely can’t be medicated.
Instead, you must train your brain to think differently and replace that belief with something else that is positive and true, or the old belief will return.
This is not about chanting positive affirmations – it is about retraining your brain, the neuropathway that was set in place all that time ago when you accepted the anxiety of inadequacy – when the ‘weed’ was planted.
When did it start?
I can trace it back to when I was two years old, to my sister’s birth. At first, I didn’t understand why they needed her…Wasn’t I enough!!. Of course, at two years old, it’s all about you. Neighbours and relatives came around. We were poor, so my mum had my sister in the washing basket. I remember thinking what’s going to happen with the washing now.
The weed was planted.
Again, I didn’t understand what all of the fuss was about with this little person in a washing basket. I remember trying to remove my sister from my doll’s bed, Mum came in and was furious….I said, “This is my doll’s bed’, a spanking followed. It wasn’t against the law in those days to hit your children.
The re-minding moments of not being good enough continued, no longer getting the better presents at Christmas. My own really good things being given to my sister, my dresses, when there was something special to go to, how her hair would be fussed over, and my hair was pulled up into a bun. I felt like a school matron at 7.
The weed was watered and nurtured.
I tried my best to be a good child…but as other siblings arrived, all that happened was that I became invisible.
Then, as if by order, other situations reinforced this ‘loss’. My parents often forgot about me, and I found out I was missed from family trips…their reason being they forgot. I remember spending days at my aunties, brought home at dinner time…for my father to ask, “Where have you been?”
I had been gone the whole day, and I walked for an hour to get to my aunt’s home.
Probably the worst reminder of ‘not being good enough’ was one time Christmas shopping with my Mother as a teenager, and she brought a present for my sister. My mum’s reason was that my sister had been a really good girl that year. When Christmas day came, and we got to the presents under the tree…there wasn’t anything for me. My aunt and cousin arrived later that day, and I got a present from my cousin that I treasured. It was beautiful and a blue top with a white band…I wore that as much as I could. Mum’s actions told me that Christmas that ‘I wasn’t good enough’.
The weed became strong and multiplied.
Then there was knowing at school that you weren’t going to be chosen by other students…dreading athletics and sports fixtures. Thankfully, I wasn’t bullied at school. I was clever, and as Māori, the other students treated me as if my success were their own… they still didn’t choose me for games or to be on their teams.
That weed planted at two years old was nurtured and grew over the years, to where I came to expect it. Trying to stand out as the good child, excelling at my education, getting prizes to show ‘hey I am good enough…’ but there was never that celebration.
The weed was now a forest.
The feelings of exclusion or being set apart followed me into my working life…although that was also combined with being the token Māori, so it became a bit more complicated. Isolated from team decisions or ignored during meetings when I was clearly upset, with one time my leaving the room to cry in the bathroom.
Not getting that promotion even when you are more qualified than the successful person. Having to reapply for your own job, only to find you have to train the new person, and then hearing later that the new person actually didn’t know anything about your old job. They were put there by the senior manager who needed you gone.
I am still plagued by that anxiety when I have a management one-on-one meeting, as my work history has taught me these sessions are used to discipline or ‘correct’ a behaviour and ‘insert’ a more acceptable one.
Although my life now is one of success and growth…these ‘weeds’ still surface. How can I retrain my brain to think differently…what or how can modern thinking be utilised to ‘pull that weed out’ for good!…cut that forest down and turn the land back into good soil.
Where to from here?
My thinking tells me that – if the ‘weed’ is in my brain, then I need to ‘pull it out’ and replace that belief with one that is ‘true’ and ‘real’.
The principle of – pulling the ‘metaphysical’ into the physical world, bringing the spiritual into Te Ao Marama.
What does that look like?
Also, how far is the concept of Anxiety being a weed, translated to other supposed causes of anxiety?
What does indigenous knowledge offer, and how does this fit Te Poutama o te Ora?