[00:00:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons, and welcome back to Joy Lab.
[00:00:09] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And I'm Aimee Prasek. We are in our Element of Enoughness. That is my favorite word lately.
[00:00:18] Henry Emmons, MD: Our favorite new word.
[00:00:19] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. I mean, it actually does have, you know — it's in our vocabulary already, but I don't know. There was a moment where I thought you made it up, Henry, haha.
[00:00:28] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah, I thought I did too. Hahaha.
[00:00:32] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Well, we've really gotten into it in this Series, so, we're talking about being enough today. We've talked about doing enough; we've talked about having enough; we've talked about knowing enough already — so those are in the past Episodes if you wanna go back, but you can stay right here. You can go back to those later. This is kind of the big picture, I think, maybe, of those. Which brings me to a question that I think goes through all of them, which is: who are we trying to be enough for? Is it ourselves? A parent? A child? A boss? It is a tough question to answer sometimes.
[00:01:14] Henry Emmons, MD: It's my mom, Aimee. Hahaha.
[00:01:16] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Likely. Haha. We know there's gonna be a dad, or a mom, in there for most of us. Absolutely. And that's okay. We can explore this and have grace for that, but it is a — I think it can be a tough question. I think can actually help us here.
So the idea with this theory is that we have three representations of ourselves: the actual-self, the ideal-self, and the ought-self. And when there are gaps between these selves, or discrepancies, then negative emotions can surge. And it's not just about gaps related to your beliefs about yourself, but also what you believe others think about you. So the actual-self includes the attributes you believe you possess, and also what you believe others think you possess — so how you think others would describe you.
The ideal-self is who you wanna be; the attributes you want to possess, and also what you believe others think about your ideal-self; who you think they think you could be. [It] gets a little twisty.
The ought-self has to do with the attributes you think you ought to have. The shoulds, and also what you believe others think you ought to have.
[00:02:48] Henry Emmons, MD: Oooh!, That gets so tricky. Haha.
[00:02:52] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. You know, and this is — this is different than the ideal-self too, and it'll come to light here as we dig in, I think, a little bit more. This ought-self has to do a lot with the duty, obligations, and responsibilities that we feel we ought to have, or that we feel our parent thinks we ought to have — to bring your mom back into the topic, Henry.
So I think this is super interesting because it highlights all these areas where we may be doing these kind of calculations of our enoughness. You know, comparing our actual-self with our ideal-self, or our actual-self with what our parents think our ideal-self should be, and we may feel like there are big gaps there. And self-discrepancy theory also proposes that certain calculations like that, when we sense those gaps, are more associated with either dejection related emotions like depression, shame, embarrassment, or agitation related emotions like anxiety, frustration, fear, feeling threatened.
So here, let's for example, line this up here. When there is a gap between your actual-self and your ideal-self, that gap is more likely to stir up dejection related emotions like sadness or depression. You feel disappointed because you haven't met that ideal-self that you envisioned.
And a gap in the actual-self and your ought-self — the ought-self associated with duties, and responsibilities, and obligations — when you feel you aren't measuring up there, that's more associated with agitation related emotions like fear, guilt, anxiety.
So feeling like we're not enough, or feeling like others think we're not enough, is often not just one thing or one feeling. There can be a lot happening behind our conscious awareness even, so it can be really helpful, as we often do here, to bring those things to awareness and understand what we're measuring ourselves up against, and from whose perspective. That information can matter a lot because we can start to get a bit more curious about those things. For example, is that really the ideal-self for me, and do I want to have so-and-so weigh in on that? Is that a calculation that I wanna take into consideration?
[00:05:38] Henry Emmons, MD: Hmm. Yeah. Do we want to open it up for debate amongst the people in our lives? Hahaha.
[00:05:42] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Ha, right! And you might wanna hear some opinions, but when — yeah, when you're not aware of them and they're just coming at you...
[00:05:51] Henry Emmons, MD: Mm-hmm
[00:05:51] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, it can cause a lot of those discrepancies to just unconsciously arise, is the idea here.
[00:05:58] Henry Emmons, MD: One of the things I'm wondering here, Aimee, is how clearly can any of us describe our actual-selves? I mean, I suspect that our sense of ourselves, in that way, is not super accurate. So for example, do we tend to inflate ourselves, as the research suggests — especially for the males of our world? Or do we tend to diminish ourselves, as, you know, so often happens when someone's prone to depression, for example? And I think it's worth remembering that this is all happening, or at least much of this is happening, unconsciously. So the ability to see what is, is really necessary to bring it into conscious awareness.
It's worth pointing out that this takes a toll on our psyches, to have these discrepancies. Without us realizing it, the gap between our actual, and ought, selves causes real anxiety and insecurity, which is probably the most common of these patterns. But the gap between the ideal, and the actual — the kind that might be behind more depression, because we feel we're not enough; we don't measure up — that creates a whole lot of suffering, too. In some ways, maybe even more.
We did a Series not that long ago on Grief, and I'm wondering if this, in fact, might be another one of the Gates of Grief that we talked about. In other words, we need to come to terms with the fact that we will never become our ideal-self. We will never have the ideal life. And if that's what we think we need to be happy, we're going to be very disappointed. And I think approaching this as, you know, [something] that we can — we can recognize that , we can accept that, and then even grieve for it, it might give us an off-ramp from this thing that's churning around us all of the time.
[00:08:20] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Two things. One, my favorite part about Joy Lab is that we talk about things like that. We'll never have the ideal life. Get used to this obstacle. The reality of this. But I mean, like, it sounds depressing in some ways [but] it is so freeing. These are, like, the bits of wisdom that gave me an off-ramp, as you said, Henry.
And as another Gate of Grief? Oh my God, yes, absolutely. I totally agree with that. The Gate of never having the ideal life; the Gate of the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but then you get to the other side of the fence and another gate just opens where the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
And I think the pushback, toxic positivity might say that if you acknowledge that gate, let's say, [suggesting] that these things might not ever come to fruition, that you're just not working hard enough, or dreaming big enough, or manifesting with enough focus. No. I think this is as human as that first Gate of Grief that we learned about, that Frances Weller proposes, which is that everything you love you will lose. So why not accept this, grieve this, and then let that space open up so that you're actually calculating the gaps between who you are and who you think you are, probably less often, and with less shame, or guilt, or fear, or depression, or anxiety. And you can still shoot for the stars. I absolutely believe that. But if you, or when you, miss you can be like, "Okay, cool. I tried that." And it doesn't take away from your enoughness, and you can make the fall softer. It doesn't diminish the effort and the drive to grow. Absolutely. And wait, I got another thing to say. You said off-ramp, Henry, so now I'm thinking about cars and I wanna talk about sociometer theory.
Sociometer theory suggests that self-esteem isn't really about the interpretation of how good or bad you are at something. It's actually more about your interpretation of how others value their relationship with you. So I'll explain this with a car, coming back to that off-ramp. So imagine a fuel gauge. You've got empty on one side and full on the other, and we're just gonna change those labels, though. Let's put rejection where E should be — empty should be, and appreciation where the F is.
So when self-esteem plummets, when it goes to E, then we feel rejected, like we don't belong, that people don't value us. And when our self-esteem soars, then we feel full and appreciated. We feel like we belong and people value us. And those times when we feel rejected, when our belonging is being threatened, this theory —and other related research — suggests that the rejection impacts us even more than the appreciation.
To quote another paper that I'll put in the show notes, "Bad is stronger than good." There's some truth to that.
So imagine driving down the freeway. A desolate, desert freeway. No gas stations in sight. And you're riding in the middle of that fuel gauge, and then you get a compliment. You get a text or something. It comes through, it's a compliment, and your gauge shoots over toward full for a moment. It feels good, right? So you keep driving. Then a little further down the road, you get some terrible feedback about some work you did for someone else, and your gauge drops to empty. And you're looking around you in this empty desert without a gas station for miles. You feel like you can't drive anymore. Your alarm bells understandably go off, telling you to fix it. Fix it. Fix this situation. You don't wanna die out in this desert. You wanna do all you can to get some fuel, to get back the appreciation. So according to this theory, you can maybe see how easy it is to attach our self-esteem, and our self-worth, our sense of enoughness to that gauge. It feels really important. I mean viscerally, right? We're getting those messages that the rejection is a bad thing; those stress responses. And I think that message [of the theory] then, is that if we don't embrace our worth, if we don't reclaim that, then those gauges can really take over how we see ourselves and how we value ourselves.
[00:13:26] Henry Emmons, MD: Hmm. So as you're talking, I found myself thinking about that old theory of intermittent reinforcement.
[00:13:35] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Hmm. Yeah.
[00:13:37] Henry Emmons, MD: So if our self-esteem depends on getting occasional good feedback and it tanks when we get occasional bad feedback, it leaves us really vulnerable. For most of us, like you were saying, Aimee, the negative feedback is what sticks. Neurologically, we are drawn more naturally to the negative than the positive. So we might need, say, twice as much of the positive, maybe three or four times as much, just to keep our needle in the middle, and that's kind of precarious for us psychologically. In clinical terms, what's called rejection sensitivity can be a really potent cause of emotional distress, anxiety, depression. Folks who have this rejection sensitivity are so wired to react to the pain of being rejected that the very possibility of it can shrink their life in really significant ways. Like, they just don't wanna take any risk. They don't wanna, for example, go to a social event or a work situation; anything that might put them in a position as being seen as failing or inadequate . Now, I imagine that there's an evolutionary reason for this. Rejection is dangerous to our survival, and so it is to be avoided if at all possible. But we evolved in a world where we — in the past, we might have had at most 150 people in our orbit whose opinions mattered, and now that gets amplified by, you know, all the things we know, including social media; celebrity. The person who is sensitive to this hardly stands a chance to keep their balance if this remains unconscious — an unconscious pattern.
[00:15:45] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, we dug into that I think a lot last Episode, so be sure to go back there if you missed it — that, sort of, social media or the age of the internet — what that's brought to our fear of being rejected. And I think we all fall on different spots on the spectrum here, of our sensitivity to rejection, the sensitivity of our gauge to rejection or appreciation.
And I don't think it's a bad thing either, you know, as we're getting into here. The real problem is when we're unconscious to all of it. So we did an Episode, a while back as well, on why caring about what others think is not a problem. I'll link to that in the show notes. But in short, as you're saying, Henry, we are wired to care what others think of us. You know, to tune into that appreciation, as sociometer theory suggests as well — that rejection or that appreciation. We're wired to want to belong, to want to be appreciated, to fear rejection. Those are hardwired ways of being to support our survival.
And so we don't need to break these gauges or to not care at all about what others think. In some ways, it's about letting those gauges be just helpful measurement tools; to not attach our worth to them. And that takes practice. We do that a lot here at Joy Lab.
And it's also about getting more comfortable with running out of gas in the desert, I think. There are gonna be so many times in our lives when we get rejected for reasons that are absolutely our fault, for sure, and for reasons that are completely unfair, and for reasons that are just random. What we're trying to do here is not attach our worth to that gauge, or gauges, or out-of-gas moments. Instead, and to continue with this metaphor, your sense of enoughness is like a portable gas station or solar panel. It can fill you up when you feel rejected or empty, because you will — you will feel those things. They are part of living. That is not a broken gauge. That is not something wrong with you. It's your gauges; they're functioning for you. And so we need an oasis for all of that, a place to fill up. That's our sense of enoughness. It's that place of self-compassion; of inner knowing that you matter, that you are a person of value just like everyone else, even when you get rejected; even when you feel like you're out of gas.
[00:18:34] Henry Emmons, MD: We love metaphors, don't we, Aimee? Hahaha.
[00:18:36] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Oh my God. Love them. I hope other people love them because we really dive into them, don't we?
[00:18:42] Henry Emmons, MD: So I'm gonna — I'm just gonna run with it, Aimee.
[00:18:45] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Please do.
[00:18:46] Henry Emmons, MD: So at this point in time, we as a — at least in the United States, we are still very dependent on refueling our vehicles. And that's true, I guess, whether it's gas or electric. They still need to be filled up now and then. So in order to be good at that, we've gotta be paying attention. We need to learn not to do things for example that waste fuel, like going too fast. We wanna keep our cars tuned up. We need to get regular maintenance. We definitely don't wanna miss the signs that we're getting close to being empty. And we wanna keep close tabs on when and where we are gonna be able to refuel.
I think all of that comes from the practice of mindful awareness. But long term, there's still a problem. This is not a sustainable model. It would be so much better if we could carry our fuel supply with us, to have it internally so we weren't dependent on filling up from the outside. And I think that's the work of a long-term practice. We are not victims of our evolution, or of our childhoods, or even of our traumas. Whatever our life has brought us, that's just what our life has brought us. Maybe it will fuel growth, and maybe it won't. Regardless of the externals, we can still grow. We can learn how to fill ourselves up from the inside out, and I think that is our mission here at Joy Lab.
[00:20:50] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. Yeah, that's our mission. And I think maybe even the way we're talking about it now, it almost seems like a solitary effort, but there are so many tools to help us do this and people to help us do this. You know, seeking out support when it feels like too much. And then also leaning on these types of practices that we do here at Joy Lab that you can do daily to help build that up; to create that little gas station inside of you, or solar panel inside of you.
And I think, as you're noting, Henry, that filling up from the inside out — it's often more of a slow-going process; a long-term practice. It's like filling up a semi with a Pixy Stick, I think, instead of Formula 1 pit stop. We want the Formula 1 pit stop. But I'm envisioning more like many people with Pixy Sticks, you know? We're all supporting our enoughness together. But it's not a Formula 1 pit stop. It's not rapid. It is hard work. It makes me think, too, of the hedonic treadmill that we talked about a few Episodes ago, and that belief or that desire that we can live a life full of pleasure and no pain. And I think our calculations on being enough, and the journey of reclaiming that enoughness, can sometimes get skewed by that belief- that to be enough we have to escape all misfortune, and pain, and losing, and weakness, and fear, or something — that if we just dream bigger and never feel bad, then we can manifest our enoughness.
And I'm not here to crush dreams, but it's just not true, as we discussed at the top of the Episode. So here at Joy Lab, unapologetically, I'm gonna say this: I believe, no, you cannot have it all. No, you cannot manifest everything your brain thinks up. And no, you cannot live a life full of only pleasure. And I'm not saying that as a pessimist, or a fatalist or something. I'm saying it as someone who tried to chase down that version of life. I'm saying that as someone who has had terrible bouts of depression and anxiety, and rejected that part of me, believing that it was wrong and weak. I was on that treadmill, and it got me nowhere — as treadmills do, which is probably why I hate running so much.
But this — you know, the happiness paradox tells the same story. Research has found that if you value happiness to a high degree, in such a way that it needs to be actively pursued at all times, you will feel less happy compared to someone who values happiness to a lesser degree. Long-term health outcomes like wellbeing, life satisfaction, are also negatively impacted when we relentlessly chase after happiness. It kind of sounds wild on its face, but it's what we've gotten into, I think, this whole series — when we strive for happiness or enoughness as something outside of ourselves; something we're chasing after and future-focused, something we're running behind on, then it's not ours and we may never catch it.
[00:24:29] Henry Emmons, MD: Mm-hmm. I think it's great that you're laying this out so directly, Aimee, 'cause on the surface of it, it sounds contradictory. Obviously, we value joy here at Joy Lab. Yet if we become too attached to happiness, which is different than joy, it actually works against us. But I think there's a very big difference between valuing joy and grasping at happiness. 'Cause when we grasp at anything, happiness or otherwise, we're operating from a place of scarcity. We grasp because we believe there's not enough, or we believe we're not enough, and it's the very grasping that creates stress for us, which creates worse outcomes, as you pointed out. I know it's a paradox, but joy cannot be forced. It comes from allowing. It's something you uncover; something you let rise up. And it doesn't depend on everything going well. Joy is steady and it can exist right alongside grief; right alongside loss or struggle. They're not mutually exclusive. Joy says "I can feel good even when things are hard."
So we're kinda coming to the end of this Series on Enoughness, and so what do we take away from all of this? One, I think it is tragically common to feel that you're not enough, and the antidote for that is self-compassion. Most of us hold an unreachable ideal of ourselves and our job isn't to reach it, it's to let go. Something that might surprise you, belonging is actually enhanced when we are more our authentic selves and not when we try to be perfect. And this points to something important. Fighting to be someone different from who you are just keeps you stuck. It is through accepting who you are that you actually allow change and growth to happen. And I think that's the real paradox of enoughness.
[00:27:11] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. I think you also just set us up perfectly for what's coming next too, Henry. So our next two Elements are Letting Go and Self-Compassion. We're gonna work on Letting Go in October and Self-Compassion in November. So more tools, more practice, more conversations to help you embrace your Enoughness. So thank you for being with us for this Series; for being part of this community, and share this with someone who you might think could be nourished by this message: the reminder that you are enough; that they're enough. I think that's a really important message to spread.
[00:27:55] Thanks for joining us!: With that, to close our time, I think Brené Brown has some valuable wisdom to close our Episode and our Element of Enoughness. Here's what she wrote: "You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging." Thank you for listening to the Joy Lab podcast. If you enjoy today's show, visit JoyLab.coach to learn more about the full Joy Lab program. Be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
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