An Overachieving Lifestyle Can Come From Not Feeling Good Enough
- Brooke Aymes
- Mar 24
- 2 min read
An overachieving lifestyle can come from a core belief of not feeling good enough.
Core beliefs are developed in childhood and/or from significant life events. A core belief is an unconscious idea about oneself, others and the world. A core belief can be positive or negative. It influences how a person responds to stress, develops relationships with others and their views of their future. A core belief is basically the lens that a person is looking through. It is the pair of glasses that they are experiencing themselves, others and the world through.
Examples of positive core beliefs:
About Self: ‘I am worthy’
About Others: ‘People are generally kind’
About the World: ‘The world is full of opportunities’
Examples of negative core beliefs:
About Self: ‘I am unworthy’ ‘I am flawed’ ‘I am a failure’ ‘I am not good enough’
About Others: ‘People are untrustworthy’ ‘People are judgmental’
About the World: ‘The world is dangerous’ ‘Life is unfair’
Positive core beliefs come from healthy experiences, like having a stable childhood where a secure attachment could be built with both parents. Positive core beliefs offer flexibility.
Negative core beliefs come from unhealthy experiences, like having an unstable childhood or experiencing an unhealthy relationship with a partner where insecure attachment can build. Negative core beliefs are often rigid and do not offer much flexibility meaning that our minds will always look to justify the negative belief regardless of the evidence.
If we have a negative core belief about ourself, others and/or the world that will cause us to perceive situations more negatively. It can cause us to be more likely to self sabotage things to consistently justify the negative and to continue to confirm our own insecurities.
Here are some ways that a negative core belief might show up in our lives:
Negative Thoughts- Chronic self criticism and/or negative self talk.
Avoidance- Avoiding things due to fear of rejection or due to knowing that the world is too dangerous and life is unfair anyway.
Self sabotage- We might unconsciously sabotage things to continue to prove that we are in fact a failure.
Problems in Relationships- This could show up as fear of abandonment and then we show up in the relationship as needy and insecure or we might stay in unhealthy relationships because we feel that we deserve poor treatment and we do not deserve to be happy.
Perfectionism- We cling to being perfect to prove to ourself that we are in fact good enough.
If this relates to you, the first step is gaining self-awareness to understand the lens that we are seeing ourselves, others and the world through. We can work on changing the core belief by continuing to do work on ourselves. Therapy can help.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hey, I'm Brooke -- I'm a licensed anxiety and addiction therapist serving individuals, adolescents and couples in the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Florida. My experience brings both a personal and professional perspective to the work that I do with my clients. If you are interested in learning more about the therapy process and would like to schedule a free consultation, I would love to schedule a free, ten minute phone consultation with you!
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