The elusive "good enough"

"Regardless of who we are, how we are raised, or what we believe, all of us fight hidden, silent battles against not being good enough, not having enough, and not belonging enough. When we find the courage to share our experiences and the compassion to hear other tell their stories, we force shame out of hiding and end the silence." - Brene Brown, PhD, from I Thought It Was Just Me, Making the journey from "What will people think?" to "I am enough."

As a few of you pointed out after my first post, Brene Brown would be proud if she knew what I was doing with this blog. I've been doing a lot of independent reading lately and Brene Brown's work has had quite an impact on how I view myself and my life. Her work is based on qualitative research (interviews and coding of themes) on people's experiences with vulnerability, shame, and courage, and the interconnection between all of these things.

I really like the above quote because it reminds me of something that I find to be extremely easy to forget. When you are going through something and struggling with feelings related to self-worth, it absolutely does not mean you are "depressed," "messed up," "weak," or any of the other long lists of names that people tend to associate with this type of thing. It means you are a NORMAL human being, and not a robot.

I woke up this morning with a very mixed review on my dissertation manuscript from the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. I got a revise and re-submit, which is typically a good thing, but the reviews they are asking for are very substantial (make lots of clarifications and make into a much abbreviated brief report; translation: add a bunch of info while cutting down to about half the words) and Reviewer #2 clearly did NOT like my paper at all. Frankly (and I swear I'm not being dramatic here), he/she might as well have said: "Your study was sloppy and poorly planned and you are clearly an idiot" because that was the basic undertone of the comment (okay fine I am being a tad dramatic, BUT, Garrett read it too and he agreed that this guy was unnecessarily harsh. To give you a flavor of this, he/she said, among other things, the paper was "not well written or prepared" which was interesting given that Reviewer #1 said that it was "clear, succinct, well-written, and included a strong review of the literature.")

Does fact that his/her comments made me have severe doubts about myself as a researcher AND as a clinician (he commented on the components of my intervention and suggested that they could be harmful to the participants, which is bullshit, by the way) make me a bad researcher, make me weak, or make me not worthy of being in the field of research? Or does it make me someone who "does not have it together enough or isn't strong enough to withstand criticism"?

Ummm.... maybe?

Alright, after I calmed down and talked it out with Garrett, I clearly now know the answer is no. 

We ALL struggle with feelings or worthiness, and a harsh critique on something that matters to us (a project we worked on for the past 3 years or so) will VERY likely bring that up. The fact that I reacted with some anxiety, hurt, and anger towards this unknown person makes me human. Luckily, I had someone that I trust who I could talk to about it, and help me realize the other side of things. 

That is, this person was unnecessarily harsh, but if I can separate it out from feeling like I was personally attacked, I can take this for what it is: a learning experience. The alternative is, I can stew over this and be angry at this random person for hating my paper. Which will accomplish, a whole lot of nothing except stressing me out.  I can do my best to address each reviewers concern, and I can re-submit my paper. Worst case, scenario, it gets rejected and ya know what? I will probably end up surviving.

When we engage with the world from a place or worthiness, it opens up doors for us and changes the way we see things. The opinions of people on my field matter, but they do not define me, especially people whom I do not even know. This paper does not define me, nor even does my career define me. I am passionate about it, sure, but it is not who I am. While we are at it, my weight also does not define me. No. I am, we are all, so much more than what we look like and what we do. 

With this attitude, I feel stronger and more able to address the comments. More able to push through and aim for my goals, even if I end up failing.

The thing is, we will never be "good enough" to avoid criticism. So "good enough" or "perfection" is elusive and unattainable. And frankly, its boring. People are much more interesting as complex and imperfect people, anyways... 

Side note/exercise update: Writing about authenticity and imperfection has been quite liberating and I ended up going on a 5 mile turned 6 mile run that felt awesome right after I finished most of this post. 

Friday: 3.8 miles 
Saturday: 6 miles
Sunday: 1 mile walk with Garrett up near my aunt's house in the Forest Preserves
Monday (today): 6 miles