Feeling like enough

From my therapy supervisor, Dr. Estelle Bender (who heard it from her therapy supervisor, Dr. Marianne Kris): “For a child who was given two cookies with love, two cookies will be enough. If a child is given two cookies without love, all the cookies in the world will never be enough.”

“Enough” can be a challenge to hold in your head and heart for this reason. Having enough, doing enough, being enough, and chasing the possibility of more because more might get you to enough, and then you would never have to feel deprived, never have to feel less than.

This is a tiring, often endless cycle. Fight for more, beg for more, earn more, until you are enough. Except that day is always in the future. There is always more to do.

The patient who comes to me for therapy, exhausted from the cycle, has to sit with that dissonance. They deserved the cookies. They deserved the love. They just didn’t get it. But not because they didn’t earn it, because this is not something to earn. They were enough, always.