Being Enough
Being Enough
As I rounded the bend on Lincoln Boulevard adjacent to the Los Angeles Airport, I almost slammed on the brakes. “Wait a minute,” my mind shouted, “I am enough!” As I took a long, slow, deep breath, finally, the chatter in my mind slowed to a dull roar.
Let me back up. One week prior, the CFO of my employer had a sudden heart attack. At the time, the company was involved in an international acquisition and the CFO was relaying financial documentation to a London firm. He was working long hours and under immense pressure. On the evening of his heart attack, a co-worker reported that he was in his office flexing his biceps, and belting out the lyrics to the Mighty Mouse song: “Here I come to save the day!”
Eventually, he was found and rushed to the hospital. He stabilized for a few days, and everyone expected him to pull through. But then shockingly, he passed away. The doctors said that he was born with a weak heart. Suddenly, his bereaved wife was a widow and single parent to their three-year-old daughter. He was only 42 years old.
In the aftermath of his death, my boss, our CEO, asked if I would publish the monthly financial report. I agreed. Inscrutable Excel spreadsheets with indiscernible rows, columns, and tiny numbers, were appearing in my inbox. I couldn’t make any sense of them. I had been at work all day. Now it was ten o’clock at night and time was ticking by. My boss was nervously checking his watch and looming over my shoulder. We both recognized that this endeavor was futile, and it was time to call it a night.
On the way home, as I rounded the bend of LAX, thoughts flashed through my brain like lightning, “You’re not enough for this job! You’re not good enough!” But this time I caught those disparaging thoughts. That’s when I nearly slammed on the brakes. This was the first time I consciously captured those treasonous, treacherous cognitive distortions before they could sabotage me.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines cognitive distortions as “faulty or inaccurate thinking, perceptions, or beliefs.” What is not included in the APA definition is how cunning distortions can be once they have been repressed to our unconscious. What deleterious influence would they really have if they were not unconscious?
According to Carl Jung, “Consciousness possesses a threshold intensity which its contents must have attained, so that all elements that are too weak remain in the unconscious” (Campbell, 1971). In other words, our typically unpleasant, inaccurate, ego-threatening, self-distortions, such as “I’m not good enough, I’m not enough, I’m not worthy,” etc., “sink into the unconscious” (Campbell, 1971) and remain there until an external stressor or event charges the unconscious distortion with enough energy to punch through the threshold. As the threshold “loses its regulating influence it begins to have an accelerating and intensifying effect on the conscious process,” (Campbell, 1971) which is why I nearly slammed on the brakes. The accelerating effect pushes the distortion into consciousness and the intensifying effect is usually experienced as arousal.
The missing link is an accompanying awareness of the activating experience. We must determine the root cause for the emotional arousal. By using an example of a “slip of the tongue,” or what we commonly call Freudian slips today, Jung explained that “unconscious contents supplement the conscious attitude” (Campbell, 1971). On a daily basis we observe in our own lives and in the lives of others that, “the people who are least aware of their unconscious side are the most influenced by it” (Campbell, 1971). “They [and often we] are unconscious of what is happening” (Campbell, 1971). How do we make those contents which “are about to influence [or sabotage] our actions” conscious so that the “secret interference of the unconscious and its unpleasant consequences can be avoided” (Campbell, 1971)?
Around 2003, when I met my mentor, I had already been meditating for about ten years. Initially, I began a mediation practice to combat stress. At the time, I was working in a Fortune 500 company. I was traveling a lot and under a great deal of pressure. I found that mediation helped to significantly reduce my anxious feelings around performance, hierarchical immobility, (immobility being the root of all trauma, according to Bessel Van der Kolk) and competition that I was experiencing. Meditation is effective at reducing stress (American Psychological Association, 2024) as it essentially slows the chatter of the mind, and ultimately increases mental and emotional focus.
Concomitantly, I had also begun a spiritual quest that incorporated a polytheistic paradigm, as the Christian symbols that I was raised with weren’t sufficient to support the depth of my emotions or dimensions of my personality. I felt that I needed a deeper form of spiritual expression that included a feminine presence beyond the dichotomous “Mother Mary = Good” and “Mary Magdalene = Bad.” The polytheistic structure operated as a net that expanded to contain the new aspects of my emergent Self; Aspects that had remained dormant during my formative years or were disinherited due to incompatible child-rearing. After a ten-year meditation practice, I was sufficiently developed to assimilate the next healing phase.
Meeting the woman who was to become my mentor, was overtly synchronistic. During one of the first exercises that I participated in she led us through a mindfulness meditation process. “What is the deepest, darkest, secret about yourself, that you just know is true, that you don’t want anyone to know about or you would just be mortified,” she asked. A small, unidentifiable voice deep within myself answered, “I’m not enough.” That was my first awareness of the unconscious distortions contained within our personal shadows. Eventually I came to see and understand all of the times I overcompensated due to an erroneous belief system that was created through introjections from my unhealed family of origin (FOO). Because of feelings of unworthiness, I was striving to please everyone else but myself, and this pattern of overcompensation was wreaking havoc in my both my personal and professional life. Fortunately, I found an efficacious solution. Breathwork is an effective way to explore and alter the unconscious.
Glass decanters and earthenware jugs are both made with fire. When a glass decanter breaks it is redone since it was made through a breath. When earthenware jugs break, they are destroyed since they were born without a breath.
The Gospel of Phillip, The Gnostic Bible
Various breathwork methods such as Rebirthing and Holotropic Breathwork, include hyperventilation as a mechanism to create an altered state to access the unconscious. In the twenty years that I have practiced breathwork and assisted others, I have found that hyperventilation is not necessary. Instead, I begin with a meditation exercise to induce a gentle hypnotic state. I have found the results to be just as deep and efficacious. When assisting others in this practice the key is to construct a safe and compassionate space and to allow the client to explore their interior landscape. During intake the practitioner determines the cause of distress. The goal is to access and explore the root cause of the distress.
By starting with a somatic relaxation technique and meditation, the client moves into a receptive state. By inhaling their chosen positive enantiodromia of the distortion, and exhaling said distortion, the practitioner assists the client in moving back in time to their first experience of the attending emotions. The practitioner then asks the client to describe the scene and the individuals involved. By utilizing techniques such as: An “interior flashlight” to somatically explore; Asking gently probing, open-ended questions, as one would in a therapy session, and “time traveling,” the client can usually pinpoint the source of their distortion(s). Guiding them through the experience as a capable adult with mature insight is typically sufficient to gain insight, challenge the distortion, and integrate it into consciousness.
While in the car, I was still activated. However, through my meditation and breathwork practice, I was able to mediate the thoughts in my mind. I was able to slow them down and “catch” them. Once home, I was able to breathe through the subterfuge of, “I’m not enough,” and “I’m not good enough.” Once I was able to gain clarity over my distortions, I realized that publishing the monthly financial report was outside of my scope of duties. I hadn’t been trained on the protocol. I hadn’t even been shown the CFO’s entry system! I was certainly enough for my own job. But was reasonably unprepared to assume the CFO’s job. I slept soundly that night.
I’m not sure what the CEO’s expectation was when he called me into his office the next morning, but he seemed mildly surprised by my calmness. He initiated the conversation by saying that he appreciated me, and my work thus far, and fully intended to keep me on board. He planned to hire an interim MBA to assume the fiscal reporting duties during the company’s acquisition. Smiling cryptically, I agreed that this was a good decision.
References
American Psychological Association. (2024). APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/cognitive-distortion
American Psychological Association. (2024). APA dictionary of psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/meditation
Barnstone, W., & Meyer, M. W. (2003). The Gnostic bible. Shambhala Publications. Campbell, J. (Ed.). (1971). The portable Jung. Pp. 285-286.