NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Trobak discusses ways to challenge unhealthy core beliefs to become a stronger, more confident person in this mental health guide.

“People’s core belief ‘not good enough, not important, not valued’ plays a massive role in everything they do,” notes the author, whose counseling practice uses a model of therapy intended to help clients “move toward a healthy core belief and find healing.” In this book, she leads readers through “engaging activities” organized around the “four pillars of positive change: awareness, understanding, resolve, and healing.” These activities include exercises to examine “your own life experiences, thoughts, and perceptions” to uncover your core belief, which, Trobak asserts, develops in childhood and is often “fractured” due to shortfalls in meeting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Other exercises are used to determine the “intensity” level of your deficiency in each part of the “good enough, important, valued” trio and to then “change and resolve those emotions you’ve avoided or suppressed.” The author states that anxiety and anger both result from the emotional avoidance and suppression engendered by an unhealthy core belief. Finally, the book covers “maintaining these changes long term” via “coping strategies.” Here, too, discernment is key, as these methods can be healthy or unhealthy depending on their use (yoga can be a positive mind-body-emotions-spirit experience or an anxiety-anger stressor if turned into a comparison-based competition). Trobak’s self-examination primer is powerful and challenging; she recognizes the impact that parents have in developing one’s unhealthy core belief but doesn’t focus on blame, noting that this damage results from the parents having unhealthy core beliefs themselves. The author’s easy-to-follow exercises are designed to aid in building one’s own awareness and accountability to change unhealthy behaviors and achieve self-actualization (Maslow’s top level). Otherwise, as Trobak warns early on, “you will be drawn to people, events, situations, scenarios, and so on that support and reinforce your [unhealthy] core belief.”

An inspiring and practical self-awareness and self-empowerment workbook.