You Know You’re Good Enough, So Why Don’t You Believe It? A Psychologist Explains.

August 25, 2021 4 min read

Krista Regedanz is a psychologist in Palo Alto who specializes in working with business leaders. She often sees them struggle with distressful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors — thinking they’re not good enough, or that they’re failures — particularly at the nexus of an accomplishment, like a round of fund-raising, or when they’re teetering on the verge of burnout.

“A lot of the intellectually astute people I work with come to me knowing, on paper, that they are not a failure, that they are good enough, normal, OK, or free,” she says. “And yet, there is a sense that these positive thoughts are not believable.”

How, then, can people bridge that gap? Regedanz says it’s important to grasp the difference between implicit and explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is consciously learned and can be verbally articulated, like knowing the capital of Alaska. Implicit knowledge is unconsciously learned as a felt sense, like riding a bike. Our emotional reactions are learned implicitly through formative experiences, which makes it hard to unlearn them through rational thinking alone.

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That’s why, when Regedanz works with clients to overcome their feelings of inadequacy, part of the process is helping them figure out what trouble­some emotional responses they have learned implicitly.

The first step is for clients to identify a recurring pattern they want to change: a negative bundle of emotions, body sensations, behaviors, and thoughts. This is uncomfortable work, Regedanz says, because “you’ve got to really sit with it and let your body be the guide. Search for what it feels like, and when and where you felt that way before. Ask yourself, What are the emotions? What does this remind me of?”

In this way, people can gradually work toward identifying moments from their past where they may have learned to respond in a destructive way. “The memories we target have emotional resonance,” Regedanz says. “When the person remembers them, they feel a twinge or an uncomfortable feeling in their body. There is something about these memories that’s sticky. Often they have a sense of not being over.”

One example might be a childhood moment when a person had more responsibility than they could handle. “A 7-year-old who is asked to take care of their 5-year-old siblings — they can’t do that,” Regedanz says. “They’re not going to succeed. And if they succeed, that’s almost worse because then they think they should be able to do it again. And they will fail.”

When someone has identified a sticky memory like this, the goal is to build distance between it and the present. “We want to unburden that younger part of you and let her know, You couldn’t have taken care of all your siblings. You weren’t ready for that. It doesn’t have anything to do with your being a failure,’’ Regedanz says. “This can take a while and might require a person to come back many times.”

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To begin exploring this outside a therapist’s office, Regedanz suggests building small moments into your day — 30 seconds, a minute, 10 minutes max — to sit with that part of yourself. Look in the mirror or down at your hands and ground yourself in the present moment. Remind yourself that you’re an adult now, and the meaning you attached to that memory is not “you.”

This can be painful work, so it’s important to be in the right headspace. “If you can approach the part of you that thinks I am a failure with curiosity and compassion, and without judgment, go for it,” Regedanz says. “But if a person is stuck with their current reality not shifting to believable — to I am OK or good enough, free to make healthy choices for myself, safe — they may want to pursue therapy.”

The ultimate goal of processing sticky memories, Regedanz says, is to shift them from “short-term, active memory to long-term storage, so when the memory is recalled, it will feel like it is over.” Ideally, grasping  the truth that these experiences happened in the past will help you believe, implicitly, that you are good enough right now.