It can be easy to think you are flawed. Perhaps it’s when you browse social media and see that your family members and friends are sharing their accomplishments. Or maybe your mind randomly produces self-defeating thoughts, such as “I will never succeed” or “I am nothing special.”
When you feel sad, hopeless, or irritable, you might think that there’s something wrong with you. But if you take a closer look at how your mind and nervous system work, you will realize that you are not flawed after all, and that your responses are, in fact, quite reasonable.
In a rush? Use the links below to skip to a specific section:
- The Five-Part Model for Answering the Question, “Is There Something Wrong With Me?
- Environment: Why We Ask, “Is There Something Wrong With Me?” In The First Place
- Thoughts: Your Feelings Change Throughout the Day, They Are Not Fixed
- Moods, Behaviors, and Physical Reactions: How the Nervous System Works Makes You Feel Flawed
- Is Something Wrong With Me? No, You Live in a World of Overstimulation
Key Takeaways
- Your life experiences are shaped by your environment, thoughts, physical reactions, moods, and behaviors.
- The way that you feel is a factor of your surroundings. The best way to control your feelings then, is to remove negative cues from your immediate environment.
- Feelings, such as sadness or worry, are temporary and often do not last longer than a few hours.
- We think that there’s something wrong with us when we experience too much or too little arousal.
The Five-Part Model for Answering the Question, “Is There Something Wrong With Me?”
The Five-Part Model by Christine A. Padesky, a clinical psychologist from the United States, is a framework for understanding how you feel, and understand why you think “there’s something wrong with you”. This model forms the basis of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, a form of psychotherapy, and is used to help people deal with overwhelming problems in a more positive way by breaking them down into smaller segments. It states that your life experiences are shaped by your environment, thoughts, physical reactions, moods, and behaviors.
Each one of these five parts contributes to how you interpret a specific situation. A poor grade on a test (environmental change or life event) could, for example, lead to you skipping class (behavior). In addition, you might think that you are not intelligent (thought) and so you feel worse both emotionally (mood) and physically (physical reaction).
- Environment: The surroundings in which you operate, and life events you experience.
- Thoughts: Ideas you produce by thinking, or that randomly occur in your mind.
- Moods: The way that you feel, or the outlook you have at a particular time.
- Behaviors: The way in which you act or conduct yourself.
- Physical Reactions: The things that you do in response to certain stimuli.
It can also be used to understand mental health problems that arise from temporary life setbacks. For example, the life event of losing your job could result in the behavior of you not wanting to leave the house and socialize with friends. As you find yourself alone with your thoughts, you start to feel a sense of worthlessness, which affects both your emotional and physical health.
Understanding how these five parts of your life interact helps you realize that there is nothing wrong with you. It allows you to pinpoint the root cause of your struggles and approach your problems more rationally.
Related: How to Stop Thinking About Something, According to Science
Environment: Why We Ask, “Is There Something Wrong With Me?” In The First Place
Your actions are shaped by your environment. Think about it: When you are studying for an upcoming test and your phone starts to ring, you want to see who is calling. Similarly, if you come home from a day of work and your partner is watching television, you feel tempted to sit down, relax, and entertain yourself (I discuss why this is here)
The effects of our environment are especially apparent when we browse social media. It’s common to fall into negative thought patterns when you compare yourself to other people. Images of success, beauty, and happiness give you the perception that some people live the perfect life. This causes you to pursue ideals, and so you might think you must…
- Be happily married and have kids,
- Make at least $100,000 a year,
- Work a great job and have a successful career,
- Have lots of followers on social media,
- Dress well and be attractive,
- Live healthily and free of illness,
- Feel happy and joyful,
- Spend a lot of time with friends and family.
Ideals are standards of perfection, beauty, or excellence that people (especially those of young age) believe are worth achieving. These typically fall into eight different categories: beauty, freedom, wealth, health, intelligence, happiness, power, and fame. Ideals provide you with goals, but achieving success in all areas is, realistically speaking, unattainable. Nobody is perfect and everybody has something that they wish was not the way it is.
The best way to avoid feeling inferior then, is to remove cues that remind you of ideals from your surroundings. If you find that social media makes you feel worthless, put your phone in a different room, and regulate your screen time. If fashion and beauty advertisements on television make you feel flawed, consider moving the television to another room. Control your living spaces and you will find that your thoughts, moods, behaviors, and physical reactions change, too.
Related: Delayed Gratification: The Most Important Factor of Success
Thoughts: Your Feelings Change Throughout the Day, They Are Not Fixed
At times, it’s natural to feel like there’s something wrong with us. However, it’s important to realize that your feelings are always changing. That is, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness are temporary and often do not last longer than a few hours.
Think about the feelings you experienced today, and you see that your emotional state is not fixed. When you woke up and completed your morning routine, you might’ve felt excited for the day ahead, but then once lunch hit you started feeling anxious. You experience many different feelings as the day goes by.
Though it is possible to control bad feelings once they arise, you can’t change the fact that that they are dynamic and ever-changing. Your feelings are fluid, meaning that they come and go. They can change because of random life events, the weather, or the type of food you eat.
It’s important to keep in mind that feelings are something that happen to you, not something that you are. Only because it appears that other people are living a perfect life and you are not, doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you. When you react strongly to something, put faith in the fact that it is temporary and that you will feel better eventually. A change in thought changes the way you experience events.
Related: What Is Motivation? Definition and Why We Never Have Enough
Moods, Behaviors, and Physical Reactions: How the Nervous System Works Makes You Feel Flawed
Your nervous system is made up of your brain, spinal cord, and all the nerves in your body. It helps all parts of the body communicate with each other, and controls functions like breathing, walking, thinking, and feeling. It also contains two anatomically distinct divisions called the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for putting you into a hyperarousal or fight or flight state when you perceive danger. Face a threat and your brain will signal to increase heart rate and breathing, causing you to feel anxiety, anger, and defensiveness.
Though too much arousal was useful when the survival of our ancestors was threatened a long time ago, it is not needed as much today. Our lives are safer than ever before: We can buy food at grocery stores, take medication when we’re not feeling well, and stay at home when it’s dangerous to be outside.
Despite the fact that we often don’t need to be in a hyperarousal state, our brain still signals for danger in day-to-day life. We can enter fight or flight when we get into an argument with a friend, fear that we don’t meet deadlines at work, or revisit uncomfortable thoughts from the past.
The parasympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, governs the hypo-arousal or freeze response, which puts you in a state absent of sensation. It is characterised by the numbing of emotions and reduced physical movement, and typically occurs when there is too little arousal.
Just like the fight-or-flight response, the freeze response surfaces in daily life when our body signals for danger. We might enter hypo-arousal when we blame ourselves for mistakes, feel regretful about decisions, or are hopeless about the outcome of an event.
When you are not in a hyperarousal or hypoarousal state, you will likely find yourself in the window of tolerance. The window of tolerance is a term used to describe the zone in which you are able to function most effectively. You are not in a fight or flight, or freeze mode, but you are able to readily perceive, process, and deal with the demands of everyday life.
You think there’s something wrong with you when you find yourself outside the window of tolerance. That is, when you react to everyday stressors and enter a state of too much or too little arousal, your moods, behaviors, and physical reactions change. You then think that you are not supposed to feel that way, and so you come to the conclusion that you are flawed.
The truth is, however, that your brain is just trying to keep you alive. It doesn’t know the difference between a threat you perceive at work, or the danger you sense when you come face to face with a predator in the wild.
Related: How Long Should I Meditate? 8 Quick Tips for Best Results
Is Something Wrong With Me? No, You Live in a World of Overstimulation
In a world where distractions are ever so present, it can be easy to fall into negative thought patterns (and give in to instant gratification). The things that happen in your environment directly influence your thoughts, physical reactions, behaviors, and moods. With so much new information around you at all times, it can be easy to enter into hyper- and hypoarousal states that cause you to be unwell, and experience symptoms of depression or anxiety disorder.
Realize that your feelings are ever-changing and if you wait long enough, you will find yourself back in the window of tolerance. Most importantly, understand that you are going through a hard time and experience periods of emotional distress because your brain wants to keep you alive, and not because there is something wrong with you.
The next time you catch yourself asking, “Is there something wrong with me?”, know that feelings are temporary and treat yourself with self-care time or spend some quality time with your best friend. You can also break the problem down into the five-part model and assign your current experience to either a hyper- or hypoarousal state. Once you align your behaviors with how your mind and nervous system work, you will realize that you are not a flawed human being, but perfect the way you are.