Welcome to my podcast Happily, even After. I’m life coach, jen, I’m passionate about helping people recover from betrayal. I rode the intense emotional roller coaster and felt stuck and traumatized for years. It’s the reason I became a trauma-informed certified life coach who helps people like you navigate their post-betrayal world. I have the tools, processes and knowledge to help you not only heal from the betrayal but create a healthy future. Today we begin to help you live happily even after. Hey friends, welcome to today’s podcast.
Today I’m talking about inadequacy. Chances are, most of us have felt inadequate in some way or another in our lives. I know I have. I haven’t necessarily said that word, necessarily. I probably said I didn’t feel good enough, right, so regardless. Said I didn’t feel good enough, right, so regardless. Hopefully you can relate.
And especially, I think, when we’ve experienced betrayal, a lot of times we feel inadequate, like something’s wrong with us. What is going on? So first of all, I’m going to give you the definition of what inadequate means Our inability to deal with a situation or with life. We might have feelings of personal inadequacy, like it’s a feeling for sure, right, it’s also a thought like we’re inadequate, but it’s mostly a feeling that we feel in our body. If someone has feelings of inadequacy, they feel that they do not have the qualities and abilities necessary to do something or to cope with life in general, or a deep-seated sense of inadequacy. Some of the synonyms of inadequacy are incompetence, inability, deficiency, incapacity, so we’re less than something or we can’t do something.
When someone feels inadequate, it is coming from their thoughts that they believe are true. So often we think our thoughts are true, but just remember they aren’t true. They’re not facts, they are just thoughts, and the good news about that is we can change our thoughts, thoughts, and the good news about that is we can change our thoughts, we can think different thoughts if we want to, Usually because someone important in their life has told them that they and then they believed him. So that’s, I think, the biggest trigger for people, or the biggest reason why is maybe their parents or a spouse or a or someone of importance, a brother or sister, has told them you’re not good enough, you’re not doing this right, what’s wrong with you. Then you feel inadequate. So remember, it’s not a fact, it’s a thought. Feeling inadequate is cousins or brother or sister, if you want to say, with not feeling good enough. What if you try to reframe the thoughts that make you feel inadequate.
Okay, and start with the root cause of why you feel inadequate. To begin with, they may stem from previous rejection, right, failure, criticism, shame, neglect, childhood trauma. There’s lots of reasons why someone might feel inadequate. Neglect, childhood trauma there’s lots of reasons why someone might feel inadequate. Feelings of inadequacy are especially common in survivors of narcissistic abuse, leading to a type of trauma that can greatly impact individuals throughout their lives. Betrayal is also a moment when people feel inadequate.
So, you know, look at your life and I speak on betrayal, and that’s what I am. I’m a betrayal coach. I help men and women heal from betrayal, and so I find this comes up a lot. So pay attention. Are you feeling this way? One thing I teach my clients is the model, and the model is our circumstance, our thoughts, our feelings, our actions and our results. Okay, this helps us become aware of how our thoughts are creating our results. We think it’s our husband, right, or our wife that’s creating all of our results and our problems, but it’s really our thoughts. Now, I’m not telling you you can think your way out of betrayal, right, it’s really. You have to really feel your way out of that, but I just want you to consider. I have a few examples and I just want you to think about these two examples that I give and pay attention to how you’re thinking and feeling about them. So your circumstance we’re going to use husband, but you could replace this for wife.
Husband says I can never go hang out with friends because you always need my help at home. Your thought is what’s wrong with me? Then you feel inadequate. Your actions are you’re more insecure, you disconnect, you live small, you close off, you judge yourself, you compare yourself to others. Okay, and you might have a lot more actions as well. Your result is you live as if something is wrong with you. So you begin to live that way and believe that, okay, that doesn’t feel great, that’s a really miserable way to live that way and believe that, okay, that doesn’t feel great, that’s a really miserable way to live and that’s giving your husband or your wife a lot of power, okay. So the next example we’re going to stick with the same circumstance Husband, and you can replace this with wife. Husband says I can never go hang out with friends because you always need my help at home. Your thought he can think that, but I know I am doing my best and I’m still figuring out how to be a wife, a mother or an employee like, whatever your circumstances, right, but in this situation, a wife or a mother, okay, you feel compassion, your actions are. You become more curious? You open up, you ask friends what they do, connect, get help.
Your result continue experimenting and finding new ways to live life. So, if you can tell the difference between these two models, they had the same circumstance the husband saying something to you, a comment, and you get to decide what you want to think and feel about it. So often we just agree, we’re like well, if they think that it must be true, it’s not true, it is just their thoughts that they’re having right and they’re trying to figure out why you don’t want them to go out with their friends or what like oh, it must be because you can’t handle it at home. That’s not true, that is just their thought and we don’t have to believe what they’re thinking. Okay, in order to find more power inside of yourself, you’ve got to decide what you believe about you, because the anecdote, the pill that you need to get rid of inadequacy is confidence. Okay, so the more confident you can become in yourself. When people say things that in your past would make you feel inadequate, you just realize okay, that’s what they think. That’s okay, because I know that’s not true. That’s not who I am. You’re more confident, okay? So how do you get confidence after betrayal?
It’s hard. It’s, in my opinion, the biggest thing that gets hit when someone has an affair, when you find out your spouse is cheating on you, I mean, there’s lots of emotions, lots of feelings, but your confidence, your self-esteem goes out the window, because there is a part of us that believes it must have been about us, it must be something we did, even though logically we know it wasn’t. Like there are so many studies and so many. It had nothing to do with you, it had something to do with the person having the affair. But our fear brain, our what we think, we just automatically think, oh, oh, my gosh, what have I done wrong and I must not be worthy of love or whatever our brain goes to is the negative right and we lose our confidence and our self-esteem. And it’s really sad and I can totally relate, because this was my experience for 26 years and until I began to become confident of actually, oh no, what my former spouse was telling me was not even true and it was his thought. But it wasn’t a fact and it wasn’t true and I’m not going to believe it anymore. So you can just slowly start to change. Okay, it takes a lot of intentional practice to change. We have to become aware of our thoughts and our feelings before we can even change. So becoming aware of what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling is really key to building your confidence.
What are you making things that offend you mean about you? So anytime that your spouse or someone important in your life tells you something that you used to go to, oh, I must not be good enough or I feel inadequate. Why are you making it mean anything about you? It is just their thoughts and what’s going on in their brain, right? Just because what they’re thinking doesn’t mean. That’s what you have to be thinking. Question your thoughts, ask is this true or is it an opinion? So often it’s just people’s opinions about us and of course we want people’s opinions about us to be really loving and kind and wonderful.
But when someone has had an affair, there’s a lot of shame involved in that and so when someone feels shame, they’re unable to be loving and kind. Right, they don’t want to feel shame. So they’re thinking it must not have been my choice, right, like I must have had the affair, but it’s because my wife or my husband wasn’t doing X, y or Z enough, and then, if they had been, then I wouldn’t have had to go have an affair, right, somehow? That’s how they rationalize it, but that’s a lie that their brain is telling them. That’s a lie they’re telling them. So you get to decide. Is that an opinion, which I’m guessing most of the time? Yes, it is.
And sometimes what people tell us is true, like maybe we are a little bit of a brat or we are a little bit of, you know, kind of difficult to be around, sometimes, like that’s true, right, so decide instead of getting defensive when someone gives you their opinion about you or they tell you something that you perceive like, oh, I’m doing this wrong, consider if any of what they said is true and just listen to them. Right, acknowledge what they say and you can say, like I can see how you would think that, or whatever For me, since I’m not in a relationship right now, I do this a lot with my kids. My kids are very free at telling me things that they disagree with or whatever, and they don’t do it to be unkind or they don’t love me. Of course they love me. They’re just pointing things out and I appreciate it. So I will consider. Hey, actually, what you said, like I can see how I always just want to fix everything. Okay, I can see how that’s unhelpful for you, right?
So the more awareness you have of yourself and the more confidence you have, you can do that. You don’t take everything so personally and then spiral down. Okay, take everything so personally and then spiral down? Okay. So just pay attention when you feel defensive, listen to the feedback, decide. If any of it’s true, the part that you might believe is true, you can totally change, and you also don’t have to agree with them. Because they don’t think you can handle it doesn’t mean you can’t handle it. You can totally handle it if you want to.
There might be another reason. Decide, okay, what was the reason I didn’t want my spouse to go out with his friends? Well, maybe I don’t trust his friends, or every time he’s with his friends, he flirts with other women. There’s probably something deeper there. So you got to discover that and then be honest about it. This is actually why? It’s not because I need your help giving the kids a bath or getting them ready for bed or doing the dishes. It’s because I feel uncomfortable and it feels very unsafe when you go out with your friends, because every time you go out with your friends, I feel like there’s some lying involved. You say you’re coming home at 11 and you get home at 2 in the morning or whatever. It is right and so you have to.
In order to have a relationship, you have to be honest about how you’re feeling and what you want. You have to have your own back. You have to be strong enough. That’s why you have to practice and build your confidence. Be strong enough that’s why you have to practice and build your confidence. And I like to call it like quiet confidence. It’s not arrogance, right, it’s not like I think I’m better than you. That’s not what I mean by confidence. It’s understanding, like, okay, I am pretty amazing, but sometimes I’m not very amazing. Like sometimes I am a brat and I am not nice, but most of the time I’m really nice and generous and kind. So holding space for both parts of you. So practice, be intentional. If you struggle going to things like I was thinking of examples, like if you struggle going to things by yourself or people invite you to things and that feels hard for you, just make a goal like, okay, I’m going to just talk to one person, or I’m going to stay for 30 minutes and if I still feel uncomfortable I’m going to go home. I’m giving myself permission to go home.
I thought last year I went to this trauma conference Sounds fun, right, it was really amazing, but I went all by myself. I didn’t know one person at this conference and I’m just going to say it was in California. It was with a group of people that were probably they thought much differently than me. There was a lot of talk about ketamine and psilocybin, like all these different things that I’m not familiar with. There were a lot of like social workers and people that dress differently than me, their hair was different than me, they thought probably completely opposite of me.
However, healing my trauma and helping others heal their trauma is very important to me. I want to understand it. I want to learn about it. What am I going to do? Am I just going to sit in this room by myself? But what I decided? I’m like every session because you would have a session, and then, like, leave and I paid for the meal plan that they offered and I, just in line, met people. I would just, you know, during lunch or dinner I would go sit by a group of people and I met so many amazing people. The amount of amazing conversations I had in this week-long period was amazing. Like I connected with people on a whole different level because the one thing we had in common is that we were all there to learn and grow and to help other people, and so we had something in common, even though in my mind we had nothing in common. And I even have a group chat still going from some of these women that I met in this group and it’s really lovely because every now and again they’ll send a video or anyways. So I just think for me, I’m really proud of myself.
That took a lot of courage, but a little bit of quiet confidence, like, oh, I can do this. Because I think past me, before I got divorced while I was married, would have never chosen to do something like that. I would have talked myself out of it or been like no, I can’t do that. And I bet my spouse would have been like what are you doing? Like that’s crazy right, like he would not have been supportive of it. I don’t think so.
Ways you could find a retreat to go on, and especially, I think, women that are divorced, take opportunities to do things on your own right. A lot of us we’ve relied a lot on our spouse. A lot of women we rely a lot more on our spouse than we realize. And so finding moments to build your confidence, like, oh, I can do this. I can totally call the car dealership and get my car fixed, or find someone to fix a repair in my house, Like, do those things.
I think a retreat is a great way to go connect with other women and do something that’s out of your comfort zone. Right, it’s kind of safe because you kind of know it’s in a container and you probably are aligned with whatever the retreat is offering. But you’re going there by yourself. You’re going to have to take a little bit of courage to talk, and my daughter just recently went on this retreat and she didn’t decide to go on the retreat until like a week before, but I’m so proud of her because she was the youngest one there. But she connected with all these other women and now they’re in this like group together and she said several things during that retreat that helped them, and then, of course, they said things to help her. So sometimes we get caught up in our differences instead of what our commonalities are. Okay and that’s a way to build confidence commonalities are okay and that’s a way to build confidence.
If there is an area of your life you want to become more confident in, give yourself opportunities, so focus, look for opportunities to grow and develop. If you want to learn how to play pickleball, join a pickleball league that feels uncomfortable and in our minds sometimes like oh, I’m not going to be able to do it, I’m not adequate enough, right, like there’s no, you know if you can get there right and get a paddle. I think anyone can learn to play pickleball. Some people might learn faster, some people might get better at it, but anyone can learn. Okay, make a list and write it down of things that you want to do. Define what confidence means to you. It is different to everyone, including your spouse, and that’s okay, because your spouse might be defining it in a different way than you are, so that might be a good exercise to do together if you’re still together. If you’re divorced, just decide what does confidence mean to you? Because that’s going to look differently for everyone.
Understand that nobody is perfect. Sometimes you are an awesome mom and sometimes you fall short. Like I love my favorite thing about what I say to my kids like hey guys, you just got the world’s okayest mom. Like deal with it, like lucky you. Sometimes I’m really great and sometimes I fall short and make mistakes. So you can really do that with everything in your life right. Like sometimes you’re really good at eating on your meal plan and sometimes you’re not good at it. Sometimes you’re really good at not going down the rabbit hole of my spouse’s affair and sometimes I go down the rabbit hole and that’s okay. So just give yourself. The more compassion and grace you can give, the more confidence you’re gonna get.
An exercise I like to have my clients do is make a list of 25 things that you’re good at and then take those same things and say how you aren’t good at them or how you could do better. That’s gonna get your brain to just know like okay, I’m really good at this and sometimes I’m not, and you’ve got to hold space for both. That is going to build more confidence, okay. So I hope that if you are one of those people that feels inadequate a lot, you can decide like inadequacy is not something, we’re going to draw your blood and decide oh look, jennifer’s inadequate, it’s not a thing. Right? You can become more confident.
You don’t have to believe your spouse if he’s telling you like blaming you for his inability to go somewhere because he doesn’t think you can handle it. Well, that says a lot about him. That says nothing about you. That says he doesn’t have confidence in you and probably not confidence that you can, which is sad. We want our spouse to have confidence in us, but the most important person to have confidence in is you. So if you want help, reach out. I would love to be your coach. Otherwise, thanks so much for listening to my podcast. Please like and share with your family and friends and I will talk to you next week. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjenwith1ncom. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Happily Even After Coach let’s on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after coach. Let’s work together to create your happily even after.
