Ep. 7 I Thought I Wasn't Enough (Healing the "Not Enough" Pattern)

I've carried a quiet "not enough" wound for as long as I can remember. It's the pattern my ego defaults to when things get quiet. This episode came out of a single conversation that reminded me how much I actually know h and how what feels completely obvious to me can shift someone in real time. If you feel behind, inadequate, or like you're still waiting to be qualified enough - this one's for you.

Book 1:1 here

Transcript

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Hey, I'm Leslie Turner. I'm a mom, a somatic practitioner, and an intuitive coach. This is the Intuitive Drop. Short conversations about emotional truth, the nervous system, and living from your intuition in real life without losing your mind along the way. Let's drop in. Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Intuitive Drop. Today I want to talk about something that's been sitting with me kind of quietly in my body for decades now. And it's not a big dramatic thing. It's not crisis or anything that's gonna rock you. It's just this subtle feeling of being less than. Not enough. And this not enough thing has actually been a very big core wound for me since I was small, uh, for several reasons that we don't need to get into, but my ego kind of defaults there as and has for as long as I can remember. A lot of my deeper work since starting this journey a decade ago is really about working with this pattern. Um, it'll often say, maybe I should be further ahead, maybe I should have it more figured out, maybe I'm missing something that everyone else seems to have. And I want to name this because I know I'm not the only one who feels it. What's interesting is that this feeling tends to show up when I'm not actively working in my career, not sitting in front of another client or watching their body soften or hearing the relief in their voice when something finally clicks. When I'm a bit removed, like I was over the holidays from the work, that's when the old insecurity wounds come back up front and center. And something that was reflected to me recently really landed, and that was when I'm not actively doing the work, the ego steps in and starts filling that space. And the ego is very convincing. Now it doesn't come right out and say, you're not enough. It says, hey, look around. It says, compare to how you're doing right now with everyone else on social media. It says, hey, look at your bank account. See how far you're not. And suddenly then my worth is getting measured by numbers, by momentum in visibility and how things look more from the outside. I want to be really clear. I'm not minimizing that money matters. I'm, of course it does. We live in this real human world. But when worth and money get tied too tightly together, your sense of self gets rocked every time your bank account dips below that comfort level. Money is not a reliable indicator of depth. It's not a reliable indicator of wisdom or even embodiment. It's an outcome more tied to timing, capacity, visibility, regulation around receiving, and a lot of other factors that have nothing to do with whether or not you're good at what you do. But that ego loves a very clean metric, something very tangible. But your nervous system doesn't speak in numbers. It speaks in safety, it speaks in resonance, it speaks in softening. A couple of days ago, I met up with a friend for tea. And this friend has been in the health world for decades. She's very intuitive, very sensitive, very experienced. And we ended up having one of those conversations that goes deep really quickly. I mean, most of my conversations do. So if you are my friend, you already know this. Um, we were talking about nervous systems, we were talking about safety, we were talking about healing timelines, energy work, about how the body actually changes. And she asked me a question that felt almost basic to me, like very foundational, the stuff that feels very obvious right now. And I remember at first being a little surprised because I mean, she's been doing this work for so long. She's deeply intuitive. And yet a lot of what I was sharing with her when we were talking about nervous system was brand new information to her. And as I was answering her questions, I could feel the my words landing. I could see her soften, her body kind of shifted and her system responded. And I had this moment where something inside me was like, oh, this isn't actually common knowledge. What feels very basic to me isn't actually basic. It's just familiar to me because I've lived it, I've studied it, I've embodied it, I work with it every day. I've followed my intuition into this over and over again. So I'm very fluent in this. And fluency feels like simplicity from the inside. Because it feels so simple, we assume that it isn't valuable. And that couldn't be further from the truth. That was a big moment for me. And then as we were talking, there was another person that came in and I ended up chatting with her at the end. And she asked me if I would work with children. And uh, I don't usually. I would mostly work with the parents because I find if the parents have a regulated nervous system, and that doesn't mean calm all the time, but they're allowing their children to borrow their calm to create safety in calm and slowness, the kids will respond beautifully. Anyway, as an aside, the question of this person coming in and saying, Hey, do you work with kids? She, it was like she felt something. She felt that it was safe to ask me, it was safe to work with me. And again, hit me. I've been walking around assuming that what I know is everywhere, that everyone understands nervous system safety, that everyone understands how slow real change usually is, that everyone understands how much the body needs to lead this process. And that just isn't true. I've been underestimating my own depth because it feels so normal to me. And what I want to name is, you know, I've been beating myself up for not being quote unquote enough based on a metric that has nothing to do with mastery. When I'm actually in the work, when I'm present with my clients, there's no question, my intuition is very accurate. My body knows what to do before my brain can process it. And I trust myself. But when I'm not actively witnessing that impact, those old stories creep back in very quickly. The ones that say, maybe I'm behind, maybe I'm not doing enough, maybe I'm not enough for my clients, maybe I should be doing more and being more by now. I don't think that's unique to me. I think a lot of us normalize our own mastery, especially when our gifts are quiet, when our when they're embodied, especially when they don't scream for attention, because depth doesn't need to shout, regulation doesn't need to perform, and safety has nothing to do with hustling. So it's really easy to overlook. It's easy to assume that if it feels calm, it must not be powerful. That's exactly how nervous systems work, though. The deepest change often feels very, very subtle. What really landed for me that day at the coffee shop is not that is it's this realization, I suppose, that I'm not lacking. I'm not behind, I'm not missing this fundamental thing. I've just been measuring myself with the wrong ruler. And I'm probably more than enough for the vast majority of people. What I carry, what I know, what I can feel and respond to, the intuitive insights and the hits that just come to me in conversations, the feelings in my body that I'm trusting more than anything, it's not common. And saying that isn't my ego, it's clarity. And there's a difference. So if you're listening to this and something in your body is responding, I want to invite you to consider a few things. Where are you measuring your worth using someone else's metric? What do you know so deeply that you just assume everyone else must know it too? And if you can't answer that, maybe ask your best friend, ask your partner of what comes easily to you that you don't give a second thought to, but everyone else is a little bit blown away by it. When was the last time someone reflected your impact back to you and you minimized it? That's a big one. Because how often do you say, oh, it's no big deal, I do it all the time? But you've just done something so profound for someone else. So just because you start to feel like you're behind, it doesn't mean you're actually behind. Just because you start to feel, oh, maybe I'm not where I should be, doesn't mean there's truth behind it. Sometimes it means you've normalized your own fluency, your own genius. Now I'm not sharing this to convince myself or you that we are amazing, even though we are. I'm sharing it because at that moment I felt the lie loosen in my body, the quiet lie of I'm not enough. And I wanted to name it while it was still fresh, while it still felt embodied in my system, while it still felt very real. This is what happens in my sessions. We don't force clarity. We let the nervous system show us what's actually real, what's actually true. So if this landed for you, let it sit in your body, not in your head. You don't need to fix anything right now. You don't need to push through it, you don't need to prove that you are worthy. Just notice where your body already knows this fundamental truth. And let that be enough for today. Love ya. If something in this landed for you, I'd love to support you further. Whether that's through private sessions, ongoing containers, or simply listening to another episode, trust what feels right. All the ways to work with me are linked below. There's no pressure, just options. Thank you for being here and for doing the quiet, brave work of listening to yourself.