5 Tips to Beat Inferiority Complex

hi I'm Matt Terrell among common knowledge and welcome to five tips for treating inferiority complex self-esteem lifting strategies to help clients who feel they're worse than others now Anthony Trollope the Victorian English novelist said never think that you're not good enough people will take you very much at your own reckoning so that was a sort of humorous take on a problem which if you suffer from a serious inferiority complex is of course deadly serious so Tammy 19 felt inferior that's what her mum told me when booking her appointment as I got up to answer that's the call of the doorbell I mused that feeling inferior can only be done through comparison you know we can only feel inferior in relation to something or someone else so as I open the door I further sort of reflected for the feelings of inferiority being to be a complex as Tammy's mother described it we need to feel emotional about feeling inferior okay so I know I'm an inferior mathematician to say m'angil bhagava but I have no particular feelings about that okay it's good for him I say you know feeling inferior then is different from objectively knowing that we might be inferior to someone in a particular way okay so it's an emotional aspect time to stop my musings and focus outward sighs smile at Tammy and welcomed her and she was diffident but friendly and I wanted to know what the problem was from her perspective so what does never feeling good enough mean to you and she said well I feel anxious a lot of the time and was a had a subtle crack in her voice a bottle of sob okay so what do you feel anxious about I asked her the deep sadness I saw sitting dolefully within such young eyes left me feeling a little emotional myself okay and she said I I feel as if I can never be good enough you know when I see others I know you're not supposed to compare yourselves but I just think I'm ugly and stupid in comparison so feeling inferior is intrinsic to low self esteem but here I want to focus more specifically on what's being called calm paranoia constantly comparing yourself to others and finding yourself lacking so how do people get to the point of feeling less than others or less than they should be okay let's look at the anatomy of the inferiority complex confidently knowing that Usain Bolt can run faster than you is not the same as feeling inferior unless you really really care about that okay a real inferiority complex has us feeling that we should be as good as others but we're not we're not as good as others but we don't really know why that is okay so it's a generalized feeling of inadequacy not based on rational judgments or evidence necessarily so Tammie found it hard to articulate why she felt inferior it wasn't a cognitive thing it was an emotional sense that she carried with her privately and painfully the emotions of feeling inferior comprised of anxiety a fear of somehow being found out or unmasked as completely inadequate a sense of impostor syndrome even when you're achieving good things in your life or your social life hopelessness and helplessness two key ingredients of depression feeling that whatever you do it just can't be good enough or it can't be as good as you're supposed to be at it or as other people seem to be no matter how well you do it still won't be good enough okay even high achievers can feel like failures and imposters anger is another thing and defensiveness resentment and envy and possibly guilt about those feelings can also be included into the mix Tammy said that she often felt ugly now objectively she certainly wasn't but that's the nature of the beast feeling ugly can be totally disconnected from the objective perception others have a view and of course any evidence to the contrary can easily be rejected or rationalized away indeed it must be if the inferiority complex is to survive but Tammy repeatedly told me she felt not good enough she found it hard to be specific at first but then it's always hard trying to articulate feelings when they have no real basis in thought so where might an inferiority complex originate in a world that encourages us to buy stuff because we're worth it while simultaneously force-feeding us airbrushed perfection it's easy for an inferiority complex to take hold we're told it's what's on the inside of accounts but we're saturated on the outside by people seemingly exciting rewarding beautiful lives we are drowning in the fantasy while being told it doesn't matter in a way if we believed in lifelong self-improvement none of us are good enough we haven't measured up to everything we could be at least not yet but self objectively knowing us our own shortcomings and seeking to improve them is not the same as feeling emotional about ourselves or as Tammy sometimes did self despising she had self harmed in the past and had also been through periods of bulimia maybe a client has been told they weren't good enough by a parent okay or primary caregiver or someone else when they were very young one more one woman I know was repeatedly told by her mother that she was the ugliest girl in the street and no one liked her or maybe they've been constantly compared to other people why can't you be more like your sister okay other people might feel inferior because they're perfectionists they feel that anything less than perfection is completely inadequate being at war with the self is painful we always need to be on our own side to be our own support and encouragement but there's something else how good-looking are you how tall how rich how smart how popular how deeply loved and adored we can only be tall or short or rich or poor attractive or ugly in comparison to others in a world with a population of one good-looking would have no meaning at all 150 years ago you would have known your neighbors and a few other locals perhaps who would probably have been similar to you in many ways you may have been vaguely aware of a few famous people but that was it in today's world it's a very different place now we can glide silently through the lives and status updates status being the operative word of much of the world not least of all the rich and airbrushed Tammy was spending 4 to 5 hours a day on social media she admitted it often made her feel sad ugly and generally inferior but she felt pressured to be on there now researchers at Glasgow University have found that nighttime usage of social media is associated with poor sleep lower self-esteem and increased anxiety and depression and it's no wonder constant monitoring of how many or how few likes or positive responses they're getting on social media can train young people to become dependent on the approval of others and depressed when it isn't forthcoming such dependence on outside approval is a recipe for unhappiness and poor emotional adjustment and of course there are many advantages to social media but like any tool it can be misused or even in the case of cyberbullying weaponized but we're not defenseless if we can only relax our expectations as to how we should be and understand that the way others present themselves to the world is heavily edited then we can relax about how others seem to be and how we seem to them and I'm not just talking about online so this was my challenge with Tammy so what can we do for a client with an inferiority complex tip one for treating inferiority complex deal with emotional memories having an inferiority complex means having an array of unhappy feelings some of which will fuel the thoughts helping people examine their own thoughts widen their perspectives and challenge emotional thinking which is always restricted can be valuable and effective but when the feelings are really strong it could be easier to deal with them directly when we do this our thoughts tend to naturally become fairer and more moderate I asked Tammy to hone in on the feelings of never being good enough what did that feel like and with closed eyes she focused on the feeling it wasn't hard for her to access it and because she was very good at accessing that feeling next I asked her if the feelings produced any particular memory in which she'd had similar feelings mm-hmm this is known as the effect bridge technique and she thought for a moment and said no but eventually a painful memory of being teased and tormented at school when she was 8 came to mind now I asked her to open her eyes and focus on a time she felt good once she'd accessed these resourceful feelings I had to go back to that day at school watch it calmly from the outside and as her adult self comfort her eight-year-old self and sought that timeout and she reported feeling very calm with that memory after we used this helping hand technique and we did this with all kinds of painful memories and with time the pattern began to change okay so you can watch me do this technique with my low self-esteem client Emily inside uncommon practitioners TV in her case the old memories was of having books thrown at her at school when she tried to speak in class next we can remind our clients that only they can be them when this idea hits home is a feeling not just a year Arno thought the impact can be profound tip to drop the mime here lies Rachel she was quite like Susan read no gravestone ever all Rachel can be is Rachel or the best possible version of herself she's not ever going to be Susan and she shouldn't be in the words of Oscar Wilde be yourself everyone else is already taken wanting to look like sound like live like and be like someone else is to abandon what makes us unique how could an impersonator ever be true to themselves plastic replica lives don't make people happy that's not to say we can't learn from others but being inspired by someone means assimilating some of their traits into who you are it doesn't mean trying to have their exact same life inferiority complex is thrive on people wanting to be someone they're not and this doesn't mean we have to limit ourselves as to what we can do or accomplish in life but it does mean that we can get by much better when we don't try to be someone else inferiority complexes thrive on people wanting to be someone they're not I talked about plastic lives to Tammy and I also used other metaphors analogies and hypnotic storytelling to help her broaden her sense of herself as herself not some inadequate copy of anyone else we can also help our clients in another way tip 3 get specific Tammy wasn't too specific about why she felt inferior other than feeling ugly even though she knew she wasn't okay but it can sometimes be useful to get specific requires what exactly have they been feeling inferior about emotional thinking is always sloppy and all-or-nothing so we can help our clients tighten it up to make it less emotional there are around 7 billion people on this planet last time I counted which one does your client feel inferior to rich people good-looking people academic people accomplished people whatever that means most people aren't these things at least not in any extreme way is your client being too busy being selective as to whom they compare themselves with if I just compare myself to Nobel Prize winners I'll certainly see a bit of a gulf between their achievements and my achievements on the other hand if I compare myself to people I feel have achieved less than me maybe I could be a bit less harsh on myself okay so who do we compare ourselves to or here's a thought maybe I could just drop it altogether okay which leads me to the next intervention tip for dare to be different life is much less restrictive than it used to be in westernized countries in the 50s you were expected to be married in your early twenties to have kids and to have a respectable career so grave grave robbers need not apply to have short hair or long hair depending on gender to dress properly to have all the right opinions okay now we haven't cast aside all these norms and I'm not even suggesting that they're all bad even but people are much freer now to live a bit differently okay no one is a failure if they're unmarried at 40 or 80 for that matter or if they don't have kids or a traditionally professional career not in terms of current societal norms though your parents may still have some expectations which link back to those times the kind of thinking that prompts oh now I'm 45 now I should have a mortgage a partner 2.4 children I should be how other people are is a trap you know all those things right for you if you really want these things that's one thing but if you only want them because you feel they're expected of you then remember this your life can only be lived by you so we can encourage our clients to explore what they want to do as distinct from what they feel they are or were supposed to do okay the expectations what do you think what do you want and these are the questions I kept asking Tammy I wanted to get to the bottom of what she wanted not what she thought she should want or what other people expected and she said she felt validated by this but really really all I was doing was addressing her the one and only Tammy addressing the unique her it's also useful to look at just what a client might be expecting so tip 5 asked the utopian assumptions people who feel inferior tend to think in all-or-nothing ways actually any emotion will drive us to do this utopianism is one form of this simplified if only thinking if only I was 20 pounds lighter then I'd be confident and happy if only I owned 10,000 more a year then my life will be good if only I could be exactly like Bob then I'd feel great about my himself so life doesn't work like that sure you might have more confidence if you lose 20 pounds at least for a while but because much of what we feel in theory about is relatively superficial band-aid remedies will always leave the non superficial part of us wanting more so even if I earn a million a year it won't be long before I start thinking if only I earned two million so why because I still haven't satisfied what I actually need is a human being so we all have deeper needs and until those needs are met there may be an aching disconnect between what we feel we want and what we really need whole lifetimes might be predicated on this mismatch and the bewilderment and lack of fulfillment it causes so how could Tammy start being herself more cronic compare annoyer tends to drop away quite naturally when we begin to live in more sustainable ways we do this by meeting our needs for real meaning purpose and genuine connection to other people so I worked long and hard with Tammy to help her overcome past emotional conditioning and start helping her to start meet her primal emotional needs in a balanced way in hypnosis we rehearsed her caring less about what others might or might not think of her and challenged the learned thinking that had been causing her so many problems for so long I also encouraged and helped prepare Tammy for downtime from social media she cut it down to no more than 90 minutes a day and sometimes much less we mentally rehearsed her being much less bothered by what she read and saw where it seemed to reflect badly on her by comparison and feeling and being much more socially spontaneous was something that we also started to focus on Tammy has become happier and less anxious and she says she feels freer she started to see differences between herself and others not in terms of better or worse but just as differences after my last session with Tammy she sent me a clip from YouTube and it was a song by The Kinks called Plastic Man and she says she'll live her life as a flesh-and-blood unique perfectly imperfect person she is the only Tammy there is ever was or ever will be she will never be a plastic copy of what other people expect okay so I hope you found that useful and if you did please hit like and subscribe and if you want to hear where my next video is published hit the notification bell below I'm mark Terrell of uncommon knowledge and I hope I'll see you soon over at uncom slash blog that's UNK comm slash blog thanks for watching you [Music]

Channel: Mark Tyrrell

Views: 181,264

Keywords: how to remove inferiority complex, reasons for inferiority complex, do you feel inferior to others, tips for therapists, inferiority complex psychology, how to overcome inferiority complex, uncommon practitioners, how to stop feeling inferior, overcome inferiority complex, treating inferiority complex, how to stop inferiority complex, inferiority complex, mark tyrrell, treat inferiority complex, beat inferiority complex, therapist tips, how to get rid of inferiority complex

Id: IvBD8KbCIQQ

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 08 2019