You know these people who go through life thinking, believing, repeating, “I’m not good enough, not attractive enough, I’m fat, I’m a loser, I can never do anything right, I have bad people skills, I always mess everything up, etc.”?
One can tell them many times that it’s not true, that they are not ugly, worthless, fat and stupid, but they won’t believe it. Want to know why?
Because that’s how they survive. This is their survival mechanism. Take the mantra of “I’m no good” away from them, and you are putting them at what they perceive as an actual threat of extinction.
So if you keep asking, “But why doesn’t it help him that I keep telling him how fantastic he is? Why doesn’t he believe me?”, remember: believing that he is good enough would be devastating to him. He is profoundly invested into maintaining the belief that he’s worthless.
In the following posts I will explain why.
Clarissa's Blog 
Let me guess: It’s their organizing principle for their life and conception of self and if you take it away they don’t know who they are anymore?
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My guess is that if they’re “not good enough” then they’re not really responsible for their unhappiness and/or things they perceive as failures. You take that away and they have to take responsibility for the facts of their lives.
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Even a maladaptive strategy still “works” for the person. It can be very negative but still oddly comforting. Take that away and what’s the person to do?
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