"You Are Enough".... Really?

A logical case for that thing you see on mental health t-shirts and mugs.

Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash

I distinctly recall a time in my life when I’d walk past a poster with a saying like “you are enough” or “you matter” or “you are loved” and immediately cringe. Hard.

I’d see that and think:

Honestly, the phrase “you are enough” seems like something you might crochet into a nice doily or stitch into a throw pillow but isn’t actually real. It’s the “live, laugh, love” of the mental health world.

Am I enough? Are you enough? Based on what? Who decides what “enough” actually is? Don’t I want to work on being more? Isn’t that settling? What if I feel like less?

This line of questioning gets even more intense if you grew up in a Christian or Catholic environment where you learn and discuss how much of a sinner you are on a frequent basis. This post isn’t meant to confirm or refute those beliefs about sin. That’s a lengthy discussion for another day. I’m simply saying the narrative of me being a wretched sinner was easier to believe than a “you are enough” mug, t-shirt, or doily because it seemed to match my inner experience. I was pretty comfortable with the idea of being an object of divine wrath because it meant God agreed with me on something.

But what if it’s true? What if you and I are enough? What if it’s more than a nice thing to make a neon sign out of? Let’s investigate.

Deconstructing Self-Esteem

The construct we all know as “self-esteem” has been seen for a long time as a primary goal and measure of mental wellbeing. If you have high self-esteem, you feel good. If your evaluation is negative, it’s really really not. To esteem oneself is to perform a subconscious evaluation of the characteristics, accomplishments, failures, abilities, appearance, accumulated goods, social circle, romantic partnership, career status, and more. This is done to arrive at some conclusions about how one should feel about who they are.

While growing up, moving through that list of evaluative criteria, I genuinely thought there was nothing of value to offer. There were no accomplishments. There were many failures. There was no readily apparent abilities. I was not popular. I considered my appearance to be awkward. Anyone who has red hair and went through middle school knows what I’m talking about.

Not only do I have red hair, I also have a big head. Like megadome. I can’t buy hats at regular stores. I’ve missed out on some pretty great trucker caps in my life because the snaps won’t close.

“So I Married an Axe Murderer”

My friends used to think this movie quote was hilarious to say to me.

I’ve since embraced this quirk of nature and now can make jokes about it as you can see. But if you laughed while reading that, just know that I’m judging you right now.

The first thing to know about the case for your worth is that this internal compulsion to evaluate one’s value based on the criteria above is unhealthy and based on poor logic.

I’m not arguing that you should work to improve your self-esteem. I’m asking you to reject self-esteem as you’ve likely understood it entirely. Stop the near-constant arbitrary self-measurement.

There’s simply a better, more true way of thinking. Albert Ellis, the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, posed this same argument. He argued that one should reject self-evaluation of one’s worth in favor of “unconditional self-acceptance.”

If you’ve struggled with self-esteem in the past, it’s likely because of the measures used. You embraced faulty ideas given to you by society about what you should be at the expense of who you are made to be.

Even if you are doing good in the areas of accomplishments, appearance, wealth, social prowess, and proportional skull size, these qualities are not static through life. We age, we experience tragedy and failure, we lose touch with friends. Do you really want to stake your sense of self on such impermanence? There is a better way.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine for a moment you are driving down the road at a pretty decent speed when you notice out of the corner of your eye that you passed a person on the sidewalk. You keep going. You don’t know much about the person other than the fact that there was a human being on the sidewalk as you drove by.

What is that person’s life worth in dollars? Think about it for a moment. If I wanted to pay money equal to the value of their life, what would that amount be?

I’ve asked this line of questioning to a lot of people, and I get a wide range of reactions including confusion and even anger. It’s kind of a messed up question isn’t it? But why do we see it as a messed up question?

No one I’ve asked this question to has arrived at a dollar amount for our friend on the sidewalk. There seems to be a universally agreed upon underlying belief that every human life is priceless no matter what belief system they hold. I haven’t met anyone who would argue anything other than priceless.

The thought experiment gives no details about the person on the sidewalk. We know nothing about their gender, appearance, head size, body shape, accomplishments, wealth, or social status. None of that matters, because when you strip all that back, we still have a priceless human life with consciousness, hopes, and dreams. Irreplaceable. For me and others who hold similar faith, the person was made in the image of God. For those who do not have faith in a God or gods, the person is the result of a cosmic miracle, the odds of which are quite slim. Either way, the worth of that sidewalk person is priceless without condition.

What if you are the person on the sidewalk? Could that be true of you too?

It’s often hard for us to bridge what is obvious for everyone else but feels elusive for ourselves. Remember that the logic of this argument is sound and your inner critic is simply not. If you follow the flow of thought above, that pricelessness applies to you too.

And that’s the second thing to remember in the case for your worth: you are priceless.

Constructing Self Acceptance

I am suggesting we work our way toward rejection of the internal demands of our self-esteem units of measure. I’m asking you, reader, to walk the path toward accepting your worth without conditions or evaluations. We don’t work for it. There aren’t some who have it and some who don’t.

It simply is.

You are not settling to embrace this idea. Rather, from this new vantage point, you can embrace and pursue growth. You can stop fighting against the way you’ve been made and move with it. You can reject unhealthy standards from within and from without. You can reject the oppression of ridiculous societal standards about what you should do, look like, own, or hang out with. Instead, the foundation of your life can be built on something more true, logical, and healthy…

That is: You are enough.

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