Focusing Tip #276: “I’m no good, useless, a failure…”

“It’s a part that says ‘I’m no good, useless, bad, a failure, crap.”

Wendy writes:
“I wonder if you can give me some tips about working with a part of me that comes up regularly. It’s a part that says ‘I’m no good, useless, bad, a failure, crap.’ It can come up regardless of anything I am or am not doing in the world it seems — more like a core belief that gets activated and then with it are all sorts of really uncomfortable feelings — shame, sobbing, rage, despair/helplessness, etc. At such times, it’s quite hard to operate in the world although I do continue to as best I can. I understand the roots will be from childhood and that I must have adopted and absorbed this belief as the best way to survive at the time.

However, even though I realize this, I find it very hard to dis-identify form this wounded part — it feels ‘true’ even if another part of me can reason with it and say otherwise, and say that it is just a belief. I guess the belief and messages are coming from a critical part of me, though I am more merged with the part experiencing the pain.

“I have, at times, explored relating to the part that must be giving me those messages too and that it must be worried that I won’t survive if I don’t accept these beliefs but haven’t got a lot further with this. The feelings of the wounded part can — understandably I can see — be very strong. So I will acknowledge them — maybe getting clear image of the sobbing, raging child with it and do my best to cultivate a sense of kind nurturing adult being with this child, but it can still feel like that part has taken over a lot of me, and that the whole body is full of discomfort and emotion.

“Sometimes I am concerned that if I Focus too much on the feelings — acknowledging them and sensing what they are, etc. — that can just take me deeper into pain. But ignoring them or denying them doesn’t help either, of course. I find it hard to see where the ‘gold’ is in all this — the sense of forward movement. Bit like I’m stuck in a loop (a part of me is stuck in a loop?) at these times.”

Dear Wendy,
There’s a lot of pain there, and it sounds hard to go through. And I really appreciate all that you’re already doing, to be the nurturing adult for that terrified, wounded child.

I do have a few suggestions, but anything you do is going to take time, because this is healing, and healing takes time.

The first thing I would suggest is to avoid the concept of “core belief.” I’m not saying it isn’t true or valid, but in my experience, the inner discussion about beliefs doesn’t go anywhere. It’s like “referred pain.” It’s not where the real material is.

One part says, “I’m useless,” and another part says, “I know that isn’t true,” but knowing it isn’t true doesn’t change anything…and as you yourself put it, there is a loop here we can just stay stuck in.

What is under the loop is a fundamental struggle: There is pain, and there is not wanting to feel pain. The bigger the pain, the more the desperation of the part of you that doesn’t want you to have to feel it. And yes, this is all about the past, all about a time when the pain of some kind of trauma (stopped process) was really too much for the little one that you were.

What needs to happen is what couldn’t happen then

What was missing back then was Self-in-Presence — both in you and in the caregivers around you. Little kids need their caregivers to be gentle and strong, and help them contain hard feelings and get through them. Without that, the inner wounded parts stay frozen in time, ready to get triggered by almost nothing and emerge in a way that feels like there’s no way to help.

You need to BE that nurturing Presence, strong and gentle to your own feelings. There’s no need to say things like, “It will be all right.” Who knows that anyway? Just be a listener. “Ah, THAT’S how bad it feels!” And it’s not just how bad it feels, but also how bad it felt. With something like this, I would think of it as showing you how it was, back then. It needs to show you it was this bad, and it needs you to be a compassionate witness.

I’m not saying you have to remember what happened. Everything you need to know is being shown by the feelings themselves. “That’s how bad it feels/felt.” The feelings can be as precise as they need to be. Maybe there’s nausea, for example. Or a sense of helplessness. It is showing you that.

The ‘gold’ in it is that so much of yourself and your energy has been bound up in holding this back, that when you finally turn toward it simply to feel it, you get yourself back as well.