There’s a Type O Negative song which asks the question, “Am I good enough, for you?” It’s a question that sums up my experience as a co-dependent person, but it also sums up my experience as a man. I’ve asked myself this question, “Am I good enough?” for most of my life and it represents the pressure that I have felt around being a man. I don’t know if other men ask that question of themselves, but I know I’ve asked it and so often it has really represented a pang for acceptance in my life, but acceptance from what?
Acceptance from my dad or my mom? Acceptance from my family, friends, lovers, or society at large? At times those answers might fit that question, for a given moment, but when I dig deeper into it, I find that none of those answers are really satisfactory. And invariably with these people I find myself ask performative questions. Am I good enough son? Am I good enough lover? Am I good enough friend? In a given moment, looking for the answer becomes a quest for validation from other people, and regardless of the answer, whether its in the affirmative or negative, the validation falls into a void.
Am I good enough for myself? It’s another question I ask and on the one hand it has a performative element based around how busy I am. Am I doing enough, am I justifying my existence to myself (and any/everyone else)? It’s a question that has driven me to DO so much. And yet it has never produced a satisfactory answer.
Yet this question, when asked of myself, doesn’t have to have a performative answer. It doesn’t even have to have an answer. It can simply be a question I ask. The answer, the only real answer, has to be found in my own validation of my self. While someone else might be able to affirm I am good enough, the person who really needs to know it is myself and who else can provide that answer? I
The not good enough wound is a deep one for me. It brings with it a lot of pressure to perform, and its linked to a shadow around recognition that I’ve battled with a lot in my life. When I find myself asking this question I have to get real with what’s behind the question. What’s real is that I’m carrying a wound from my early childhood where no matter what I did or how I did it, I learned I wasn’t good enough. I would strive to find get value from other people because I felt empty inside.
I eventually learned there is only one way to answer this question. You fill yourself up with the love and validation that no one else can give you. This doesn’t mean that you don’t value other peoples’ expressions of love and care for you…if anything you’ll value them more because you won’t be craving them from a place of neediness and codependence. Instead you’ll be valuing them from a place of grounded awareness and be able to genuinely receive that love.
Self love isn’t a cure all, but it can help with this question of am I good enough. It’s helped me answer that question and sometimes I have to come back to it, when that question rears up again, but its the only answer I know that truly addresses the emptiness within that prompts that question.
